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.
— Steve PetersPsychiatrist and author of "The Chimp Paradox
“As you think this through, a lot of structure dissolves. And then the question becomes: what remains once all of that is gone? You could still choose to do these activities, of course, but there would no longer be any point—no instrumental need. You would only do them simply because you wanted to…”— Nick Bostrom
Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford
The quote archive
Science
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
Emotions are like the reward (or punishment) the brain gives us for getting what we need, want, or could be harmed by.
— Steve PetersPsychiatrist and author of "The Chimp Paradox
If only one-quarter melted, it would lead to a 2-metre rise in sea-levels all over the world and would threaten thousands of cities and towns on every continent.
— Ólafur Ragnar GrímssonFormer President of Iceland (1996-2016)
Surgery, like many other disciplines, is primarily about facts, your relationship with the facts, how you manage, handle, interpret and use those facts. This is something we all begin to do very early in life, in our childhood.
— Owase JeelaniWhen do we have our best ideas? When we're in the shower… when we're on a long drive with a radio off… when we're on a hike. The research supports this too.
— Joe SanokFounder of Practice of the Practice & Mental Health Business Consultant
If you take care of this dualistic biological soul, your immune system, and nurture it, you can live to well-beyond 100 years of age. In fact, my belief is that in the next 50 years we'll see people easily living to 130-150 based on sheer medication availability and nurturing their biology.
— Dr. Bob LahitaRheumatologist and lupus researcher; author on autoimmune diseases
Our brains are adapted to pick leaders based on characteristics that are no longer adaptive, or necessary today. In times of crisis, we are wired to gravitate towards strong men – strong males who are overconfident and speak of solutions in simplistic terms.
— Brian KlaasPolitical scientist & author specializing in authoritarianism and democracy
Smell is an outlier. The brain essentially sent out a little tentacle into the world, those nerve fibres are the only contact between the central nervous system and the external world. This is the point at which there is no barrier between the brain and the outside world.
— Guy LeschzinerSleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders
Our brains are constantly taking shortcuts to inform us about the world and this introduces an intrinsic error which our brains are filling in. By the time we 'see' something perceptually, we're a fraction of a second behind real-time.
— Guy LeschzinerSleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders
What we perceive to be the absolute truth of the world around us is a complex reconstruction, a virtual reality created by the complex machinations of our minds. We have no idea about the world that we inhabit and 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.
— Guy LeschzinerSleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders
Our current scientific paradigm was designed by Galileo to exclude consciousness. This goes back to the 17th century, 1623 – Galileo declared that from that point onwards, mathematics was going to be the language of science.
— Philip GoffPhilosopher specializing in consciousness and panpsychism
Consciousness is the most troubling because it's so hard to deny its existence. With all these other tricky, troubling phenomena, it's at least an option to say maybe it doesn't exist, maybe we're not really free in the way we think we are. But with consciousness, it's seems hard to make sense of the idea that nobody's ever felt pain.
— Philip GoffPhilosopher specializing in consciousness and panpsychism
When you put cells in the same vat and ask them to grow and they're producing ammonia, you're going to have a nice glass of urine! We must solve all of that!!
— Yaakov NahmiasAn example is when you catch a cricket ball your brain is doing the equivalent of solving differential equations, but you do it unconsciously.
— Richard DawkinsEvolutionary Biologist & Author of "The Selfish Gene
Birds are not born with an innate genetically determined knowledge of constellations. What they do has been brilliantly shown in an experiment by Stephen Emlen.
— Richard DawkinsEvolutionary Biologist & Author of "The Selfish Gene
The question to be asked is why doesn't everybody fly?
— Richard DawkinsEvolutionary Biologist & Author of "The Selfish Gene