John Brockman Quotes & Sayings

Civilizations do fail. We have never seen one that hasn't. The difference is that the torch of progress has, in the past, always passed to another region of the world. But we now for the first time have a single, global civilization. If it fails, we all fail together. — John Brockman

Filters fail when they know us too well and when they don't know us well enough. — John Brockman

Twice as many people in India have access to cell phones as to latrines. — John Brockman

it is difficult to discern where "you" end and the remainder of the world begins. — John Brockman

Change is the law. Stability and consistency are illusions, temporary in any case, a heroic achievement of human will and persistence at best. When we want things to stay the same, we'll always wind up playing catch-up. — John Brockman

A system that makes no errors is not intelligent. — John Brockman

What is the universe, anyway? To test your knowledge of the universe, please complete the following sentence. The universe (a) consists of all things visible and invisible - what is, has been, and will be. (b) began 13.8 billion years ago in a giant explosion called the Big Bang and encompasses all planets, stars, galaxies, space, and time. (c) was licked out of the salty rim of the primordial fiery pit by the tongue of a giant cow. (d) All of the above. (Correct answer below.) — John Brockman

Uncertainty is intrinsic to the process of finding out what you don't know, not a weakness to avoid. — John Brockman

That's the way of all good explanations. The better they are, the more questions they raise. — John Brockman

Every aspect of life is an experiment that can be better understood if it is perceived in that way. — John Brockman

We'd be unfeeling, unconscious zombies if we did. — John Brockman

After several decades of empirical study, Jaques concluded that just as humans differ in intelligence, we differ in our ability to handle time-dependent complexity. We all have a natural time horizon we are comfortable with: what Jaques called "time span of discretion," or the length of the longest task an individual can successfully undertake. — John Brockman

Income is an important determinant of people's satisfaction with their lives, but it is far less important than most people think. If everyone had the same income, the differences among people in life satisfaction would be reduced by less than 5 percent. — John Brockman

Is likely to survive for another 100 billion years or more. — John Brockman

It's an illusion to believe that you can be happy when no one else is. Or that other people will not be affected by your unhappiness. — John Brockman

But there is another case for curating as a vanguard activity for the twenty-first century. As the artist Tino Sehgal has pointed out, modern societies find themselves today in an unprecedented situation: The problem of lack, or scarcity, which has been the primary factor motivating scientific and technological innovation, is now joined and even superseded by the problem of the global effects of overproduction and resource use. Thus, moving beyond the object as the locus of meaning has a further relevance. Selection, presentation, and conversation are ways for human beings to create and exchange real value, without dependence on older, unsustainable processes. Curating can take the lead in pointing us toward this crucial importance of choosing. — John Brockman

The story emerging from these studies is not yet complete, but it has already led to fascinating insights. Thanks to its microbes, a baby can better digest its mother's milk. And your ability to digest carbohydrates relies to a significant extent on enzymes that can be made only by genes present not in you but in your microbiome. — John Brockman

Bad behavior is seen as something to be noticed, reported on, and analyzed, whereas people who do not lie and cheat are taken for granted. — John Brockman

Happy brains are all alike; every unhappy brain is unhappy in its own way. — John Brockman

The universe consists primarily of dark matter. We can't see it, but it has an enormous gravitational force. The conscious mind - much like the visible aspect of the universe - is only a small fraction of the mental world. The dark matter of the mind, the unconscious, has the greatest psychic gravity. Disregard the dark matter of the universe and anomalies appear. Ignore the dark matter of the mind and our irrationality is inexplicable. — John Brockman

What the mediocrity principle tells us is that our state is not the product of intent, that the universe lacks both malice and benevolence, but that everything does follow rules - and that grasping those rules should be the goal of science. — John Brockman

We can speak, think, refer to ourselves as agents, and so build up the false idea of a persisting self that has consciousness and free will. — John Brockman

The universe has been around for 13.8 billion years and — John Brockman

After all, there have never been loonies carrying signs saying, "The End is Not Near. — John Brockman

I can answer the question, but am I bright enough to ask it? — John Brockman

They fight against popular creationism, but at the same time they fight fanatically for their own creationism," he — John Brockman

Creativity is a fragile flower, but perhaps it can be fertilized with systematic doses of serendipity. — John Brockman

Traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time. — John Brockman

Mischel refers to this skill as the "strategic allocation of attention," and he argues that it's the skill underlying self-control. Too often, we assume that willpower is about having strong moral fiber. But that's wrong. Willpower is really about properly directing the spotlight of attention, learning how to control that short list of thoughts in working memory. It's about realizing that if we're thinking about the marshmallow, we're going to eat it, which is why we need to look away. — John Brockman

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research. — John Brockman

Psychological well-being is not determined by the presence of one type of emotion but by a diversity of emotions, both positive and negative. Whether or not an emotion is "good" or "bad" seems to have surprisingly little to do with the emotion itself but rather with how mindfully we ride the ebbing and flowing tides of our rich emotional life. — John Brockman

Computers are fine, but it's time to return to the mind itself and stop pretending we have computers for brains. — John Brockman

Economics graduate students are far more likely to free-ride than other students. — John Brockman

Throughout history, only a small number of people have done the serious thinking for everybody. — John Brockman

Plus, where would the universe retire to? Florida isn't big enough. — John Brockman

By undercutting fundamentalism and intolerance, education would curtail violence and war. By empowering women, it would curb poverty and the population explosion. — John Brockman

Narcissistic leaders. The ultimate weapon of mass destruction is a state. When a state is taken over by a leader with the classic triad of narcissistic symptoms - grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy - the result can be imperial adventures with enormous human costs. — John Brockman

You may know that a prisoner's guilt is independent of whether you're hungry or not, but she'll still seem like a better parole candidate when you've recently had a snack. — John Brockman

It's natural to worry about physical stuff like weaponry and resources. What we should really worry about is psychological stuff like ideologies and norms. As the UNESCO slogan puts it, "Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed. — John Brockman

Some places in the world, such as Ramsar, Iran, have a tenfold higher background radiation, — John Brockman

I believe that consciousness is, essentially, the way information feels when being processed. — John Brockman