From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
At Colossal, we are not going to work in humans or non-human primates because we felt like we're already going to have an uphill battle with transparency and education, and we don't want people to be like, if a hair-loss treatment comes out of Colossal, 'are they selling a gene from a woolly mammoth?'
What's special about it as a science subject is that it is so awkward, it doesn't lend itself to easy solutions. It's a multi-factorial problem, very different to- for example- the question of what causes influenza?
The rules of the brain are such that the chimp can freeze our brain, freezing the human out and can make decisions on our behalf.
We get more energy from air than from food or drink. So, if we're absorbing that energy inefficiently, it's bound to catch up to us.
Our research over the past 45+ years shows that when you're actively noticing, your neurons are firing, and that's literally and figuratively enlivening. And what do we do when we're having fun? We notice, we engage. So mindfulness is not just beneficial—it's enjoyable.
Science, akin to art, music, and literature, reshapes our perspectives, offering new insights into ourselves and our surrounding universe. This transformative aspect is what makes science as thrilling as any other facet of human culture.
Emotions are like the reward (or punishment) the brain gives us for getting what we need, want, or could be harmed by.
The paradox is that in the Milky Way galaxy, with something like 400 billion stars and trillions of planets, it's estimated there may be around 10 billion potentially Earth-like worlds. And the galaxy has been around for about 13 billion years. If a civilisation had developed ahead of us and become spacefaring, it's very hard to see why we haven't noticed any evidence of that.
The brain can be thought of as a blank slate, yet it comes with certain built-in constraints and proclivities. Every culture recognizes the octave, because it's grounded in physics, a simple 2:1 frequency ratio. Every culture also uses the perfect fifth, 3:2. And every culture divides the octave into a discrete set of steps for their scale, usually between five and eight.
The theory describes only the way objects interact with one another, without indicating what happens between one interaction and the next one.
When you examine how these myriad factors intertwine, from genetics and evolution to the proteins synthesized mere minutes ago, you see a continuous arc. In my view, there's no room in this intricate web for free will.
This is not just about the elephant- it's about there being different types of elephants. Looking at the market in simplistic distribution perspectives misses the true effect, threat and risk of large movements and upcoming changes.