I'm particularly interested in the human propensity to copy behaviours that lack any kind of knowable causal structure. This is how we learn arbitrary conventions—and I think it originates in a distinctively human way of building group identities.
— Harvey Whitehouse Cognitive scientist studying ritual, religion, and social bonding mechanismsFor me, one of the big gaps is youth entrepreneurship. There are a high number of young people who want to set-up businesses, but there is a huge gap between their aspirations/intentions and the actual delivery of setting up a business.
We've got the most powerful tool in the world sitting in our head, yet no manual of instructions on how to use it. Everything else comes with instructions, a blender, a point and shoot camera. Even to drive a car, you need a licence.
To confront cancer is to encounter a parallel species, one perhaps more adapted to survival than we are. This image- of cancer as our desperate, malevolent, contemporary doppelganger- is so haunting because it is at least partly true.
We are all headed towards aging populations because we are living longer and measuring GDP growth is not the way to decide whether a society or an economy are flourishing. Population aging is evidence that we've been doing a lot of things right.
This is a very tough question because the correlation between growth and returns on assets in China has been completely non-existent. You have had this tremendous growth, with fairly lame returns for equity investors!
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.
My fun statement is that if I see the same thing, three times in one week, from disparate news or information sources, I have to move quickly as it's a trend that's likely to happen.
We can become resilient however, and learn to have peace of mind, even when we experience traumatic events. We can learn to have stable peace of mind... happiness? Maybe not. It's unhelpful to say to someone, 'do these 10 things to be happy' – there are things you can do to get peace of mind, increase your probability of happiness, and your probability of having successful relationships.
I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.
The most important lesson I learned is that you have to show 100% genuine emotion and personality through everything you do and allow that to connect to people. You cannot keep things inside because you think people won't accept you, or will think you're strange; just let your freak flag fly.
If one wants to treat societal problems, then philanthropy and government spending are fine. If one wants to cure societal problems, one has got to come up with sustainable solutions- and that means attracting for-profit capital.
Vulnerability isn't oversharing; it isn't necessarily personal. And that's where some of the fear has come from—this sense that leaders might need to role-model less sharing about their personal lives. Yet vulnerability can look very different. Trust benefits from clearer boundaries, because trust needs clear expectations and clear limits.