Steven Pinker: “The most powerful means of getting people to be more rational is not to concentrate on the people. Because people are pretty rational when it comes to their own lives. They get the kids clothed and fed and off to school on time, and they keep their jobs and pay their bills. But people hold beliefs not because they are provably true or false but because they’re uplifting, they’re empowering, they’re good stories. The key, though, is what kind of species are we? How rational is Homo sapiens? The answer can’t be that we’re just irrational in our bones, otherwise we could never have established the benchmarks of rationality against which we could say some people some of the time are irrational. I think the answer is, especially for publicly consequential beliefs: We achieve rationality by implementing rules for the community that make us collectively more rational than any of us are individually. People make up for one another’s biases by being able to criticize them. People air their disagreements, and the person with the strongest position prevails. People subject their beliefs to empirical tests.”
Umakant Soni: “The next 15 years are going to be critical for India’s growth story. We will have an opportunity to combine demographic dividend with artificial intelligence (AI)-driven hyper-innovation, in which 50 billion smart things (machines and devices) will combine with billions of connected humans. Unlike previous innovation cycles, the AI wave is different in which rapid technology innovation (combination of AI, Robotics, 5G and Quantum technologies) will occur together with business model innovation (digital intangibles-driven experience economy)…For India to play a massive role in this upcoming ecosystem, we need to launch ambitious technology moonshots, which will create the innovation ecosystem necessary to dominate the experience economy.”
FT: “In advanced economies, cryptocurrencies are viewed by many in the financial world with suspicion — the domain of zealous “crypto bros” and a speculative and highly volatile fad that can only end badly. Regulators in Europe and the US have issued stark warnings about the dangers of trading crypto. But in the developing world, there are signs that crypto is quietly building deeper roots. Especially in countries which have a history of financial instability or where the barriers to accessing traditional financial products such as bank accounts are high, cryptocurrency use is fast becoming a fact of daily life.” Vietnam and India have the highest levels of crypto adoption.
