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 argument is that happiness shouldn't be pursued deliberately. Happiness is more of a by-product, a downstream effect of making sound decisions, and adopting the right mindset. I cite a quote from Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, in his book, 'Man's Search for Meaning'. He posits that success shouldn't be sought deliberately but rather, it's something that materialises when one is engaged in meaningful endeavours. This logic applies perfectly to happiness as well.
You don't need to be a celebrity to suffer from what social media does to you; it's happening to everyone. For me, I have to find a routine and discipline with how I use my public image.
There's also a great metaphor from the world of automotive technology. The main naysayers against cars were probably the drivers of carriages in the streets of New York. At some point, the Model T factory was open. And suddenly you're looking around, you're looking at the friend that is driving a car and you're saying, wait a second – he doesn't need a barn to house your horse.
For a civilisation to succeed, it must learn from failures. Dubai is a land of innovation and failure here is perceived as an opportunity to learn and not the end of an endeavour.
Paying a negative interest rate on currency, or on electronic reserves at the central bank, may seem barbaric to some... But it is arguably no more barbaric than inflation, which similarly reduces the real purchasing power of currency.
My primary design philosophy involves putting the tools into the hands of the community, and thinking really hard about avoiding bottlenecks which require some 'top-down' intervention.
If only one-quarter melted, it would lead to a 2-metre rise in sea-levels all over the world and would threaten thousands of cities and towns on every continent.
People have always been entrepreneurs, what's changed is connectivity. We can now relate to people all over the world and get to market really quickly. You could generate traffic in 24 hours, and sell within a week. It's incredible.
It seems, to me, that relationships are face to face things. There is no point in having a virtual relationship if you are never going to see those individuals again as it crowds your 'mental boxes'. To think of this in context, they are real cognitive limits.
If you really want innovation, you have to say 'no' a lot of times to what's incremental. Saying 'no' reinforces that the small stuff isn't enough.
The rumour is often significantly more interesting than the facts. And the rumour is often very persuasive to the people who've heard it; they've heard it from somebody they trust. When the target says, 'No, that's not true,' the audience says, 'Oh, of course he or she would deny it,' and so it really puts the target at a disadvantage.
Diamonds are a miracle of nature, they are millions of years old, they survived a hazardous journey to the earth's surface and the discovery of them is an exciting moment. To see the rough diamond and then watch it come to life on the polisher's wheel with incredible fire and scintillation is incredibly inspiring.