From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Think about a rabbit sitting in a field. If that rabbit saw a hawk circling above and decided to wait for the back-propagation step before responding, it would be dead. It has been eliminated from the gene pool. The better you model the world, and the faster you can act on that model, the more likely your genes are to survive.
Quantum computing can be seen as a monumental effort to fully confront this exponential scaling that lies at the heart of quantum mechanics. By building and testing quantum computers, we are conducting an experiment that should either indisputably confirm this exponential nature, or overturn a century of established quantum theory.
We are scientifically naked in front of this threat. We do not have the diagnostics to quickly detect an MDR or XDR case. Once detected, we do not have the drugs to effectively treat the patient at reasonable cost, and we do not have a TB vaccine.
Right now, biological evolution is not the main engine of change in the human condition. Instead, social and technological development, which occur on shorter timescales, are the predominant change-makers.
The perspective of seeing the Earth from space has rewired our brain. We used to have a 2-dimensional view for hundreds of thousands of years. Then we became 3-dimensional with aircraft and rockets. Now with Hubble we have a 4-dimensional view of our universe. When you see a galaxy that's a billion light years away, you're seeing a billion years into the past in real time.
There's no way electrical signals alone can produce the sensation of taste. That's the hard problem of consciousness: qualia—the sensations and feelings through which we know the world and ourselves—bear no resemblance to electrical impulses, and physics offers no explanation for how one could give rise to the other.
There is a lot of misunderstanding about demography and one of the biggest misunderstandings is that it's destiny. If it's destiny, it is not that interesting to study, but it's not destiny.
As we continue to push the boundaries of what is computationally possible, we are not just developing a new technology, but fundamentally expanding our understanding of the universe and our place within it.
By measuring skulls from 400 years ago, you'll find that our ancestors had straight teeth, prognathic faces, and very wide jaws. Compare these to modern skulls, which show very slender, narrow faces and small jaws. It's all there, plainly evident, yet it seems as though nobody is really talking about this or acknowledging the rapid changes that have occurred over just a couple of hundred years.
Gender identity drives self-socialization. People think adults socialise their children, but children socialise themselves. We see the same process in the Great Apes. Self-socialisation we see, is not limited just to humans! That's why I talk about the idea of gender in apes, not just sex.
The group found that, on average, people living in Manhattan travel 2.5 miles most days, compared to five miles in Los Angeles. But we also found that when you look at the longest trips people make, people that live in New York go significantly further, 69 miles on a weekday compared to 29 in Los Angeles.
There is a line between the observable and greater universe. For discussion it's very useful to recognise that when we speak about anything outside the observable universe, we're switching from the empirical to the speculative and theoretical