From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Consciousness is any kind of subjective experience whatsoever. The philosopher, Thomas Nagel, put it like this, 'for a conscious organism, there is something it is like to be that organism…' – there is something it is like to be me, to be you, to be a dolphin – but there's probably nothing like what it is to be a chair, table, or iPhone.
What politics couldn't say and left silent, fiction could tell. Literature takes us out of our comfort zones and pushes us to see the issues from various angles. Fiction is an intellectual exercise.
We are first generation entrepreneurs, with middle class values, coming from middle class backgrounds, we never expected to be so wealthy! Our first reaction therefore is to share.
Consciousness is at the root of human identity. Fundamentally, we relate to each other as beings with feelings and experiences. Consciousness is at the root of everything that really matters in life from deep emotions, subtle thoughts, these are the things that make life worth living.
The definition of 'purpose' can be questioning, 'What am I doing that's greater than myself? What am I a part of that's bigger than just me?' We now know the most sustainable form of meaningful happiness comes to purpose.
I realised that what people do is, instead of figuring out the right thing to do and then doing it whether they want to or not, doing the ethical thing, what they do is they figure out what they want to do and then come up with the rationalisation for doing it, whether it's right or wrong. And we fool ourselves.
My wife quipped that we're all going to die and it just happened to be her turn. Her pragmatic and humorous attitude was a guide as to how to accept what is unchangeable and inevitable.
Success means having a lifestyle that I enjoy. It means slowing down, enjoying what I do, and having as few stakeholders as possible. I don't want a bunch of investors. I don't want a ton of employees.
Critical narratives are centered on the idea of moral complicity in these evils and use very sophisticated rhetorical ways to get people to feel that guilt and to believe in their complicity. They use very obscure language that involves a lot of double-meaning and multiple-meaning to words so that people it confronts feel stupid.
What makes any sport exciting is learning how to excel by staying within the confine of rules, not by winning through ignoring them. The team isn't just the one with your jersey, it's everyone who wears a jersey.
Endurance stays with you across everything, if you do it one place, you can do it anywhere. You're able to sustain because you've already trained your brain to do that.
A particular individual trait that has piqued my interest through research is intellectual humility. Embracing the possibility of being wrong enhances