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seven billion people have seven billion agendas, and as already noted, thinking about the big picture is a relatively rare luxury.
Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely.
Democracy is based on Abraham Lincoln’s principle that “you can fool all the people some of the time, and some people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
But liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption.
In addition, no remaining human job will ever be safe from the threat of future automation, because machine learning and robotics will continue to improve.
However, for better or worse, elections and referendums are not about what we think. They are about what we feel.
Politicians are a bit like musicians, and the instrument they play on is the human emotional and biochemical system.
to Israeli Jews, who are educated from kindergarten to think that Judaism is the superstar of human history.
Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.
in the twenty-first century, because biotechnology and artificial intelligence now seek to change the very meaning of humanity.
In the early twentieth century a favorite Zionist slogan spoke of the return of “a people without a land (the Jews) to a land without a people (Palestine).”
People are afraid of being trapped inside a box, but they don’t realize that they are already trapped inside a box—their brain—which is locked within the bigger box of human society with its myriad fictions.
In the past, it was a relatively safe bet to follow the adults, because they knew the world quite well, and the world changed slowly. But the twenty-first century is going to be different. Because of the increasing pace of change, you can never be certain whether what the adults are telling you is timeless wisdom or outdated bias.
But if you don’t know what you want in life, it will be all too easy for technology to shape your aims for you and take control of your life.
