Wisdom in fragments

Emotions are perception, but perception of the body itself. You see something scary like a bear, that triggers all kinds of physiological changes in your body. Your heart rate increases, your breath quickens, and the perception of those changes is the emotion. Emotion is another kind of controlled hallucination but geared to the interior of the body rather than the outside world.

Neuroscientist & leading researcher on consciousness and perception

We all inhabit distinctive inner universes. We all see and experience the world in a slightly different way. There are some extremely viral examples such as the dress which people perceived as being different colours – these things go viral and get popular because they reveal something that is essentially true but often hidden- that people can be exposed to the same image or be in the same place and be having very different experiences.

Neuroscientist & leading researcher on consciousness and perception

The way I prefer to think of perception is as a processor of active construction, a controlled hallucination. Sensory signals don't come with labels attached. Everything we perceive is a kind of inference, a burst guess about what's out there.

Neuroscientist & leading researcher on consciousness and perception

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.

Neuroscientist & leading researcher on consciousness and perception

Distrust in government is very dangerous – what follows is the ability for authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government to take control, and that doesn't do anybody, any good.

Chief Innovation Officer of the White House & Open Government Advocate

The process of problem definition is a discipline that we rarely teach or learn. It is one of the most important things that we can invest our time in.

Chief Innovation Officer of the White House & Open Government Advocate

Today, we have the tools to enable institutions to operate simultaneously at micro and macro scales. We have the tools today to allow us to get smarter faster. But we do have to learn how to do it.

Chief Innovation Officer of the White House & Open Government Advocate

We need to shift our thinking about what government does, and what civil servants do, away from this relentless focus on policy and ideology and onto project management and problem solving.

Chief Innovation Officer of the White House & Open Government Advocate

The danger is that when we jump too quickly to the solution, not only is the floor littered with the inventions that never worked, but we risk designing solutions that never fit the problem.

Chief Innovation Officer of the White House & Open Government Advocate

We don't need bigger or smaller government; we need better government. A leaner, more agile, more innovative government can solve problems faster, without necessitating more money being spent or the overall size of government increasing. This isn't a left or right issue; I think we can all agree on the fact that we want efficient government.

Chief Innovation Officer of the White House & Open Government Advocate

When you're blending digital and physical, you'd better know how things are made. When I talk to my students it's shocking how few of them have ever been to a factory, and how few of them know what a CNC machine is or how goods get from A to B efficiently.

NPR Host and Senior News Correspondent for Over Three Decades

The enemy has to be outside the building, not inside. If the enemy is outside the building, whether you're working on innovation or your quarterly sales-target, you're on the same team… you're playing for the name on the front of the jersey, not the back.

NPR Host and Senior News Correspondent for Over Three Decades

If your strategy is to do everything, you have no strategy at all.

NPR Host and Senior News Correspondent for Over Three Decades

Incumbents are not doomed, and disruptors are not ordained. When we started our research, we thought that all these new Silicon Valley businesses were going to come in and destroy the incumbents. What we actually found was that a number of incumbents were doing things that really allowed them to respond and be ready for change.

NPR Host and Senior News Correspondent for Over Three Decades

Amazon is the archetype of a great brainy and brawny business because they do both so well but since every company is going to have to do those things, the skill set required of leaders will be different over the next couple of decades. In the old days, you could stay within a function, rise through that function, adding teammates to complement your skills…Today I talk about systems of leadership – and you need the ability to see the entire system.

NPR Host and Senior News Correspondent for Over Three Decades

Most people do not realise what will happen when they cross the divide- they've already accepted a story about who's on the other side, and have already decided that the other is frightening, delusional and dangerous. In truth, we are all confused. This era is nothing if not confusing. We all see some things with clarity, we all see some things upside down, and we all have blind-spots.

Evolutionary biologist and podcaster known for critical COVID-19 vaccine commentary