There is a famous Iraqi idiom which states that if you think your opponents can eat you for dinner, then you'd better eat them for lunch. If your opponent is too big and powerful to eat you right-now, you'd better eat them for lunch before they eat you. Commitment problems from our opponents lead us to act, and that's another reason why rational man can go to war.
— Christopher BlattmanMy favourite question when evaluating a startup idea is, 'Is this from the future?' I'm not interested in your ideas about the future; I want to understand why you are living in it today. Why are you living in a different future right now than other people are?
In the spring, when we lose an hour of sleep, we observe a consequential 24% increase in heart attacks the following day. In the Autumn, when we gain an hour, we see a corresponding 21% reduction in heart attacks.
We have a blind spot about the ways in which the things we innocently buy and use actually are decaying the environment we depend on, the global systems that support life on the planet. We are super-monkeys- super because of the technology, and our monkeys because our brains haven't kept up with the change.
We live in a deeply connected world, and if we want stability and prosperity in our connected world, we have to look after the weakest links as well as the strongest parts.
We've lost our relationship with ourselves; and that is all-encompassing because without a relationship with ourselves, we can't then have a relationship with nature, with each other and the planet.
We are facing the mother of all debt crises. When you look at the data on private and public debt, the debt to GDP ratio was near 200% of global GDP in 1999, today it's more like 350% and rising. In advanced economies, it's over 420% and in China, 330% and rising.
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.
If you view the world from a moral perspective, you have no option but to address climate change in a timely fashion. The good news is that the moral imperative is backed-up by economics, technological advance and capital shifts.
We're extraordinarily vulnerable to the functions of our heart, no other organ can cause sudden death.
His practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects and interventions in civic space.
Early stage investing is very difficult and financially risky meaning that a lot of what we invest in won't work. A lot of what we do is, in effect, pilots to see if individual projects or funds can generate some positive return.
More important than picking specific industries, what matters is ensuring competitive and innovative companies that are able to compete in international markets.