From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Bureaucracy may be humankind's most important innovation. Whether it's scientific innovation, the invention of the steam engine, locomotive, electric-motor, semi-conductor or antibiotics, none of these would have been possible without the understanding of how to work precisely and repeatably at scale; bureaucracy.
The myth of women's inferiority is the product of a social system that has produced and fostered countless other inequalities, inferiorities, degradations, and discriminations. The ripple effects of the creation of these systems continue to this day – to the point where they are deeply embedded into society.
When you have children, you have to ask yourself what the world will look like in the next 80-100 years, because people get that old these days if everything goes well. Last but not least, as a father I see it as my responsibility to think about my actions and my motives.
The printing press helped democratise Europe by providing space for discussion and agreement among politically engaged citizens, often before the state had fully democratised.
The people in the advanced countries now face a choice: we can express justified horror, or we can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes. If we refuse to do the latter, we will be contributing to the likelihood that much worse lies ahead.
You've got around 2.6 billion people in the world who survive on less than $2 per day, 75% of them are rural and agriculture is their primary economic activity. Most are, however, mired in a form of subsistence farming that barely allows them to scrape-by.
In the Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting non-state opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.
As a prosecutor, I recognize that our involvement typically begins when it's already too late: when prevention, humanity, and common sense have failed. Violence, whether in families, communities, or at an international level, signifies a failure of humanity.
For the first time in over 20 years, I feel brown… I find myself being extra careful in terms of how I dress, where I go, how I speak, what I carry and how I behave; not to conform to any new social norms- but rather, so that people don't mistake me for a terrorist, or make assumptions about my intentions.
In a world where everyone gets to play in social media, we're about to realise that the vast majority of people aren't good enough. We've never had to quantify this before because there were people in-place to filter the people America got to see, and most were qualified to some level. Now we have an ecosystem where everyone gets out there and says they're great. The vast majority are not going to be great at what they pontificate to be great at, and we're going to watch them fail right in front of our eyes.
the share of the population in the top tercile is negatively associated with crime. When crime increases twofold the share of the rich tercile drops by 1.3%. In addition, we see that the share of the population in the poorest tercile increases with crime
Social media was kind-of created to destroy humanity, in a literal sense. The first notion of the implications of such networks was provided by B. F. Skinner who spoke of the dangers of people who- on networks- were too free, too creative and too uncontrolled.