From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
If you had to make everything up in your life, from the start, with no input whatsoever – that wouldn't be freedom – you'd be less free; you'd have to think constantly about what you should or should not do. There would be no structure for your life choices.
Initially, I harboured a somewhat naive belief that the system's failings were largely due to a scarcity of people willing to do the right thing. Working for international organisations, I was caught up in the belief that we could fix broken systems simply by introducing the right resources, processes, and intentions. However, I've come to realize that good intentions alone are insufficient.
We therefore see the drone (robot) exhibiting (through software) signs of the moral-affective function of 'guilt' when engaging in each mission. The aim of such developments is to introduce a level of ethics into the battlefield which, as more drones and high power long range weapons are used, is becoming increasingly fraught with collateral damage.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
What was impossible 20 years ago, is possible today. What is impossible today, will be possible x-years from now. We are always in change.
If Smith were alive today, he'd say that in addition to the openness and competition and all the wealth we are creating, we need a sense of mutual sympathy and empathy. We need to give people the ability to compete.
Music is woven into the fabric of the universe. As far back as Pythagoras and Kepler, scientists were writing about the fact that music was intrinsic in the planets… part of the harmonic series in sound. Music is built into our neurology, our survival instincts and our communication.
We need to be more nuanced about how we define integrity. For me, it's not about sticking to opinions, but about sticking to values. I'm very flexible about the best way to live those values.
Meaningful and moral are different in an interesting sense; something can be meaningful, and yet be morally terrible. Adolf Eichmann was clearly engaged in what he thought was a meaningful pursuit, perhaps he was even in a state of flow, thinking that what he was doing was 'good' – even though he was the architect of the death of millions.
True success in life can only be gauged by something which is priceless; how much love you have in your life – I am truly fortunate to be surrounded by extremely loving and fun family and friends and nothing beats spending time with the people I love.
The economy is a subset of society, it's a social construct. It's entirely created by humanity- by the way we interact with one another to meet our wants and needs and human society itself is embedded in the living world, we are part of nature whether we like it or not- and we have to respect the rest of nature.
We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans- because we can… We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings… That's why we paint, that's why we dare to love someone- because we have the impulse to explain who we are.