From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Too often when we find someone disagreeing with us, our question is about why. Why do you believe this ridiculous thing? What tends to work better is a how question… This kind of approach helps to view the real complexity of a situation and reveals gaps in knowledge.
I grew up in Canada and have a lot of friends in Argentina. In the early part of the 20th Century, Argentina was wealthier and had a higher per-capita income than Canada. The country had severe governance issues which impacted economic and social development.
There are two key advantages of thinking of guns as a public health issue. First of all, it removes some of the emotion from the issue because it's no longer about banning guns, it's no longer about guns being awful things. Secondly it moves the debate to be about evidence; where we can empirically show what works, at what cost.
As a collective, we tend to look at progress as being linear, especially where it concerns women's rights. This is a huge mistake and breeds complacency because we risk losing the hard-won gains.
History is not linear, like the chapters of a book… History moves through seasons, and so winters are inevitable.
Essentially therefore you have a three-pronged approach. Firstly privatisation, secondly cutting the size of the state and thirdly- collecting existing taxes (rather than imposing any new ones).
I don't think it was inevitable until the point where the tanks started rolling-in. It was unstoppable at that point… But 20 years ago, would we have realised this was going to happen? My sense would be absolutely not.
What is worrying is not the rise of multinational corporations, but the rise of social media. Facebook has 2.5 billion participants and whilst some may argue they are an instrument of the American state, it's worth noticing that Russia was able to use Facebook as a device to penetrate and disrupt the American electoral process in 2016.
[the impact of the internet on liberty and free speech has been] very positive indeed – not so much two steps forward and one step back, as ten steps forward for every step back. By breaking the oligopoly of the established press and letting everyone be a publisher, it has made information much harder for the powerful to control.
Over half have changed national policy within five years of launch.
Whether we look at the rioters who converged on the capital, the Gamestop Redditors, Incels or Qanon followers, what they have in common is that they're groups of people who are lonely and craving community. That fundamental need for human connection is missing for significant swathes of our population, and that's dangerous.
Too often when we find someone disagreeing with us, our question is about why. Why do you believe this ridiculous thing? What tends to work better is a how question... This kind of approach helps to view the real complexity of a situation and reveals gaps in knowledge.