Wisdom in fragments

I know a lot of people who develop and improve by squeezing more and more out of a repertoire, but the journey of development for me is somewhat opposite to that. I'm trying to let go more and more, to be less controlled and more open… that's where I feel the most impactful storytelling comes from.

Scottish violinist & classical music ambassador

When I play, I try to embody the most primal state I can- that's when you're strongest, at your most powerful, intuitive and convincing. Too much information and analysis can actually get in the way of how you would naturally understand and feel your way through the structure of a long, complex piece of music.

Scottish violinist & classical music ambassador

I never had a conscious thought that music would be my everything, but I never had anything that pulled me elsewhere, and anything that threatened that sacred part of my life felt like an assault on my being and my sense of worth.

Scottish violinist & classical music ambassador

If you want other people to open their minds, you have to open yours too.

Organizational psychologist & bestselling author on work culture and human potential

Too often when we find someone disagreeing with us, our question is about why. Why do you believe this ridiculous thing? What tends to work better is a how question... This kind of approach helps to view the real complexity of a situation and reveals gaps in knowledge.

Organizational psychologist & bestselling author on work culture and human potential

The scientist mindset says, I will not let my ideas become an ideology. When I start to form an opinion, I should treat it as a hypothesis before doing some observations or experiments to test it. I should be just as excited to find out I was wrong as to prove I am right.

Organizational psychologist & bestselling author on work culture and human potential

Any time you get angry, frustrated or disappointed, it's worth remembering that those emotions are just a first draft. You would never publish a draft version of your blog, right? The same is true of emotion- a lot of people just go ahead and 'publish' – internalising how they feel – without stopping for a second and thinking that maybe they ought to do a revision.

Organizational psychologist & bestselling author on work culture and human potential

I felt strongly that search- as a product- was just going to continue to face more and more revenue pressure, forcing us to show more and more ads, and inevitably making the product worse over time.

Former Google Executive & Founder of Perplexity AI

Search started as a free product meaning it cannot get any less expensive for the user. You pay nothing, but the benefits of reaching larger and larger portions of humanity accrue to the provider, not to you.

Former Google Executive & Founder of Perplexity AI

In the long-term there is no way to reconcile the conflict of interest between serving the user and the advertiser.

Former Google Executive & Founder of Perplexity AI

I didn't like the rampant tracking and the fact that Google and Facebook effectively ran some of the largest information gathering networks on earth (and that's a very charitable way of describing it).

Former Google Executive & Founder of Perplexity AI

Thanks to monetary policy, business cycles are far less volatile today than they were in the 19th century, when we had huge swings. But if cryptocurrency takes over the way its proponents would like, we could return to the ups and downs of the pre-monetary policy era.

Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics; Mechanism Design Theory Pioneer

Even more seriously, cryptocurrency can interfere with governments' ability to fight recessions with monetary policy. When people are using privately created money (cryptocurrency) rather than ordinary money, the money supply is beyond the government's control, and monetary policy can no longer be conducted. That's a bad thing.

Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics; Mechanism Design Theory Pioneer

The potential for blockchain is to accelerate the digitization of financial markets. Blockchain gets everyone excited as it has the potential to convene these different parties together to reach the necessary agreements, in that sense it is a unique enabler, a coordination mechanism. That has massive implications on the structure of our financial markets.

With blockchain, you may not even need to bring someone to court, because the evidence is already there- on the blockchain! Producers can sell their products and services to people they don't know and need not trust—- so that expands their market.

Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics; Mechanism Design Theory Pioneer

There are two key features of blockchain that make it, potentially, a very useful technology from an economic perspective. First, the data about transactions are posted on many public sites thus giving these data an immutability that makes disputes easy to avoid. Second, although the data are in some sense public, they can be encrypted so that a particular party learns only those aspects that she needs to know.

Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics; Mechanism Design Theory Pioneer