From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
My wife quipped that we're all going to die and it just happened to be her turn. Her pragmatic and humorous attitude was a guide as to how to accept what is unchangeable and inevitable.
We cannot think about technology in confrontational terms. There is no race against the machines, there is no fight, no war. We have to end this long, historical confrontational narrative.
Einstein famously said time is what a clock measures, which was a half-joke but also the best answer he could give. A clock measures the 'distance' it travels through spacetime between events. That's fascinating, but it still doesn't tell you what time actually is.
A lot of people think we're pleasure motivated hedonists, but it turns out we have many other goals. We want happiness, but that comes in many different forms. We want pleasure, we want to be good people, we want to make a difference in the world.
We are fields endowed with consciousness and free will, existing in a reality deeper than the familiar realm of space, time, and interacting objects. Consciousness exists independently of any physical form; it resides in the underlying field that instantiates the matter and energy we measure in space and time.
I use the word repugnance to describe transactions that some people would like to engage in, that other people would not like them to; it's often hard to pin-down what harm the transaction does to anyone else.
MMA serves as my ministry. As a Christian, I want to convey unconditional love to everyone. The real value lies not in winning titles but in the ability to positively impact the lives of my teammates, trainers, friends, family, and future generations.
You can think of the human mind as a measuring instrument. We're making judgements all the time and studies show that on a day-to-day basis, when presented with the same evidence, our judgements may be different.
If you had to make everything up in your life, from the start, with no input whatsoever – that wouldn't be freedom – you'd be less free; you'd have to think constantly about what you should or should not do. There would be no structure for your life choices.
I believe that you have to keep asking questions, and that there's no such thing as a negative question. It's all learning.
The sustainability of traditions relies on their ability to evolve. This was the crux of my message: how can we help this tradition evolve? Because at that time, it was certainly losing its vitality.
Some call it resilience, but it's likely just escapism. When you keep moving, the wind moves behind you, and you leave behind who you once were and move towards something new.