UAE set to be world leader in creating a knowledge-based economy: HE Sheikh Nahayan

Dubai, 25 March 2019: H.E. Sheikh Nahyan Mabarak Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Tolerance, said the UAE is on the trajectory to become one of the worlds leaders in creating a knowledge society and a knowledge-based economy.

H.E. was addressing the audience on the second day of the Global Education and Skills Forum, the annual Varkey Foundation event that celebrates inspirational teaching and which works to ensure that every child has access to a good education.

Discussing the importance of the forum for the UAE in helping the country meet its development objectives, HE Sheikh Nahayan said: Our interactions with accomplished world thinkers and leaders will help support our national goals. They make us more efficient and they help us reach our potential.

The second day of the forum commenced with renowned popular science author and Harvard professor Steven Pinker giving his analysis on behavioural characteristics, followed by Syrian child Twitter activist Bana Al-Abed revealing the psychology behind her world attention-grabbing tweets she sent during the 2016 period her home city of Aleppo was under bombardment.

Professor Pinker, a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author who was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, discussed how human beings had a tendency to be unreasonable.

As a cognitive psychologist, I would be the first to acknowledge that human beings on their own are not particularly reasonable. As a species, we are likely to generalise from anecdotes, we reason from stereotypes, we seek evidence that confirms our beliefs - while dismissing evidence that disconfirms them - and were all overconfident about our knowledge, our wisdom and our rectitude, he said.