Philosophy

For me- I think we're all here to uplift the human condition, making lives better for ourselves and others.

With technology, we're creating a lot more hammers – and with more hammers, we're able to find more nails. The question is whether those hammers are being made for the right purposes, and whether they will serve the right purpose. I often worry that when we talk about health-tech – it almost seems that in certain areas the tech is taking over the health.

You need clarity of vision and purpose. You need to know the reason you're there at that surgical table with a knife in your hand. You have to be clear that you are using these sophisticated tools (tools which can cause a lot of harm) to fundamentally and primarily help that entity, that child in front of you. That mindset provides the energy and focus needed to carry out the task.

If Smith were alive today, he'd say that in addition to the openness and competition and all the wealth we are creating, we need a sense of mutual sympathy and empathy. We need to give people the ability to compete.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

The genius of the classical economists was to think of economics and politics as the same. Remember, in Smiths' Day, there was no economics faculty, it was political economy. We may need to go back to that.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

Pleasure has limits, it's fleeting, we habituate to it quickly and get bored of it. You can only experience pleasure against a backdrop of pain, difficulty, or struggle. We allocate pain and pleasure; we balance them out in clever ways.

Psychologist specializing in moral development and human nature research

Meaningful and moral are different in an interesting sense; something can be meaningful, and yet be morally terrible. Adolf Eichmann was clearly engaged in what he thought was a meaningful pursuit, perhaps he was even in a state of flow, thinking that what he was doing was 'good' – even though he was the architect of the death of millions.

Psychologist specializing in moral development and human nature research

Purpose and meaning are inextricably tied to suffering and difficulty. If you tell me a pursuit that you view as meaningful and important, I can guarantee it won't be easy. If it was easy, it wouldn't be meaningful or important. We reserve the notion of meaning for things that have difficulty.

Psychologist specializing in moral development and human nature research

Chosen suffering is part and parcel of a meaningful life. If you don't have any chosen suffering in your life, you're probably not living the best life you could. To put it primitively, we're the mammal that likes Tabasco sauce! We're the only creature that seeks out suffering and pain willingly.

Psychologist specializing in moral development and human nature research

The field of positive psychology, and people in general, would benefit from thinking harder about what a good life 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 want meaningful pursuits.

Psychologist specializing in moral development and human nature research

Mixed martial arts aren't like boxing. In boxing, if you lose on your way up? It's pretty much career over. In mixed martial arts, there are so many ways to win and lose... When that happens, you say, 'OK, what did I do wrong?' – you have to be honest with yourself.

Former UFC Middleweight Champion & MMA fighter turned commentator

When you're getting defeated in training, you're getting better. You've got to get tested in life if you're going to improve. When you're training in the martial arts, you always want to be getting beaten in the practice room. That signifies you're fighting good people.

Former UFC Middleweight Champion & MMA fighter turned commentator

Despite our huge scientific advances, we're still very-much at the early stages of discovery. Many of our great questions are also stepping into the realms of philosophy. Do we all see the same way? Do we all perceive the same way? It's a hidden frontier.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

There are significant distinctions between what we perceive to be reality and the cold, hard, molecular world we inhabit. Our brains are constantly taking shortcuts to inform us about the world and this introduces an intrinsic error which our brains are filling in.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

We have no idea about the world that we inhabit and that what the brain is doing is really creating an entire shortcut that enables us to understand the world without being able to physically really understand the reality in which we inhabit, which is a mind-blowing concept.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

Our senses are the conduit between the external world and our interior. When we're born, we have some wiring, but essentially a very limited experience of the exterior. To really understand the world we inhabit, we need to try and observe it. In order to function in the world, we need to have a model of the world upon which we base predictions.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders