13 Questions: In conversation with Zan Boag

If you could change one thing about the world, what would that be?
The massive inequality of access to the basics: food security, healthcare, education, agency, opportunity, and freedom.

What do you people accuse you of?
Being lucky.

Which ‘thinker’ has had the greatest influence on your life?
Me, and 500 people I listened to and read.

What do you doubt most?
I doubt humans are ready for the next (AI) Industrial Revolution scale of change, starting now.

What is love?
It is not a single thing. It is my favourite feeling. More is better. It can recalibrate everything around you.

What does it mean to be human?
We are social animals with an unlimited capacity to create complexity. We have complex language. We can think deeply and choose.

What illusion do you suffer from?
I am massively, creatively optimistic. Optimism lives next door to constructive.

What would you never do, no matter the price?

Stop trying, creating, helping, thinking, laughing, loving, being a dad.

If you could choose, what would you have for your last meal?
Tacos at the original Taco Inn in Mexico, DF (my birthplace).

What is a good death?
I can imagine several good ones, just for other people.

The question you’d most like to ask others?
Are we there yet?

What is your motto?
A fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi: in front a precipice, behind a pack of wolves. Old Latin proverb.

What is the meaning of life?
Our scale: if the solar system equals 180 lbs then Earth is a grain of sand. If our galaxy is 1,000 miles then our solar system is 8 inches. There are two trillion galaxies. If human existence was 100 years then complex language shows up in March of year 98. Are we equipped to figure out the meaning of life? What we can do is think, choose,