 We, as human beings, are pretty pathetic animals, right? We're weak, as strong as you are. You go up again a saber-toothed tiger, you ain't surviving, right? We're slow, we have no fangs, we have no huge jaws to bite into an animal and kill it. What is it that makes us able to survive? What is it that is uniquely human that makes it possible not just to survive, right? I mean, we've thrived. We're the lions, they're still doing the same stuff they did 5,000 years ago, right? We live in places like this, right? What's the difference? What's uniquely human that makes it possible for us to do that in spite of our physical weakness to still succeed so well? Our brain, what is it about our brain? It's intelligence, but it's our ability to reason. It's our ability to think rationally. It's our ability to look out into reality and not just accept the senses, right? Accept the data and automatically respond like an animal does. It's our ability to get the data and analyze it and think about it and generate something new from it. It's our ability to absorb lots of information and integrate it and then go out into our environment and change our environment. You see, the gazelle or the lion are stuck. They can never change and they can never change their environment. They are what they are. They function automatically just like your computer. Inputs in and it's an automatic response. We have free will. We have the ability to actually engage with the world around us to understand it, to figure it out and to change it. The lion can't change his environment. He's going to be doing the same stuff 5,000 years from now as he did 5,000 years ago. You know, he might change genetically through evolution, but not, we build homes, right? So, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I do not have a gene that automatically would let me know how to build a home. Initially, human beings probably lived in caves and in trees like animals. And then one genius one day said, you know, if we put some bricks together or maybe it was mud or maybe it was straw, who knows? I can create this thing that we can live inside and then other geniuses made it better and better and better and today we live in these magnificent skyscrapers and magnificent homes and buildings that a lot of thought, rational thought had to go into and by definition what we did was change the environment in which we live. We're not just dependent on a cave, which we have to share with the sabertooth tiger or bear or something. We can now go and build a house wherever we want to live under our terms and under our conditions, including, for example, one of the greatest inventions in human history, air conditioning, right? Which makes much of the world habitable whereas before it wasn't or shouldn't have been. It was, I guess, but it shouldn't have been habitable. So it's our mind that makes that possible. We don't have a gene that lets us know automatically how to hunt like the lion does. I mean, how do you catch a bison? Anybody just instinctually know? No, none of you do. You'd have to think about it. You'd have to develop weapons, have to build tools. Those tools take thought. Somebody had to figure them out. Lions don't have tools. They can't think. You can think. Every value that we have, our ability to communicate, our ability to have relationships, our ability to love is dependent on our ability to think. Everything, everything at the end of the day, all our values, all the things we live for, figuring out what the right diet is. How do you do that? Do we just know? Go out into the forage or just pick whatever? No. It's not obvious, especially in modern times when the choices are unbelievable the amount of choices we have in terms of food, right? What's good for us? What's not good for us? It's not obvious. Not obvious. I think we're still confused. I don't think anybody really knows even today what's really good for us. But how are we going to discover that? How are we working to discover that? By using our minds, by using science, which is the epitome of rationality. So, for human survival, if you had to name one thing that is required to be successful in life, to be good at life, to achieve the goals that you want to set in life, I'd say it's simple. There's only one principle that you need to know. And that is think. Now, it sounds easy, right? But it's not. How many times in life do we get a sense, you know, we're doing something and we get a sense that something's wrong? But it's unpleasant. So we say, you know what? I don't want to think about that. Because the conclusion might not be the conclusion that I want to get to. The conclusion might not be one that's pleasant to me. And it's going to require a lot of effort to figure out if it's true or not. Your girlfriend might be cheating on you. You don't know, something's just not quite right. But if I think about it, I might discover some bad news and I don't want to go there. I just don't want to go there. Or the, you know, the cocaine is right there. And you're going to get a really cool high from it. And emotionally, you might be very happy for a little while. But that's not happiness. That's some emotion. What's it going to do to my ability to function over the next 30 years, particularly if I do it repeatedly? Well, the empirical evidence is pretty clear. Not that good for you. But you have to think about it, to figure that out. It's not obvious. I mean, I'm going to get a high. So it requires stopping a minute and saying, is this really good for me? Not easy. Not if you're in a party with lots of friends and everybody's doing it. So, to be truly selfish. To think about what's good for you. To think about what's good for you in the long term. To live life to the fullest. My biggest piece of advice today is, think. This thing that we got between our ears is the most powerful tool for living that we have. It's actually the only tool for living that we have. Everything else is a product of that.