Huffington Magazine Issue 10 | Page 57

A BEAUTIFUL MIND in life get together to schmooze, booze, sing and pee in the woods, according to accounts. Thrun says it isn’t likely. Later, he tells me he wouldn’t want to go on vacation without his wife and son. WINNI WINTERMEYER The Laws Of Motion Even as Thrun seeks to get gadgets out of our way, his v ision suggests an effort to make humans a bit more like computers: more rational and less inclined to give into foolish fears. Thrun sees a very real and important place for HUFFINGTON 8.19.12 technology that advances clarity, eliminates obfuscation, and gives people all the help they need to solve problems on their own. Thrun approaches problems armed with facts and cool hard logic, and seems troubled by people who do otherwise. He has an impressive number of statistics at his fingertips: the energy efficiency of planes versus trains, the fraction of materials shipped to a construction site that go to waste, the number of years required to fly to Mars and the percentage of Americans who don’t believe in evolution (a number irksomely large, in his view). He imagines a Thrun in the Google self-driving car earlier this month.