Many of the projects that we do that appear quite successful, it's actually often the second or third time we've given it a try.

The skill-providers want to have more impact and solve problems; the problem people want new tools to get their problems solved.

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

The brain is really hard to see. The whole thing is very large - the human brain is several pounds in weight - but the connections between brain cells, known as synapses, are really tiny. They're nanoscale in dimension. So if you want to see how the cells of the brain are connected in networks, you have to see those connections, those synapses.

I would argue that if you understand how the cells of the brain are organized into circuits, almost computational circuits if you will, and we see how information flows through those circuits and how it's transformed, we might have a much firmer grasp on why our brains make decisions the way that they do. If we get a handle on that, maybe we can overcome some of our limitations and at the very least we'll understand why we do what we do.

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

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