Society

There was a significant psychological barrier; people were afraid of making mistakes and ruining their work. But when they saw this engaging, simple game on the screen, they understood what to do and felt successful. It broke down that fear and made people more comfortable with computers.

Creator of Tetris, the iconic video game

Being an entrepreneur, or even running a large organization, is like being a society builder. The system is bigger than any individual. You can take the same person, place them in different environments—like the old Soviet Union versus the UK or the US—and get completely different outcomes. It's about the system.

Founder and former CEO of Panera Bread Company

One is: Do I trust you with my feelings? Do I think that you're going to be a listener who is non-judgmental, or do I think you're going to judge me—'Marc is weak because he's anxious,' or 'Marc is a man and he's feeling sad; dudes don't feel sad.' So if I think you're going to judge me for my feelings, I'm going to be much more guarded about whether or not I express them.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

When you take a step back and view this from a 30,000-foot perspective, I try to highlight the role of civilians in conflict. Officials, especially those in power controlling militaries or governments, often want to shape the narrative, to spin you to their story. But when you speak to civilians in the midst of war, they share more about the personal impact on their lives, and I think my audience and readers can connect more deeply with those voices.

Fox News Correspondent and International Reporter

I've always been interested in foreign coverage. When I first got into journalism as a student at American University, my goal was to change people's minds about others by helping them understand different perspectives. I didn't necessarily aim to make them feel one way or another, but rather to foster a sense of connection with people they might not know or might even disagree with.

Fox News Correspondent and International Reporter

While a quantum computer could certainly cause significant economic and social disruption if used to break encryption, it does not pose the same kind of direct, physical threat to humanity as nuclear weapons. The situation is somewhat mitigated by the existence of quantum-resistant or post-quantum cryptographic schemes.

Theoretical computer scientist specializing in quantum computing and computational complexity

Having recently spent two years working on AI safety and ethics at OpenAI, I have been deeply engaged in examining the moral and societal implications of artificial intelligence. With AI, we face a profound civilizational question: as AI systems become increasingly capable of performing tasks previously done by humans, what role will humans play in an AI-driven world?

Theoretical computer scientist specializing in quantum computing and computational complexity

Look at Jeff Bezos telling his 1.5 million employees to 'wake up every morning terrified and stay terrified all day.' They're not getting rich; they're barely scraping by. Yet he wants them living in terror so he can get even richer. That's crazy. That's a crazy society and a crazy life.

Life Coach, Author & Sociologist Known for Self-Acceptance Work

I often joke that social media is the 'NutraSweet' version—it seems good but doesn't deliver the psychological benefit we expect. In fact, our use of technology can be a big opportunity cost on a lot of the stuff that truly matters for happiness.

Psychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale

So many of the things our culture pushes us to pursue for happiness don't actually work the way we think they will. Material possessions, more money—if you're on social media, you get this strong sense that you should go after more of everything and then you'll feel better.

Psychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale

I felt that civil discourse in America was breaking down, with people splitting into two warring ideological camps. Meanwhile, the real issues we face are far more subtle, nuanced, and complex. I believed society needed what I call a contempt-free zone.

Warren Buffett had a phrase I really liked: You want to give your kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing. I set up a plan to create wealth for them—and I wildly overshot that.

The idea of selfish philanthropy is a push against the notion of philanthropy as simply 'giving back.' That phrase implies that wealth was accumulated by taking something from society. But if you've built a successful business, you've contributed to society—you don't owe anything back.

Fusion – or 'identity fusion' to be more precise – is basically a form of group alignment in which essential features of your personal identity are felt to be shared with the group. What this means is that there are basically two ways of becoming fused. One is to undergo an experience that becomes a core feature of who you are – such as a painful or frightening ordeal.

Cognitive scientist studying ritual, religion, and social bonding mechanisms

The power of routinization is that it allows you to spread a shared set of identity markers to a large population—and to do so very quickly. All you need is a handful of proselytizing leaders willing to travel from village to village, spreading the same ideas and behaviours, and you can soon create a vast tradition encompassing hundreds of communities.

Cognitive scientist studying ritual, religion, and social bonding mechanisms

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. I describe ritual actions as causally opaque. We engage in this kind of behaviour even more enthusiastically when we're anxious about being excluded or left out.

Cognitive scientist studying ritual, religion, and social bonding mechanisms