From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
For me, that's the foundation of songwriting: improvisation. In improvisation on instruments, I feel creation is going a new path with every note, somewhere you haven't been before. You discover things, you're the adventurer in music.
Inside each of us are monsters and angels- there are no divisions between good and bad people- and I've seen how those times of insecurity can make us do terrible things to each other.
We are very porous now, and it isn't just through neurotechnology, it is through all modes of technology that are designed to interpret and change our cognitive and effective functioning. So as I wrote this book, it is more of a call to recognise that in the modern era we have to expand our notion of liberty to include the right to cognitive liberty.
One of the greatest myths in the lives of the people I coach is, 'I will be happy when…' as if there is some place to go to. There's only one book that ends with the phrase happily ever after, that's a fairy-tale.
The research community rallied behind the Turing Test as a benchmark. The idea was simple: demonstrate that machines can emulate human intelligence, which was seen as the pinnacle of cognitive achievement. This historical and cultural trajectory, while understandable, seemingly dismisses the idea that computers can serve as invaluable complements to human cognition.
No regrets culture is a terrible blueprint for living. The idea that you should always be positive and never look backwards is not an effective blueprint for living a decent, meaningful, happy life. It runs against everything we know about the science of emotion! Regret is one of the most common emotions that human beings experience. Everybody has regrets- the only people who don't are babies, sociopaths, and people with brain damage.
You can't stop risks completely, that's the whole point of a free market.
I believe that success in business can be measured by if you enjoy what you are doing; create something that stands out; create something that everyone is really proud of.
Those who have the most meaningful, purpose filled lives tend to dream so big – that those dreams will rarely be completed in a lifetime. What keeps you going is the beauty you encounter at every juncture of the path.
There is nothing really so bad about a recession. A recession is very much an economy pausing for breath to re-evaluate where it stands and to assess where to go next.
Fundamentally, we must slow-down the process of change. We should recognise that most change is not progress- and therefore, it is in our interests to slow down without interfering too much with actual solution making.
To confront cancer is to encounter a parallel species, one perhaps more adapted to survival than we are. This image- of cancer as our desperate, malevolent, contemporary doppelganger- is so haunting because it is at least partly true.