From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I think intelligence is best understood as an entity that has the ability to improve a metric through repeated exposure over time. By that definition, machine learning algorithms are learning systems — they get better with more data and more exposures. A dog is a learning system. A cat is a learning system — you teach it a trick, reward it a few times, and it just does it from there on. And humans, of course, are the ultimate example of a learning system.
The sustainability of traditions relies on their ability to evolve. This was the crux of my message: how can we help this tradition evolve? Because at that time, it was certainly losing its vitality.
Society has undoubtedly faced setbacks, but clinging to practices from 100 years ago isn't a solution. The world has evolved, and so must we, finding our purpose in the new landscape. It's crucial to introspect and work with the hand we're dealt.
Most people run around like biological robots, as if we are an algorithm not a being. We become the predictable outcomes of the conditioned reflexes of our nerves, constantly triggered by people in reaction to circumstances.
There is no such thing as true-altruism (even philanthropists get something out of giving!). What is this individuals' payoff from working with you?
No industry and indeed no activity at all whether commercial or not should act unethically, or immorally and so the relationship of bioethics, or ethics, to anything it studies is the relationship of authority.
Everything is just crystal-clear and glowing. Our planet just glows with all the colours you know Earth to be made of, but in a way, that's almost transparent, iridescent. Seeing our planet from space is so much more than a visual experience, I think it's about feeling it, I think it really is about having a kind of spiritual connection to it, that you feel. Total awe, humbling.
We are fields endowed with consciousness and free will, existing in a reality deeper than the familiar realm of space, time, and interacting objects. Consciousness exists independently of any physical form; it resides in the underlying field that instantiates the matter and energy we measure in space and time.
There's an interesting over-representation of physicists within the existentialist community. Physicists, especially astronomers and cosmologists have had a glimpse of how vast the universe is, and the potential value of it, versus our planet.
Life is just receiving a rope from your parents. A rope of a certain quality, with a certain diameter and of a certain material. Your only duty is to take the rope and try to make a better one. Your only duty is to make the best rope you can for your children, for the next generation.
To overcome extreme obstacles, to do the impossible, you have to create another human being inside yourself. I had to create an image of how I wanted to look, how I wanted to act, how I wanted to believe, how hard I wanted to push. I trained that image in my mind, and then I had to become an artist to create it.
I was the kid that was wondering what was faster, a car or a bee… what if garbage cans were gold… I'd posit these what-if questions and throw them to people around me.