Philip Ball: belief

Transcript context

…Lift wallets from people’s pockets, whatever you want. You see, having written that book and having looked into the history of it, I would like to feel that if someone came along and said, “Here’s a ring of invisibility. It’s all yours, and just yours. Do what you want with it. ” I would like to think that I would be like Gandalf, and I would say, “No, take it away. Don’t tempt me with it because I know where that stuff leads.” If one had it, then, of course, the sky’s the limit. You could take what you liked, and that’s the worry. For me, [laughs] I would love to feel that I would resist that temptation. Why is it that we, as evolved humans, find outer space beautiful? Is that a coincidence? Or is there a reason why it worked out that way?…

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