“I actually think social media can be fine, and in fact if you look at the first year or two of any particular social media, they often start out quite charming before the stupid business model kicks in where companies can only make money by having third parties inject money into the system.”— Jaron Lanier
The quote archive
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
Sensory data by itself is not red, it's not anything. It's just energy. Sensory signals don't come with labels attached. Redness is coming from within my brain, as a way of predicting how certain patterns of light appear.
— Anil SethNeuroscientist & leading researcher on consciousness and perception
The way I prefer to think of perception is as a processor of active construction, a controlled hallucination. Everything we perceive is a kind of inference, a burst guess about what's out there.
— Anil SethNeuroscientist & leading researcher on consciousness and perception
Consciousness is any kind of subjective experience whatsoever. It's what goes away when you fall into a dreamless sleep or go into general anesthesia, and what comes back when you wake-up or come around.
— Anil SethNeuroscientist & leading researcher on consciousness and perception
We live downstream of a very high-quality tool for manipulating each other in a collaborative way, which has been augmented by the perverse incentives surrounding manipulating each other in a hostile way. The explosion in the number of people who are interacting with each other has- today- made the problem effectively unsolvable.
— Bret WeinsteinEvolutionary biologist and podcaster known for critical COVID-19 vaccine commentary
At a point, we developed language sophisticated enough to transmit abstract ideas with precision from one mind to another. That enables high quality parallel processing of problems such that we literally have emergent cognition. When people gather, they talk about difficult puzzles they face, and the product of their thinking exceeds the sum of their individual capacity to reason through it.
— Bret WeinsteinEvolutionary biologist and podcaster known for critical COVID-19 vaccine commentary
Rationality applies whether you believe in it or not. One idea follows from another – or it doesn't – and if you want some of your beliefs to lead to other beliefs, you have no choice but to be rational.
— Steven PinkerCognitive Scientist & Psychologist Known for Research on Language and Human Nature
When I look at my own life- the things that I'm most embarrassed about are the moments where I acted, or didn't act, because of fear. The moments I'm most proud of are those where I acted with some semblance of courage.
— Ryan HolidayAuthor & Stoicism Expert; Marketer & Media Strategist
Courage is not the opposite of fear, rather it is the triumph over fear. There is nothing courageous about a guaranteed outcome, right? Courage is being yourself in a world where everyone tries to be like everyone else.
— Ryan HolidayAuthor & Stoicism Expert; Marketer & Media Strategist
Fear just finds a new thing to be scared of. People are worried about having mean things said about them on twitter… they're worried about losing their jobs… and yes, all those things suck, and could happen, but it's not the same as being tied-up and roasted at the stake!
— Ryan HolidayAuthor & Stoicism Expert; Marketer & Media Strategist
My advice is to grab hold of people that are close to you and lean on them heavily. That's how we're designed to work!
— Steve PetersPsychiatrist and author of "The Chimp Paradox
The rules of the brain are such that the chimp can freeze our brain, freezing the human out and can make decisions on our behalf.
— Steve PetersPsychiatrist and author of "The Chimp Paradox
Robustness is being in a good place and having a plan, resilience is being able to implement that plan and stay in a good place.
— Steve PetersPsychiatrist and author of "The Chimp Paradox
Emotions are like the reward (or punishment) the brain gives us for getting what we need, want, or could be harmed by.
— Steve PetersPsychiatrist and author of "The Chimp Paradox
If you know what's inside your head and you understand its structures, rules, and functions, it avoids glitches. You can almost think of it like three sock puppets! You, this little chimp, and a computer, trying to run your life.
— Steve PetersPsychiatrist and author of "The Chimp Paradox
Super-specialisation at the expense of a breadth of knowledge is a modern-day fallacy. If you're super-specialised in one particular area, at the expense of that breadth, you are quite likely to make errors in other, bigger fields.
— Owase JeelaniSurgery, like many other disciplines, is primarily about facts, your relationship with the facts, how you manage, handle, interpret and use those facts. This is something we all begin to do very early in life, in our childhood.
— Owase Jeelani