Science

Magical thinking is a bi-product of cognitive process that were useful in our evolutionary survival. We're so good at pattern matching that we see patterns everywhere, even when they don't exist. It's better to believe the movement in the dark is a tiger, rather than the wind blowing thru a bush. Its better to be wrong on that, than the other way around.

We are a product of evolution, and the mechanism of evolution is natural selection. Evolution is selecting for survival, and the qualities we have are evolved to help us survive as well as possible. Our cognitive capability to reason has not evolved to find truth, it evolved to help us survive and that means that we sometimes find it easier to stay with a group rather than believe the correct thing.

Truth is a quality of reality. It has nothing to do with what I believe. Truth, when it comes to empirical issues, is an objective thing. Whether something is true or not is independent of whether I think it is true or not, and a lot of people confuse this. People say that we cannot trust science because once-upon-a-time scientists held it true that the earth was flat; that's not correct. It was never true that the earth was flat, even if people believed it.

The only way to innovate is to follow Aristotle's prescription. To create a future that is different to the past is to imagine possibilities and choose the one for which the most compelling argument can be made, not the one for which there is the most data. If companies want to innovate, they need to realise that data analytics is killing innovation yet is lauded and used increasingly.

Management theorist & former Dean of Rotman School of Business

We should be looking at our regrets not as meaningless, debilitating phenomena but as signals, information, and data. If we do that systematically? We can use this emotion as a transformative force for progress.

Author of "Drive" & Leading Work Culture Expert

I worry that we haven't checked our interstellar mailbox, and so we've missed the letter which contained the recipe for our salvation. Perhaps another civilisation sent us a message with the key to our own survival. Physical objects have a huge advantage over listening for signals – you can encode a lot more into a physical object.

Harvard astrophysicist who studies interstellar objects and extraterrestrial life

Our experience is very limited to the surface of this rock we call home. You cannot show-off in space, we must be humble. The only purpose for us to seek journeys into space is to learn about the unknown. That's a spiritual conquest. Leaving the solar system has no commercial benefits.

Harvard astrophysicist who studies interstellar objects and extraterrestrial life

The only way for you to discover something new is to acknowledge the ocean of ignorance in which you are just an island. Experts have a problem with that – they want to get prizes, and get recognised by their colleagues and peers as being very smart. So, when something new comes along... an anomaly... it often gets dismissed for the sake of reputation management.

Harvard astrophysicist who studies interstellar objects and extraterrestrial life

Science is a learning experience. We are interacting with nature, collecting evidence, and sometimes nature is more imaginative than we are. We ought to be humble when collective evidence, and not assume we know the answer in advance. Many of the realities we create are designed to flatter our ego... We prefer to attach ourselves to virtual realities that flatter us, and that's driven by ego.

Harvard astrophysicist who studies interstellar objects and extraterrestrial life

We are under an existential threat now as humankind. Even a simple two-cell yeast has a survival instinct and evolves fast enough to try and survive. I don't understand why humans who are supposed to be these very complex creatures can see that we're heading towards a very, very dangerous future which could be irreversible, and why we're not doing absolutely everything possible now.

I've known many individual monkeys and apes, and I'm struck by how much diversity and gender diversity there is which I have been ignoring. We always look for typical behaviours… a typical male does X… a typical female does Y. We overemphasise the typicality of men and women. If we start looking in primates, we'll almost certainly find the same sort of gender diversity we find in humans.

Primatologist & behavioral psychologist who studies animal cognition and emotions

Biology doesn't need to be obeyed, but it always needs to be considered. If we discuss gender differences, we cannot act as if biology doesn't exist. We live at a time where a group of people – for ideological reasons – have made it clear that they think we can shove biology aside, that everything is culturally constructed, and we can act like biology doesn't exist. That's not going to work, that's not how the world works.

Primatologist & behavioral psychologist who studies animal cognition and emotions

If you tap out the rhythm to a familiar song, say 'happy birthday…' how often do you think that someone listening to your taps will guess the song? The person tapping usually guesses about 50%, but in reality, it's about 2.5%! You are assuming the other person can hear the song you are tapping!

Harvard Business Review contributor & workplace dynamics expert

In 2010, Alibaba started talking about itself as an ecosystem and it invited many of the world's top biologists to come and lecture on how plants, water and animals all interact – and how that could teach a business about how to interact with its' own marketplace.

Our brains are not wired to think statistically or in terms of probabilities. That's sad because whole industries have emerged to exploit this reality – top of the list, casinos. The whole point of the scientific method is to do all you can to prevent yourself from thinking something is true that is not.

Renowned Astrophysicist & Director of Hayden Planetarium

It has been said that we went to the moon to explore the moon, but while we were there, we looked over our shoulder and discovered Earth. Seeing the Earth in that perspective upgraded the firmware of all our brains, of everyone's subconscious. Those missions sparked Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency, a comprehensive Clean Air Act... So much activism came from seeing that there's no hint of anyone coming to help us from somewhere, that we're here by ourselves on one planet.

Renowned Astrophysicist & Director of Hayden Planetarium