Quotes by Ramez Naam

“Playing God is actually the highest expression of human nature. The urges to improve ourselves, to master our environment, and to set our children on the best path possible have been the fundamenta...”

“The world has a very serious problem, my friend' Shiva went on. 'Poor children still die by their millions. Westerners and the global rich -- like me -- live in post-scarcity society, while a billi...”

“Do you think that a billion people knowing your face makes you special?It doesn't.”

“But Nita had always seen having a child as selfish. Why bring another soul into this world, she'd say, when there are so many out there that need our help?”

“We've seen over time that countries that have the best economic growth are those that have good governance, and good governance comes from freedom of communication. It comes from ending corruption....”

“Everything good and bad about technology would be magnified by implanting it deep in brains. Is the risk of brain-hacking outweighed by the societal benefits of faster, deeper communication, and th...”

“I have an 'office,' technically. I never use it. I work on a couch in my living room, with my laptop on my lap, looking out the windows. I love space and green things. And I'm an incredibly casual ...”

“I'm a geek through and through. My last job at Microsoft was leading much of the search engine relevance work on Bing. There we got to play with huge amounts of data, with neural networks and other...”

“Orange juice from concentrate is labeled. Food coloring Red #5 is labeled. Fish are labeled as to whether they've been previously frozen. To a consumer, there's no plausible reason why these factor...”

“Solar power is going to be absolutely essential to meeting growing energy demands while staving off climate change.”

“The accumulated knowledge of materials, computing, electromagnetism, product design, and all the rest that we've learned over the last several centuries converts a few ounces of raw materials worth...”

“Genetically modified organism (GMO) foods are feared and hated by environmentalists and the public alike. Yet the scientific assessment of GMOs is remarkably different. Every major scientific evalu...”

“Technology is incredibly powerful. And in many ways, the sky is the limit in terms of what you can actually accomplish with the right science and the right technology. But to get there, you have to...”

“Threats that could wipe out the bulk of life on earth abound. Planetary catastrophe could come in the form of a killer asteroid impact, the eruption of massive supervolcanoes, a nearby gamma ray bu...”

“On almost every environmental issue I care about, in fact, I've been wrong at one point or another. I used to think that climate change was no big deal, that most environmental problems were massiv...”

“Environmental concern is a phenomena that tends to rise in a nation after a certain level of wealth.”

“Technology is vital. We have to have development in new technology if we're going to solve these environmental problems without throwing humanity back in poverty.”

“Producing food to eat is the single most destructive environmental activity humans engage in.”

“Every attempt through history to limit the definition of humanity has been a prelude to the subjugation, degradation, and slaughter of innocents.”

“People are wired for lots of things. We're wired for novelty. We're wired for humor. We're wired for new pieces of information that surprise us in some way or add value to our lives. We're wired fo...”