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Neurologist at Oxford; studies apathy, motivation and attention after brain injury, and edits the journal Brain.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Motivated and apathetic people are indistinguishable when the reward is large; the whole difference between them shows up over small rewards.

  Their words

  We find that everyone is willing to work for high rewards. But the difference between motivated people and apathetic people is at the level of the low rewards. Apathetic people are more inclined to say, "Nah, I don't think this is worth the effort, so I won't do that option."

  youtube.com

Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience and Biology at Caltech, where he studies the neuroscience of emotion and social cognition.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Losing your emotions does not leave you a cooler decision-maker; it leaves you unable to organise a life at all.

  Their words

  if you have massive frontal lobe lesions that make it the case that you're no longer emotionally responding to stimuli the consequences are devastating which is that you cannot make decisions complex decisions in your life you can't organize your life you're not motivated to take the right path through life because you don't feel one one way or the other about the different options that are available.

  youtube.com

Swedish programmer with degrees in engineering and psychology, author of Your Code as a Crime Scene and founder of CodeScene.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Nature of Code

  Their words

  This book is a beautiful introduction to simulations of natural systems. We get concise prose, clear illustrations, and carefully chosen systems with a guided tour through the math. All done in the Processing language, which is fun and easy to pick up. The reason I like this book so much is probably due to timing. In 2013, I was on the verge of abandoning software development. I was fed up. (That's a story for another time.) Instead, I planned to go into cognitive psychology full-time as a researcher. This book brought back the joy in programming for me. Sometimes, a good book is the book that motivated you.

  adamtornhill.substack.com

Mathematician and maker of the 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel, which explains mathematics through animation. Creator of the open-source Manim animation library and founder of the Summer of Math Exposition.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Even if AI curates better, people will still want a human curator they have a relationship with, because wanting to learn something is a social phenomenon.

  Their words

  I think we would always still prefer like a human that we had a relationship with because the way that we get motivated to be interesting interested in things is a social phenomenon.

  youtube.com

Engineer and writer on machine-learning systems; author of Designing Machine Learning Systems and AI Engineering. "I work to bring AI into production. I write about AI system design."

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The problems worth a small builder's time are the ones too small for a big AI company to be motivated to solve.

  OpenAI

  Their words

  Like if it's a big problem, like everyone can see, then all these big companies will get into it. But whereas it's like there are a lot of problems that's like smaller, then maybe OpenAI won't be motivated to solve it, but maybe I can like all a lot of people can.

  youtube.com

Software developer and entrepreneur; co-founder of Heroku, author of The Twelve-Factor App, and a researcher at Ink & Switch.

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  People who lack intrinsic motivation to invest time upfront in a new tool often won't, even if it would save them time later

  Their words

  The "homework problem" described above might be much worse in practice for end users who aren't motivated to invest in their email triage systems, even if it will save them time in the medium term.

  Firehose authentic useadamwiggins.com

Roboticist; co-founded iRobot and Rethink Robotics, directed the MIT AI Lab, and publishes a scorecard grading his own dated predictions about AI, robots and self-driving.

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  A robotaxi that still needs remote human help loses the cost advantage that motivated it, which pushes out when it can scale.

  self-driving cars

  Their words

  Systems which do require remote operations assistance to get full reliability cut into that economic advantage and have a higher burden on their ROI calculations to make a business case for their adoption and therefore their time horizon to scaling across geographies.

  Predictions Scorecard, 2026 January 01rodneybrooks.com

Founder of the toy manufacturer Viahart; writes about manufacturing, importing and why bringing production back to America is harder than it sounds.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Chinese factory workers are more motivated than American ones because what they want has been getting cheaper against their wages while American housing has not.

  ChinaAmerica

  Their words

  Between 2015 and 2025 US manufacturing wages rose 40%, while the cost of purchasing a home rose 93%.

  molsonhart.com

Structural engineer and senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress; writes Construction Physics on why physical things cost what they cost.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Whether a country builds ships well comes down to whether it actually wants to compete internationally, and America never has.

  America

  Their words

  The U.S., on the other hand, never appears to have been strongly motivated to make its shipbuilding industry an international success.

  Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships?construction-physics.com

Technology journalist; writes Understanding AI, after reporting at Ars Technica, Vox and the Washington Post.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A robotaxi that still needs remote human help loses the cost advantage that motivated it, which pushes out when it can scale.

  self-driving cars

  Their words

  If Waymo vehicles were constantly asking for remote guidance, Waymo might need to hire so many remote operators that it negates the cost savings that come from not needing a driver.

  understandingai.org

Marketing author and daily blogger; founder of the altMBA and the Akimbo workshops, and author of books including Purple Cow and This Is Marketing.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Employees and customers do not want what founders want, and equity stakes become a demotivator in almost every organisation.

  startups

  Their words

  Employees don't want what you want. Customers don't want what you want. Uh you know, that that one of the challenges of the whole stock option thing is entrepreneurs and founders think that other people will be as motivated by owning part of the company as they are. They are not. Not even close.

  youtube.com

Journalist and author writing on politics, liberalism and ideas; a contributor to Quillette and co-author of a book on Christopher Hitchens.

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  A movement that has decided its job is to save humanity is uniquely prone to hubris, dogma and motivated reasoning.

  Their words

  This is a worldview that’s uniquely susceptible to hubris, dogma, and motivated reasoning.

  How Effective Altruism Lost Its Wayquillette.com

Security technologist and author of books including Applied Cryptography and Data and Goliath; writes the Schneier on Security blog and the monthly Crypto-Gram newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Against a sufficiently skilled and determined attacker computer security fails, and most people are safe only because nobody bothered with them.

  Their words

  If a sufficiently skilled, funded, and motivated attacker wants in to your computer, they’re in.

  Security vs. Surveillanceschneier.com