The trouble with integers is that we have examined only the very small ones. Maybe all the exciting stuff happens at really big numbers, ones we can't even begin to think about in any very definite way. Our brains have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look at things in a hundred thousand dimensions.
If you see voters as rational, you'll be a terrible politician. People are not wired to be rational. Our brains simply evolved to keep us alive. Brains did not evolve to give us truth. Brains merely give us movies in our minds that keeps us sane and motivated. But none of it is rational or true, except maybe sometimes by coincidence.
If brains have brought us to what we are in now, I think it is time to allow our hearts to speak. When our sons are killed by the millions, let us, mothers, only try to do good by going to the kings and emperors without any other danger than a refusal.
Humans like to think of themselves as unusual. We've got big brains that make it possible for us to think, and we think that we have free will and that our behavior can't be described by some mechanistic set of theorems or ideas. But even in terms of much of our behavior, we really aren't very different from other animals.
I feel like human beings can't help but destroy, but if our numbers are small we don't destroy as much as we do when our numbers are this huge and out of control. I wonder, what's the carrying capacity for human beings? When do we get to the point when we can't take it anymore, when it becomes too unpleasant to us just to be here because there's too many of us and there's no solitude anymore.
Our brains have evolved to help us survive within the orders of magnitude of size and speed which our bodies operate at. We never evolved to navigate in the world of atoms.
It's a very, very tough market.
So unless you do a really good job, you buy the right products from the manufacturers, you service the customer, they keep coming back, they bring their friends in, it's all about numbers, numbers, numbers.
I think all of us set out to try and reach as many people. That's the whole point of being in a band: trying to get your music out there. So, any opportunity to do that, within reason. We're informed about where our music is going to be used; we get to say yes or no. There are things we can turn down, and there are things we can agree to. When it comes to movies and stuff like that, it's great for us. I don't think it's selling out. Maybe 10 or 20 years ago it was seen as selling out, but nowadays I think it's the only way to get your music out there.
When we first went there we completely lacked confidence. Our manager told us our act was too long, and told us to drop certain numbers and concentrate on the exciting stuff. And he was right.
If he could have his way, Satan would distract us from our heritage. He would have us become involved in a million and one things in this life-probably none of which is very important in the long run-to keep us from concentrating on the things that are really important, particularly the reality that we are God's children. He would like us to forget about home and family values. He'd like to keep us so busy with comparatively insignificant things that we don't have time to make the effort to understand where we came from, whose children we are, and how glorious our ultimate homecoming can be!
Our physical senses and our embodied brains allow us to perceive only a small fraction of reality. We cannot see microbes or untraviolet light, for example. We can hear only a small range of sounds. When we try to describe the otherworld of energies and spirits, we are limited not only by our bodily constraints but by the expectations, assumptions, and language patterns ingrained in us by the culture we were raised in.
God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours - so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things....In the Bible I learn that God values us not for our strenght or our brains but simply because He has made us.
Human beings cannot comprehend very large or very small numbers. It would be useful for us to acknowledge that fact.
We have to do something about the cartels. I did talk to [Enrique Peña Nieto] about it. I want to help him with it. I think he's a very good man. We have a very good relationship.He seemed very willing to get help from us because he has got a problem, and it's a real problem for us. Don't forget those cartels are operating in our country. And they're poisoning the youth of our country.
It's created a very real chilling effect among our sources. They've become nervous about talking with us. They don't want their phone numbers associated with us. And government employees who previously routinely talked to us, now won't.
As a researcher at US Berkeley I used to go into the brains of small, little animals and study the way that brains were connected and how little did I know that one day that was going to be my future - exploring the universe of the brain and hold it in between my hands and look at cells migrating.
Some of us are taught to ask for help. Some of us don't feel comfortable asking for help. Some of us will get into trouble because we don't want to share things with adults - maybe because we're used to getting in trouble. I have two daughters, and they're very different from each other. One will tell me everything. The other barely tells me anything at all. Who do I worry about the most? I worry about the quiet one. But it's something I wish I had had when I was a child, that feeling of having someone I could ask for help.