Latest Michio Kaku Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• What differentiates human from lower-animal consciousness is time. You can't explain the concept of "tomorrow" to your dog. Our consciousness is dominated by time - We're constantly running simulations of the future. Our brain is a prediction machine. The hallmark of intelligence, indeed of genius, is the number and complexity of the feedback loops we use in predicting the future.

  Michio Kaku

  Running, Dog, Brain

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

• A related aspect of intelligent consciousness is delay of gratification: the wisdom to accurately predict whether delay rather than acting on impulse will yield greater benefit.

  Michio Kaku

  Intelligent, Acting, Consciousness

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

• Until computers and robots make quantum advances, they basically remain adding machines: capable only of doing things in which all the variables are controlled and predictable. Robots are bad at pattern recognition and certainly at common sense. That's why computers can beat humans in chess but can't have even a basic conversation with a six-year-old.

  Michio Kaku

  Common Sense, Chess, Recognition

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

• Language and emotions are too easily misread. For example, laughing can mean many things: laughing with you or at you. Does that laugh reflect joy, anger, or that s/he's about to fire you? Too many jobs require complex feelings, pattern recognition, common sense, and the human touch.

  Michio Kaku

  Mean, Laughing, Common Sense

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

• We need an enduring, robust theory of education. Now, it seems education careens from one fad to another and often back again. I think that with better education and students willing to put in the 10,000-hours to become expert, we could develop better science professionals, even theoretical physicists.

  Michio Kaku

  Thinking, Students, Endure

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

• I don't. We've had three technological revolutions that have changed the course of human history, all driven by physics. In the first, the industrial revolution, physicists developed Newtonian mechanics and thermodynamics, which gave us the steam engine and machine power. The second technological revolution was the electricity revolution. That gave us radio, television, and telecommunications. Then, physicists developed the laser and the transistor.

  Michio Kaku

  Revolution, Physics, Mechanic

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

• We need more concept-development and active involvement, less tuning forks, pulleys, and friction formulas - students know they'll never use those. They need more study of outer space and DNA. They need more exciting teaching, more fair-minded encouragement, more career guidance, more mentorship. Both students and teachers need more feedback. It would help if we stopped protecting bad teachers - It's very difficult to get rid of even sexual perverts let alone just bad teachers.

  Michio Kaku

  Teacher, Encouragement, Teaching

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

• We've done a miserable job of preparing people for today's world, let alone tomorrow's.

  Michio Kaku

  People, World, Done

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

• Today's clunky smart glasses will be replaced by smart contact lenses. We'll command them by voice, blinking, or even thinking, to interact visually in 3-D with the Internet.

  Michio Kaku

  Smart, Thinking, Internet

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

• I began to realize something - to understand the future you have to understand physics. Physics of the last century gave us television, radio, microwaves, gave us the Internet, lasers, transistors, computers - all of that from physics.

  Michio Kaku

  Television, Radio, Lasers

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I had two passions when I was a child. First was to learn about Einstein's theory and help to complete his dream of a unified theory of everything. That's my day job. I work in something called string theory. I'm one of the founders of the subject. We hope to complete Einstein's dream of a theory of everything.

  Michio Kaku

  Dream, Jobs, Children

  Source: www.pbs.org

• There are dangers, but only dangers if people don't understand where technology is taking us.

  Michio Kaku

  Technology, People, Danger

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I'm not a science fiction writer, I'm a physicist. These are scientists who are making the future in their laboratories.

  Michio Kaku

  Fiction, Scientist, Physicist

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Growing new organs of the body as they wear out, extending the human lifespan? What's not to like? Then in the last phase of this transition people begin to realize, hey, I thought of it already - this is something that everyone can enjoy.

  Michio Kaku

  People, Transition, Hey

  Source: www.pbs.org

• We physicists know that the brain is a milliwatt transmitter of radio. We have computers that can decipher much of this gibberish coming from our brain and we could then use that to control computers.

  Michio Kaku

  Brain, Use, Radio

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Computer chips will cost about a penny. That's the cost of scrap paper. The Internet will be basically for free and it will be inside our contact lens. When we blink, we will go online. When we see somebody that we don't recognize, our contact lens will identify who they are, print out their biography in your contact lens and translate, if they're speaking Chinese, into English with subtitles as they speak.

  Michio Kaku

  Chinese, Lenses, Cost

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Cesium, iodine from the Chernobyl reactor accident went around the world many times and everyone on the Earth has a piece of Chernobyl in their bodies, but it's very tiny - too small to cause much damage.

  Michio Kaku

  Iodine, Pieces, World

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Faust was this mythical figure who sold his soul to the devil for unlimited power. The Japanese have made that Faustian bargain because they don't have coal, oil or hydro power.

  Michio Kaku

  Oil, Soul, Devil

  Source: www.pbs.org

• In fact, all of us have a piece of Chernobyl in our bodies going back to 1986.

  Michio Kaku

  Pieces, Body, Facts

  Source: www.pbs.org

• It's risky to allow radiation to constantly go up into the atmosphere. The main criticism of this approach of entombing it is that it would cost too much, involve too many resources and people. But think of the cost of having all the crops impounded by the government, all the milk being thrown into the river, people's livelihoods destroyed.

  Michio Kaku

  Thinking, Government, Rivers

  Source: www.pbs.org

• The reactors in Japan are stable in the same way that a ticking time bomb is also stable. It wouldn't take much to light the fuse - a 6.6 earthquake, like what happened today in Japan, a pipe break, an over-pressurized containment vessel - anything could set it off, in which case we would have another Chernobyl, three times the magnitude of a Chernobyl accident.

  Michio Kaku

  Light, Japan, Earthquakes

  Source: www.pbs.org

• One problem with politics is that it is a zero sum game, i.e. politicians argue how to cut the pie smaller and smaller, by reshuffling pieces of the pie. I think this is destructive. Instead, we should be creating a bigger pie, i.e. funding the science that is the source of all our prosperity. Science is not a zero sum game.

  Michio Kaku

  Zero, Cutting, Thinking

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. March 7, 2014.

• We should explore new ways to drive down the cost of space travel. instead of costly booster rockets, maybe we should think of laser/microwave driven rockets, or space elevators. Until then, the cost of space exploration will limit our ability to explore the universe.

  Michio Kaku

  Thinking, Space, Cost

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. March 7, 2014.

• I agree, along with Carl Sagan, that we should eventually become a two planet species. Life is too precious to place on a single planet.

  Michio Kaku

  Two, Life Is, Sagan

• The most likely possibility, favored by current data, is that the universe will die in Ice, not Fire. However, personally I believe that trillions of years from now, we (if we are still around) will have the technology to leave the universe, perhaps in an interdimensional life boat, and move to a warmer universe.

  Michio Kaku

  Believe, Moving, Technology