The current political system is under pressure around the world. High levels of community distrust, eroding of 2 party systems & decreasing membership, rise of extreme groups, loss of national sovereignty, impact of global corporations.

Thoughts consume most of our lives and they don’t even exist.

The public seems to be content with castigating honest and reasonable mistakes while overlooking genuine issues in favour of “weapons of mass distraction”.

In Australia we’ve got the dominant view that hung parliaments and large cross benches are ‘unworkable’ and ‘feral’. Why? In Europe hung parliaments are normal, and there are often many parties represented in the parliament.

Would we benefit from more diverse parties and viewpoints in parliament?

I believe we need to seriously consider a set of complex problems – economic, social, and scientific – that pose great threats to our world. However, if we continue to talk about these problems in ways that create fear rather than inspiration, and look for protection rather than for possibilities, then we may always default to fearing the unknown, rather than embracing change. I also believe that no one perspective or discipline, neither side of politics, nor any one country or group, can solve the world’s problems alone – so I would love to have the Brains Trust’s diversity of experience and expertise applied to identifying the modern world’s great opportunities.

Why does Nutella taste so good? Why is Australia going so crazy for it, to the extent that we have it in donuts, milkshakes, brunch items… etc?

AI engineers might be doing what engineers do, working in a reductionist way on a discrete part of a problem with the ethical contexts left to someone else. The commercial drive to develop better and better AI should make us all nervous unless we have absolute transparency, ‘commercial-in-confidence’ is not helpful here.

This is a question that propels my research (at RMIT University), e.g. I co-edited Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies (2011, Pluto Press, London)

I can’t bear meditation – am I the only one? It’s such a buzz-concept at the moment; others must be wondering too.

Because I’ve never heard a satisfactory answer.

It concerns global warming and climate change. Others should care about it because it will be the end of the world if we don’t resolve the issue.