From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Our research over the past 45+ years shows that when you're actively noticing, your neurons are firing, and that's literally and figuratively enlivening. And what do we do when we're having fun? We notice, we engage. So mindfulness is not just beneficial—it's enjoyable.
The fact that you and I are alive is against stupendous odds. One day we will die, and that's sad, but there are people who will never die because they were never born. We're the lucky ones, we get to die.
Measuring wellbeing solves two big problems: it tells us what truly matters (not just income or health metrics), and it lets us compare different types of charities—poverty relief, education, the arts—by how much happiness they generate. We move from vibes‑based giving to data‑driven giving.
Every plant has to endlessly sense and monitor a number of environmental parameters; and is constantly called upon to make decisions. This is not the place to list numerous cases of intelligence behaviour in plants, a huge volume of such examples can be found in scientific literature.
Whatever you think it is, meaning self-evidently exists, because the universe means something to each of us. But I would argue that whatever it is, it's an emergent property. So it exists here on Earth because there are complex biological systems. Without those complex biological systems, it doesn't exist. There is no meaning.
I'm advocating for a right to cognitive liberty, a new international human right that would be the right to self-determination of our brains and mental experiences.
An example is when you catch a cricket ball your brain is doing the equivalent of solving differential equations, but you do it unconsciously.
Climate change is a J-curve, not linear. Rates of change globally are occurring at a faster pace than the global population expects, and will impact food production.
even allowing for a margin of error of 5000%, there must be in our galaxy about 100 million stars which have planets of the right chemistry, dimensions, and temperature to support organic evolution.
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.
Climate change isn't just warming the planet - it's fundamentally rewiring the hydrological cycle. Wet places are getting wetter, dry places drier, and the timing of water availability is becoming increasingly unpredictable.
Unlike the waking brain, the dreaming brain shows reduced executive function, specifically in areas like logic and mathematical reasoning. Instead, areas like the default mode network, which I'd argue functions as an imagination network, along with emotional centers, are highly active. This configuration makes the dreaming brain less logical but more emotional, visual, and imaginative.