Ed Smith, former chief selector for England cricket: “In the best decision-makers I’ve observed, I’ve sensed they could live with uncertainty and yet still make good (or above-average) decisions. Conversely, an opposite type finds it hard to cope unless they “know for sure”. And yet this second group never can know — so their thinking gets sucked into trying to reduce anxiety rather than searching for better solutions. In most interesting aspects of life, there usually is no perfect or complete answer. And yet there is still better and worse. Wise people know this. But admitting it is in danger of falling victim to the craving for convenient certainty — including the expedient use of “what the data says”. Rationality should allow for healthy scepticism about how much can ever be completely known and understood. When I started as selector, the optimist in me wanted to believe we could harness data towards “optimising” England selection. In retrospect, I see more clearly that it will always be a highly human challenge founded, above all, on the primacy of judgment. Just as well, too. Because human value lies where things are most unquantifiable and most uncertain.”
Laurence H. Silberman: “The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech is not just a legal doctrine. It represents the most fundamental value in American democracy. A national commitment to uninhibited political speech is a crucial aspect of our country’s culture. It is the penumbra around the First Amendment, which, by itself, only prohibits government control of speech. Unless all American institutions are committed to free political speech, I fear the strain on the First Amendment’s guarantees will become unbearable. Those seeking to suppress free speech sometimes think that provocative, even extreme and obnoxious, political speech is dangerously divisive. It should be suppressed. I think that is profoundly wrong. I think it is the very opposite. Toleration of all versions of political speech is the crucial unifying factor in our country.”
Bill Gurley: “The environment for launching a start-up was really crazy the past five years. And the truth is that if you’re going to build something from scratch, this might be as good a time as you’ve had in a decade. Real estate? You can get all the real estate you want. People used to fret about lease cost, but that’s all gone. And while people get caught up on whether the money’s cheap or not, getting rid of the distraction of all that cheap money may be a good thing. That whole mentality of, oh, your competitor raised $100 million, now you have to raise $100 million. All those things have evaporated—for the better, I’d say. A huge thing is that your access to talent is way better. It was so hard to get, but now it’s a lot cheaper than it was. There are layoffs happening. And then hybrid has opened up the people you can get.”
Tsung Xu: “Synthetic polymers became a new class of materials that changed the world during the 20th century, enabled by fossil fuels. In the coming decades, I believe new [bio]materials will replace synthetic polymers and other materials as well as being used in completely new ways.”
