From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I argue that the ecosystem where idea pathogens originate from is the university; it takes intellectuals to come up with some of the most moronic ideas possible.
I've always been self-taught, sort of like the Grandma Moses of acting. If I'd gone to drama school, I would probably have had a very different career- perhaps not as much fun in some ways.
Super-specialisation at the expense of a breadth of knowledge is a modern-day fallacy. Fundamentally, we need to be able to address facts in an unbiased fashion. If you're super-specialised in one particular area, at the expense of that breadth, at the expense of clarity of vision, it is natural you will accumulate biases that will factor into your decision making.
You can almost think of it like three sock puppets! You, this little chimp, and a computer, trying to run your life.
There was no single spark that got me into science. My parents were both scientists, so I was exposed to that world from an early age. I remember noticing that science was international – in our house in India, we would have visitors from many different countries and I found that fascinating.
Play is inherently interactive, granting agency whether indoors or outdoors. When competition was added into the mix, playing with friends introduced me to complex concepts like game theory, including strategies involving threats, promises, and bluffs.
I've always been self-taught, sort of like the Grandma Moses of acting. If I'd gone to drama school, I would probably have had a very different career- perhaps not as much fun in some ways.
Over this 99.9% of human existence, when technology advances, population advances and counterbalances any potential increase in human prosperity. Suddenly once technological progress reaches a tipping point, families start to invest in education, they economise on the number of children, and technological progress is converted into richer people rather than into more people.
We fear the unknown, but the less you know about something the more knowledge there is to gain, and hence the less afraid you will be. When you understand a situation and are fully prepared having analysed the risks and mitigated them- you may well still be apprehensive, and that's normal.
I cannot help but admire the insight of our Jewish sages of old who taught that every child is born with equal affinities toward goodness and evil, in Hebrew yetzer hatov and yetzer hara. This means that we are not born as a tabula rasa.
Seventeen of the top twenty universities in the world are in the USA, one third of all students who leave their countries to study in another come to the USA.
The main currency on our campuses has become the management of hurt feelings.