Achievement and the Atomic Human

Reminder: Essence of Human Intelligence

Importance of Narratives

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention …

Simon (1971)

If in this book harsh words are spoken about some of the greatest among the intellectual leaders of mankind, my motive is not, I hope, to belittle them. It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes; and as the book tries to show, some of the greatest leaders of the past supported the perennial attack on freedom and reason.

Case Study: Science

Conjectures and Refutations

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

• Individual scientists are subjective.
• The process of scientific consensus takes time.

Ogni scarrafone è bello a mamma soja

Neopolitan expression

• Just because “scientists say” it doesn’t mean “science says”.
• Decisions are still needed when facing uncertainty.

Societal Hidden Labour

Model of Transformation

The Attention Reinvestment Cycle

• Ideas flow from creation to application like physical supply chains
• Parallels with traditional economic supply chain management
• Particularly relevant for IT and AI solutions

• Current imbalance between supply and demand sides
• Current focus on creating new technologies/companies
• Under-focus on real-world needs

• Need to map idea demand to supply
• Focus on understanding current “stock” of ideas
• Active management of idea resources
• Shaping supply to meet demand

Data Science Africa is a bottom up initiative for capacity building in data science, machine learning and AI on the African continent

• A-Ideas (across 20 departments)
• Policy lab (with Bennett, Minderoo)
• HPC Pioneer projects (with RCS, C2D3)
• Accelerate programme (Schmidt Sciences funded)