While our times inspire both great optimism for peace and prosperity, they also cause concern due to instability, inequality, conflicts and crises of identity. With his usual clarity, he divided the theme between intellectual and political challenges. The former addressed global paranoia, risks, inter-dependence and ethical choices while the latter touched upon war, global economic insecurity, the issue of democracy, global governance and the decisions of the individual. This lecture series, which is open to the public, presents an opportunity to examine contemporary challenges which may shape the coming decades.
Some people say they are artificial entities.
They are not elected bodies, so they lack the democratic clout to do anything. They are talking shops. One wouldn't want them to have any real power'. However, there is an alternative explanation - that of the 'multiverse', where different universes have randomly different values. On the other hand, those universes will only seem to be fine-tuned because they are only a small part of the multiverse.