I worry that we don't have a very good definition of consciousness yet which makes it hard to tackle.

Behavioral economics can explain some things, but it's hard to explain a lot of the underlying processes that generate these decisions, much less some of these unconscious things that we don't have a handle on at all.

One thing that I've been doing for a long time is to wake up really early. I try to get up around 4 or 5 in the morning, long before most of my lab members are up, which gives me some quiet time to really think without distraction. I think that's important.

If you think backwards from a big problem, and you talk to all these other people who have skills and who think forward from their skills, it's very easy to form collaborations because everyone is incentivized to work together.

If we succeed, it makes no sense to keep it only for ourselves.

It's surprising that the world is understandable to the extent that it is.

I often try to think about, What sounds like a bad idea, but if you find the right plan of attack, it's actually a really good idea? I spend a lot of time really trying to systematically tackle problems from different angles.