Wisdom in fragments

When you look at the numbers, over half the sub-Saharan African population is under 18 years old, versus Latin America, where over half the population is under 25 years old and Asia, where it is under 35 years old. In short, these EM populations are young, expansive and dynamic, not like the stable, more risk-averse populations of the world's developed economies.

Unknown.

Africa is an enormous continent, larger than the US, China and Europe combined. It represents 20% of the global land mass, and only 10% of the world's population. It offers an un-crowded space of opportunities including minerals, natural resources, water and agriculture.

Unknown.

Globally, we have neglected this topic [agriculture] for decades. We have, worldwide, over a billion undernourished people. Food prices have risen over the past few years, with our own research showing these should accelerate up from 2010. The world's demographics are also alarming: The world's population has quadrupled in the twentieth century, doubling between 1960 and 2007. For the first time in history, we have seen the global urban population exceed the rural one, and, over the past forty years, agricultural-land has increased by only 10%. Two words, food security, are central to our model.

Unknown.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Physicist who developed the theory of relativity and E=mc².

Seventeen of the top twenty universities in the world are in the USA, one third of all students who leave their countries to study in another come to the USA. There are only a handful of countries who spend relatively more on R&D than the USA.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

It turns out that for every ipod sold by Apple, it makes the US trade deficit go up by USD 150. Is the US poorer because the world loves ipods? No, we accrue the high-value elements like intellectual property, profit, and so forth, and outsource the lower-value parts of the chain.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

To use an analogy, when you squeeze toothpaste out of a tube, it's quite hard to get it back in. By the same token, by the time you see inflation, it's too late. The key is inflation expectations.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

The daily turnover of the foreign exchange market is around USD 3.2 Trillion, meaning that in a few weeks of trade, enough capital is circulated to pay for all of global trade in a year. Capital is the driver, NOT trade.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

Abraham Maslow (a famous psychologist) once commented, 'if all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail'. Investors currently have a hammer, and that hammer is economics.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

I can illustrate the current situation in the form of a story. Two boys were being chased by a Tiger. One boy stops to put on running shoes, and the other boy says, 'What are you doing?' The first boy responds, 'I don't have to outrun the Tiger, I just have to outrun you'.

Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

At some point, if this kind of technological progress continues, it would seem that our descendants will become entirely digital: uploads or artificial intellects implemented on computers. At that point, it is possible that evolutionary selection will again become an important driver of change—but not necessarily of change for the better.

Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

Right now, biological evolution is not the main engine of change in the human condition. Instead, social and technological development, which occur on shorter timescales, are the predominant change-makers. In particular, it seems that we are gaining capabilities to directly modify human nature—through genetic selection, gene therapy, cognitive enhancement drugs, life extension treatments.

Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

Super intelligence would be the last invention biological man would ever need to make, since, by definition, it would be much better at inventing than we are. All sorts of theoretically possible technologies could be developed quickly by super intelligence — advanced molecular manufacturing, medical nanotechnology, human enhancement technologies, uploading, weapons of all kinds.

Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

Intelligence is a big deal. Humanity owes its dominant position on Earth not to any special strength of our muscles, nor any unusual sharpness of our teeth, but to the unique ingenuity of our brains. It is our brains that are responsible for the complex social organization and the accumulation of technical, economic, and scientific advances that, for better and worse, underpin modern civilization.

Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

In my view, all the big existential risks are anthropogenic, arising out of human activity. More specifically, the biggest existential risks in this century arise out of anticipated future technological advances. Humanity has survived all kinds of natural hazards over a period of over one hundred thousand years; it seems unlikely, then, that any natural hazard would do us in within the next hundred.

Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

The scenario I am describing would involve a relatively sharp collapse of the dollar, which I would qualify by stating that if the same policies are undertaken in U.K., Japan and continental Europe, the collapse of the dollar may not be reflected in exchange rates between these currencies, as all would collapse at same time.

Unknown.