Philosophy

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

Arguably, though, it could be more comparable to the rise of Homo sapiens itself, or even to the origin of life on Earth.

Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

I used to keep a pair of lizards in an aquarium and fed them live crickets. At the time, I didn't think twice about it—I didn't believe crickets had any inner life at all. But now I wonder if I was actually creating the worst moments of their existence by feeding them to my lizards.

Canadian science communicator and former host of Daily Planet

It's becoming increasingly clear that we don't yet know how simple an organism can be and still be conscious. There's now quite good evidence that bees not only learn tasks but can watch another bee perform one and then learn it themselves. Twenty or twenty-five years ago, no one would have believed that possible.

Canadian science communicator and former host of Daily Planet

We're the only species on Earth that keeps pets, and that alone suggests there must be a good reason for it. It's hard to even imagine a world without pets. But we do need to be aware of all these issues—from abandoning animals to breeding them to extremes simply because they look 'cool' or different.

Canadian science communicator and former host of Daily Planet

Anyone who takes the DMT space seriously is forced to live a kind of parallel life. You slip back into 'normal life mode' and almost have to ignore the implications of what you saw. It shows you that this tawdry, flimsy domain we think is foundational to reality is actually nothing more than a theatre screen.

We assumed matter was fundamental when we probably should have prioritised consciousness. If we viewed consciousness as the prima materia of reality itself, I think we'd know a lot more about these intelligences and hidden agents than we do today, had we not gone down that strict materialist path all those years ago.

The world we see is always constructed by our brain. We never have direct access to the world in itself; we only have access to the model our brain is constructing. It works as a sort of 'best guess.' The brain isn't trying to find the absolute truth or create a perfect replica of the outside world's structure. It's trying to find a model that works—one that is adaptive and allows you to function.

DMT forces you to confront the fact that we know almost nothing about the true nature of reality. Whatever image you have of what's real or possible is obliterated in an instant. You're faced with a world that isn't just strange, but so utterly incomprehensible that it transcends imagination. It's a place that shouldn't exist within our consensus reality, yet there it is—undeniable.

Trust is a confident relationship with the unknown. And the reason this is so important is that trust isn't, at its essence, an asset or an attribute or a currency. It's a belief. It's what we believe about someone or something. That definition is slightly counterintuitive because, often, when people think about trust, they talk about knowing what to expect from someone or knowing what the outcomes will be. So, they're actually thinking about trust through the language of risk, thinking about it in terms of certainty. And that's not what trust is.

Author & Leading Expert on the Sharing Economy & Collaborative Consumption

Think about a rabbit sitting in a field. If that rabbit saw a hawk circling above and decided to wait for the back-propagation step before responding, it would be dead. It has been eliminated from the gene pool. The better you model the world, and the faster you can act on that model, the more likely your genes are to survive.