LA Times Festival of Books. Science: How We Invent the World

On Sunday, some of the flaws from day one were resolved.  The ticket process went much quicker.  A simple solution was to have the tickets with those taking the requests versus the tickets being on another table.  Also, there were signs around campus directing people to the bathrooms.  

My first panel of the day was about Science:  How We Invent the World.  This was a unique panel, because the moderator never showed up.  Also, one of the panelists didn't show up until the last ten minutes -- a traffic accident had occurred in front of him on the freeway.


Mike Brown.  Brown is the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.  He is best known for his discovery of Eris, the largest object found in the solar system in 150 years and the object that led to the debate on and eventual demotion of Pluto.  His book is 'How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.'

K.C. Cole:  Cole is the author of numerous books on science, including her latest, 'Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens:  Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up.' Cole is a faculty member at USC's Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism.

Anonio Damasio:  Damasio is David Dornsift Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Neurology and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC.  He is the author of 'Self Comes to Mind:  Constructing the Conscious Brain' and has received the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research.

Here are my imperfect notes from the panel discussion.

KC Cole. “If we stop trying to understand things, we’re all sunk.” Frank Oppenheimer. We can no longer afford  the old ways of doing things due to nuclear weapons. Frank Oppenheimer created a place where people could take part in this process. Invent a world that allows one to be aware.

We need social inventions to help solve problems of life. Traffic lights, for example. We must reduce the damage we can do to each other.

A lot of science is based on wrong info. Gravity is not a force. Do we need to change everything for the public? Why change Pluto from being a planet?

Antonio Damasia.  Self comes to mind. Process of the self coming to the mind. When we think about the mind, we don’t think about the self. You don’t come to the end of the story in science. Start with the end and do reverse engineering in science of the brain. How brains are put together in humans. There are techniques that allow us to get to the human brain directly without doing harm.

Capacity to be conscious allows things like this meeting happen. When you’re in a dreamless sleep you are not conscious. When you are dreaming you are conscious. Conciousness is when you wake from a dreamless sleep. Gives you a picture that is audio, visual with self in it. We know we are doing things. How does the brain form images? How is it you hear me when I talk? Build of self. We never have developed conciousness without a cause of life. We need to manage life. Very complex. A brain manages our bodies. Conciousness helps regulate even more. Critical issues, self is because there is a body to regulate.

Brain stem is important to study, because it manages our body. Emotions driven by body and brain stem.

Creativity needs social emotions, moral behavior. Humans only have this ethical ability, not monkeys, apes.

Mike Brown. Stuck in a wreck. His book is how he killed Pluto. Pluto was a mistake in 1930s. Was falsely called a planet. Initially thought to be larger than the earth.