It's funny to see this German effort turn up in Scientific American, of all places. In 2014, FQXi held an essay contest, sponsored by Scientific American, call

It's funny to see this German effort turn up in Scientific American, of all places. In 2014, FQXi held an essay contest, sponsored by Scientific American, called "How Should Humanity Steer the Future?". First prize [1] went to German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies [2]. Her award-winning proposal [3] was to hook up everybody to a recommendation engine "to give the user an intuitive feeling for how well a decision matches with recorded priorities", so they would not have to think for themselves. Because, as she succinctly put it, "They don't like to think" ("they" being "most people": "It is time to wake up. We’ve tried long enough to educate them. It doesn’t work."). Granted, the technological contraption needed to make this work would currently be Google Glass-clunky, but fear not; the essay helpfully adds that "If such a feedback in the future can be given by a brain implant, it will be like an additional sense." No, I am not making this up. [1] http://fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2014.1 http://fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2014.1 [2] https://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/fellows/ https://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/fellows/ [3] http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Hossenfelder_fqxi_essay_hos.pdf http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Hossenfelder_fqxi_e...