Wisdom in fragments

I don't think there is anything about putting your country first that requires you to turn your back on the rest of the world. If anything, the opposite is true.

Co-Founder of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Health Advocate

We can't solve problems if we don't understand them.

Co-Founder of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Health Advocate

We like to think of data as being objective, but the answers we get are often shaped by the questions we ask. When those questions are biased, the data is, too.

Co-Founder of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Health Advocate

In rich countries, 'innovation' often means finding a better way of doing things. But in developing countries, it can mean finding a way to do things at all.

Co-Founder of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Health Advocate

If technology is just for the privileged few, then it will concentrate power in the hands of those who already have it.

Co-Founder of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Health Advocate

Many of us think that you should only believe things that are true, not just things that rally your coalition, sect, or tribe. That belief is by no means universal, but it is a gift of the enlightenment.

Cognitive Scientist & Psychologist Known for Research on Language and Human Nature

We have a growing inequality of rationality. At the top, we've never been so rational – we've accomplished technological miracles, sequenced the COVID-19 genome in days and deployed vaccines in under a year. At the same time, we have pizzagate, QAnon, chemtrails and 9/11 truthers.

Cognitive Scientist & Psychologist Known for Research on Language and Human Nature

The laws of cause and effect which govern our universe don't care about our beliefs – so we'd better find out what those laws are and try and align our beliefs to them to eliminate guesswork. The consequences if we don't? we'll get sick, we'll starve, our machines will break down.

Cognitive Scientist & Psychologist Known for Research on Language and Human Nature

Rationality applies whether you believe in it or not. One idea follows from another – or it doesn't – and if you want some of your beliefs to lead to other beliefs, you have no choice but to be rational. We're committed to it by the very act of discussing, arguing, debating, persuading and convincing.

Cognitive Scientist & Psychologist Known for Research on Language and Human Nature

Truth is an aspiration which none of us can ever know that we have attained. Nobody has a pipeline to the truth; nobody is imbued with divine revelation. We seek truth through institutions like science, journalism, governance, justice systems and record keeping. These are the bodies that make us collectively more suited to attain the truth.

Cognitive Scientist & Psychologist Known for Research on Language and Human Nature

We mustn't focus exclusively on this threat, and it tends to be the case that the global elite does. I was at Davos in January 2020 and climate change was the agenda – and the pandemic had already begun! It was quite difficult to persuade people that there might be a nearer-term threat facing us than climate change.

British historian and author specializing in financial and military history

There's no question that Facebook could have done much, much more in the last few years to address the problem. I don't think we can inoculate people against crazy ideas, they will always have takers- but we can certainly improve the way that platforms like Facebook operate because they don't have any incentive at the moment to restrict the spread of harmful content.

British historian and author specializing in financial and military history

Those cycles don't exist – that's not what history is like. Disasters keep coming along at random intervals, they are not normally distributed... That's hard for our brains to deal with… we don't like the idea that history is just a lot of random shocks without any predictable features.

British historian and author specializing in financial and military history

We've built two great contagion machines. Firstly, international travel which has enabled vast numbers of people to fly over great distances. Secondly, the internet – and in particular, the way the internet has evolved... it became a machine for disseminating contagious ideas.

British historian and author specializing in financial and military history

The story of modernity is a story of scientific advance – but in reality, with every step forward, we're taking half a step backward in terms of making ourselves more fragile.

British historian and author specializing in financial and military history

Today's civilisation is more fragile as a result of its complexity. We've created an astonishingly networked world in which we communicate and travel in ways which were unimaginable for most of human history... but at the same time, we have made ourselves more vulnerable to certain kinds of disaster, and even invented new forms of disaster that didn't' exist before.

British historian and author specializing in financial and military history