Science books
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“We will merge with AI and augment ourselves with millions of times the computational power that our biology gave us.”
"What separates you from an earthworm is not the unit of intelligence itself—neurons—but how these units are wired together."
"Could there be someone watching our Earth right now, also wondering if they are alone or not? For the very first time, we have the technology to investigate."
"My hope for AI isn’t that it creates a new upgraded species without the messiness of humanity, but that it helps us ordinary, flawed humans live our best and happiest lives."
"First, Medicine 3.0 places a far greater emphasis on prevention than treatment."
"Movement is medicine, and the simplest acts of daily motion can have profound impacts on our health and longevity."
"The world’s chip industry, as well as the assembly of all the electronic goods chips enable, depends more on the Taiwan Strait and the South China coast than on any other chunk of the world’s territory except Silicon Valley."
"The universe is vast and varied, daily forcing scientists to confront, accommodate, measure, and analyze the diversity of all that’s out there."
"The metaverse will challenge our assumptions about what is real, what is valuable, and what is possible."
"We are closer than ever to understanding what it is like to be another animal, but we have made it harder than ever for other animals to be."
"We now have the power to control our genetic future, which is awesome and terrifying. So we must move forward cautiously and with respect for the power we’ve gained."
"Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious."
"In the age of AI, the most valuable commodity will be data, and those who control it will hold enormous power."
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“Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless—in short, more dramatic—than it really is.”
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"Perhaps among the other universes in the multiverse, there is a new home for us."
"The world has made spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being."
"Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day - Mother Nature's best effort yet at contra-death."
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"Measure what you value, and others will value what you measure."
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"AI has the potential to fundamentally alter what it means to be human, but we need to ensure that we retain control over our own destiny."
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"Our behavior is shaped by a complex web of influences, including genetics, epigenetics, hormones, brain development, culture, and socialization."
"The Blank Slate is the denial of the deep roots of human nature. It is the idea that we are all born as blank slates, but that society can mold us into whatever it wants us to be."
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"We are part of a great cosmic web, connected to everything else in the universe."
"The power and beauty of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them. In other words, after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion."
"Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you."
"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special."
"We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes."
"The ideal of the local and the organic isn't an aesthetic decision. It's a moral and ethical decision."
"Our relationship with the microbes that live within us is not just one of coexistence, but one of mutualism and symbiosis."
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"The beauty of evolution is that it can explain both the diversity and the unity of life."
"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars."
"Science made the bomb possible, but it was politics that brought it into existence."
"I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way–by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!"
"The universe and the laws of physics seem to have been specifically designed for us. If any of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as we know it couldn't exist."
"Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it."
"Writing this book was a chance for this courageous seer to be a sayer, to teach us to face death with integrity."
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"Our reality is similar to the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis; we live in a simulated world, but it is not in a computer—it is in our head."
"The strategies and plans that managers formulate for confronting disruptive technological change, therefore, should be plans for learning and discovery rather than plans for execution."
"The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify."
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"Growth is a universal phenomenon, but its patterns are anything but uniform."
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"Perception is not a direct reflection of the outside world, but an interpretation."
"Climate change is a global problem, and we need a global solution that includes all countries and sectors of society."
"The brain processes music by breaking it down into its component parts, such as pitch, rhythm, and timbre, and then reassembling these elements into a coherent whole."
"The food you eat can either be the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison."
"Our perceptions of the world are filtered through the lens of our subconscious biases and assumptions."
"The human body is the product of three billion years of evolutionary tweaking. It is a wonder of optimization."
"Different types of thinking provide strengths in one area and deficits in another."
“Representing fidelity, self-reliance, strength, and courage, the founding bird quickly attained a vaunted perch in America’s iconography.”
"When a food becomes endangered, another seed lost, another skill forgotten, it is worth remembering the epic story of how they got here."
"I am an organism like any other, we people and pigeons and bacteria experiencing homeostasis on the sidewalk."
"Mental disorders—all of them—are metabolic disorders of the brain."
"Blind conformity is never good for anyone—it robs us of happiness and keeps us from fulfilling our potential, individually and collectively.”
"This, rather, is the story of how the concept of the cell, and our comprehension of cellular physiology, altered medicine, science, biology, social structures, and culture."
"I hope you will then go on to help your parents, siblings, children, friends, and acquaintances do the same. Together we can help everyone reconnect with their bodies, one person at a time."
"Having removed, replaced and repaired what we can, the final stage in an actual cure for biological ageing will almost certainly require us to reprogram our own biology, hacking what nature has given us to prevent problematic processes from happening in the first place."