Philosophy

When you understand that your perception shapes your experience, you stop fearing uncertainty. The fear of 'not knowing' comes from the worry that something bad might happen. But if things aren't inherently good or bad, then not knowing isn't something to be afraid of.

Harvard psychologist & researcher in mindfulness and the psychology of possibility

I want to free everyone from that misconception. You can't know everything. And when you shift from a personal attribution for not knowing—thinking, 'I don't know, but everyone else seems to, so I'll fake it or avoid the situation'—to a universal attribution—realizing, 'I don't know, you don't know, nobody knows'—you stand taller. This allows you to embrace what I believe is the most successful mindset: confident uncertainty.

Harvard psychologist & researcher in mindfulness and the psychology of possibility

Why does this matter? Because when you're mindless—assuming 1+1 is always 2—you don't notice context, and you don't have choices. But when you're mindful, you do. If someone asks you how much 1+1 is, you get to decide: do I answer 1, 2, 10, or something else? You become aware, engaged, and flexible.

Harvard psychologist & researcher in mindfulness and the psychology of possibility

Risk naturally triggers fear—fear of a bad outcome. But using reason to manage risk means applying a more analytical approach, almost like a mathematical assessment of risk and reward. If the odds are against you, how bad is the downside really?

The most important thing to me is that wealth has allowed me to live a full life, rich with experiences. I see wealth more as a means to experience than a way to acquire things. It has also given me control over my own time.

I've always felt like a natural-born Stoic. When I first read Stoic philosophy, I thought, Oh my God, this is exactly how I've been thinking since childhood. It wasn't a revelation so much as a way to organize the responses that already came naturally to me.

Our body operates both quantumly and classically, and the quantum computation within us is far more sophisticated than any quantum computer we could imagine building—so we already possess that capability. Yet consciousness does not reside in our body, however quantum or classical it may be; it resides in the field that we are. This field communicates with the body and, through it, exerts control.

Co-Inventor of the Microprocessor & Founder of Zilog

They described, for example, taste as if it were just electrical signals in the brain, but there's no way such signals alone can produce the sensation of taste. That's the hard problem of consciousness: qualia—the sensations and feelings through which we know the world and ourselves—bear no resemblance to electrical impulses, and physics offers no explanation for how one could give rise to the other.

Co-Inventor of the Microprocessor & Founder of Zilog

We are fields endowed with consciousness and free will, existing in a reality deeper than the familiar realm of space, time, and interacting objects—precisely the view scientism asserts: that we are merely bodies, properties of physical matter. But scientism is mistaken. Consciousness exists independently of any physical form; it resides in the underlying field that instantiates the matter and energy we measure in space and time.

Co-Inventor of the Microprocessor & Founder of Zilog

Consciousness lies beyond the framework of quantum mechanics. It must be regarded as a primitive of the universe itself, not merely of brains. If consciousness is a universal primitive, then the entire totality of what exists is conscious and desires self‑knowledge. That offers the best way to understand evolution and why we can know: we are parts of a greater whole, we are fields—not bodies. The body is simply the creation of the field, enabling the field to have experiences in a reality collectively constructed by a multitude of fields.

Co-Inventor of the Microprocessor & Founder of Zilog

I think it was recognising that revolution was, in a way, the original problem of political thought. But in fact, constitutionalism is a Greek answer to the problem of revolution. You want to avoid revolution? Then you need to design a constitution in a certain way—so that it's balanced and less likely to be overturned by revolution.

I think what's hard for us to appreciate today is that, for thousands of years of human history—let alone pre-history—there was never this sense, so common to us now, of a future likely to be radically different from the present. But that's a very recent development in human thought that really only dates back, as I argue in the book, to the 18th century.

There was really a sense that humanity had already reached its peak, and so the question wasn't what comes next that's better, but rather how to prevent decline and loss. If you had a good state—or even just an okay one—your main concern was to keep it, to stop it from falling apart. Because there wasn't anything better you could reasonably expect.

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…

Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

If our future is to count as a utopia, we cannot allow a massive oppressed class of hyper-sentient, uncomfortable digital beings. We want it to be good for all kinds of minds.

Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

Many of these, I think, would have moral status, meaning it would matter how they are treated for their own sake—not just because an owner might be upset if you destroyed a data center, but because they would be moral patients in the same sense that humans, pigs, dogs, or other sentient creatures are.

Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford