Science

Our brain was designed for survival and was developed in the 99.9% of human history that occurred before culture and civilisation. As a result, there are situations in our lives today where the brain doesn't work so-well. We call this an emotional hijack.

Psychologist who popularized the concept of emotional intelligence

Emotions are the brain's way of making us pay attention immediately to what is most important so that we can react as quickly as possible. In evolution, that meant 'survival' – the rustle in the bushes may be our next meal or may make us its next meal – something that we have to chase, or run away from – and in either case, we don't want to have to stop and think.

Psychologist who popularized the concept of emotional intelligence

You can think of the human mind as a measuring instrument. We're making judgements all the time and studies show that on a day-to-day basis, when presented with the same evidence, our judgements may be different. If you see the mind as a measuring instrument, you start to see it as a scale, a bafflingly variable and noisy scale.

Legal scholar & behavioral economist; Obama administration official; "Nudge" theory pioneer

The easiest way to understand noise is by thinking about measurements. Suppose you are measuring a line with a very fine ruler. You will expect some variability such that you will not get the same number every time when you measure. That variability is noise. In the mathematics of accuracy, the expression for total error is very simple and quite compelling. It is bias-squared plus noise-squared. Bias and noise are both contributing to error and in that equation, they do so on the same basis.

Nobel Prize Winner in Economics for Behavioral Economics Research

Ageing is not separate from Alzheimer's or heart disease. The leading causes of those diseases is the ageing process, which we can now control. Based on what we're doing in the lab, we know that if you turn the clock back, those diseases go away- that's a revolution. We've been working on a band aid system trying to fix the diseases that are already there, while ignoring the main cause.

Longevity researcher & Harvard Medical School professor studying aging and lifespan extension

In my lab, we can control ageing easily. We have mice where we can dial up the ageing process or reverse it. It's not that hard when you know how. Until recently, we didn't know there was a backup copy of the information which has been corrupted, and now we can reset it using an embryonic gene trick. Ultimately, I think we'll be able to pop a pill and reset our body's age.

Longevity researcher & Harvard Medical School professor studying aging and lifespan extension

Ageing is malleable, we can control it. 20% of our health in old-age is due to genetic factors, and the rest is due to our lifestyle. We can measure this clock. It's literally measuring chemicals in our own DNA. Here's the good news…. That number can be changed. If you smoke, if you don't exercise, if you eat lots of fatty foods, that number will accelerate and if you do the right things, perhaps even take some medicines, you can slow that number down – even reverse it.

Longevity researcher & Harvard Medical School professor studying aging and lifespan extension

I'd been a patsy all my life, an easy mark for the appeals of fundraisers or sales operators who would come to my door. I'd end up with unwanted magazine subscriptions… There must be something other than the features of the offer that got me to say yes, because I don't want those features, it must be the way the offer was presented to me.

Influence & Persuasion Expert; Author of "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

I'm drawn here quite often to thinking about impressionist art like Monet or Pissarro which have a beautiful incompleteness- they're just scratches and blobs on canvas but done so well that the brain is drawn into completing the image. That's partly why paintings like that have such aesthetic appeal- because they're engaging the mechanisms of the brain in completing the picture.

Neuroscientist & leading researcher on consciousness and perception

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

The thing that makes us so unique is that we, unlike most every other species, have no niche. A niche is an opportunity which a species exploits- and our niche is niche switching. We move from one niche to another, even without major changes to our physical biology.

Evolutionary 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.

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

Emotions are like the reward (or punishment) the brain gives us for getting what we need, want, or could be harmed by.

Psychiatrist and author of "The Chimp Paradox