From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We're afraid of living under constant terrorism, and the constant threat of a neighbour who wants to kill you and destroy everything you care about. The escalation is already here.
If you look at the countries in the world that are leading in their levels of reported happiness, it's countries such as the Nordics- Denmark virtually always comes out on top. The countries where people are happiest are ones which are much more domestically oriented and not seeking world-power.
This timely book outlines and directly addresses the ethical dilemmas posed by the development of autonomous military robots, which will confront roboticists and military policy makers in the future. Arkin's thesis, that appropriately designed military robots will be better able to avoid civilian casualties than existing human war-fighters and might therefore make future wars more ethical, is likely to be the subject of intense debate and controversy for years to come.
The American general felt that if we confronted the Russians with a determined show of force, they would probably back down. And you know what? He was probably right; but what does probably mean? If it's 90% then there was a 10% chance he was wrong.
My understanding of humanity was changed more by working in the space industry than space travel itself. It opened up my eyes to what international collaboration can really achieve. The space industry and scientific community seem to transcend all that. You realise that you're involved in this incredible international space station that's been occupied for 20 years and which simply couldn't have succeeded if it wasn't for everyone collaborating together.
However brave you are, you can't protect yourself against a huge pile of metal coming from the sky to kill you and everything you love.
Grief is perhaps the most universal human experience—live long enough, and you will grieve. When I see grief in another, whether a friend or a perceived adversary, what do I choose to do? In moments of shared grief, we find ourselves reflecting each other; your grief mirrors mine.
Our strategy is to try and find elements which can create a common ground, a common agenda, which can then build confidence for sides to work together. Often, a common-agenda comes from issues outside the source of the conflict, such as economic and social well-being.
There is still considerable hesitancy within the international community for robust intervention. Ultimately, blue helmets, or UN peacekeepers, come from specific countries, and the decision to withdraw them rests with the capitals of these contributing countries.
I still believe that nuclear is the greatest risk we face as a society today.
Even though we still have approximately twenty thousand hydrogen bombs in the arsenals of the United States and Russia (many of them ready to use at a moment's notice) the two risks that most experts think are the greatest and most likely are the risks of a single bomb being used by a terrorist group or the risk of a regional war involving dozens of weapons.
All conflicts are different with their particular history and reasons. I think that inequality within societies and between regions has become a key cause for conflict, exacerbated by rapid information dissemination, as people are (now) more aware of inequalities...