If you ever feel lazy or dull, take heart: you're the busiest, brightest thing on the planet.

As an undergraduate I majored in British and American literature at Rice University.

Think about the brain as the densest concentration of youness. It's the peak of the mountain, but not the whole mountain.

There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

This is what consciousness does: it sets the goals, and the rest of the system learns how to meet them.

I spent my adult life as a scientist, and science is, essentially, the most successful approach we have to try and understand the vast mysteries around.

If you measure someone's brain and see very little activity during a task, it does not necessarily indicate that they're not trying - it more likely signifies that they have worked hard in the past to burn the programs into the circuitry. Consciousness is called in during the first phase of learning and is excluded from the game playing after it is deep in the system.