"There's really not a lot of evidence against the idea that a very large subsection even of first world countries is unbearably miserable."

Picoeconomics is a developing framework for the analysis of motivation and motivational conflict.

Work on important problems, be emotionally involved, change what is difficult, don't make excuses.

"You seriously want to keep living in a place where only a vanishingly small fraction of dreams are ever realised (and in which even our imaginations are only capable of charting a tiny fraction of the possible)?"

A video presentation that artfully presents the impending effects of globalization and the exponentially growing development of new technologies to describe the future.

'People are afraid of grandeur; it challenges the status quo. But you shouldn't be. "Look up more" should be your motto; "Think bigger" your mantra.'

How dare the world do this to us? How dare people let it pass unchallenged?

This isn't the world you see in books and TV shows; those worlds obey the law of dramatic unity, where it takes an important cause to have an important effect and the main character is never killed by a completely unrelated truck halfway through the novel

Even among those who understand what is at stake, it seems that the most common reaction is to sit back and cheer the Singularity Institute on, the way one might cheer for a football team - passively.