From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
In postmodernism, there are no absolute truths; everything is relative, of course other than the one absolute truth that there are no absolute truths. This is a form of intellectual terrorism, nihilism.
We cannot think about technology in confrontational terms. There is no race against the machines, there is no fight, no war. We have to end this long, historical confrontational narrative.
So many things in life divide us – the colour of our skin, the language we speak, the god we worship, but when we run, we're the same. When we run, we're united, it's a commonality across our species like nothing else.
This timely book outlines and directly addresses the ethical dilemmas posed by the development of autonomous military robots, which will confront roboticists and military policy makers in the future. Arkin's thesis, that appropriately designed military robots will be better able to avoid civilian casualties than existing human war-fighters and might therefore make future wars more ethical, is likely to be the subject of intense debate and controversy for years to come.
The efficiency trap is very modern, but it's now become a holdover from the Industrial Revolution. If you only relate to time, as if it were a certain kind of 'thing', like a natural resource… something that you could maximise, then you're going to be in a perpetual state of psychological struggle because you won't be using the right conceptual tools to live in time.
When you step off land into the ocean, you're at the mercy of the most powerful energy source there is – you can paddle out into the water with a picture in your mind of what the surf might be like and what waves might come, and things can change… the wind… the tide… the swell… in Hawaii, I've paddled out into a 2 feet swell in the morning, and a few hours later, it's 20ft, it's really something to behold.
If you want to understand the mainsprings of human-action, then understanding the remembering self is more important than the experiencing self.
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.
I define authenticity as the consistent practice of choosing to know who we are and embracing who we are. For a lot of us, we come to know who we are, but then we rail against our identities.
Economics is like artificial intelligence, it's not really there… there's no physical invisible hand…. It's about people interacting with people against a social order, a set of ethics, principles and practices.
You need to know the reason you're there at that surgical table with a knife in your hand. You have to be clear that you are using these sophisticated tools (tools which can cause a lot of harm) to fundamentally and primarily help that entity, that child in front of you.
Cancer cells grow faster, adapt better. They are more perfect versions of ourselves.