Physics and those parts of other fields that grow out of physics - chemistry, the structure of big molecules - in those domains, there is a lot of progress. In many other domains, there is very little progress in developing real scientific understanding.

We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid.

A tremendous amount of the entrepreneurial initiative, if you want to call it that, comes from the dynamic state sector on which most of the economy relies to socialize costs and risks and privatize eventual profit. And that's achieved by, if you like, advertising.

The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.

Somebody puts up some weird thing and somebody else thinks yeah maybe that's the way things work and pretty soon you have some cult going. Its not the fault of the internet, it's the fault of a social and culture system that doesn't educate people properly and in fact on purpose. They don't want to educate people properly.

In fact, the capitalist class in the '50s was sort of part of a social contract. It was part of the tenor of the times.

For a while, after the Second World War, when there was strong support for labor, this was done subtly.