Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I only want power so I can get books.
There is light in the world, and it is us!
That which the truth nourishes should thrive.
To be clever in argument is not rationality but rationalization.
To worship a sacred mystery was just to worship your own ignorance.
If you don’t sign up your kids for cryonics then you are a lousy parent.
If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.
Trying and getting hurt can't possibly be worse for you than being... stuck.
I want to carry in my heart forever the key word of the Olympics - 'passion.'
World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation.
If cryonics were a scam it would have far better marketing and be far more popular.
Rationality is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use.
I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organised.
There were mysterious questions, but a mysterious answer was a contradiction in terms.
You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.
What people really believe doesn't feel like a BELIEF, it feels like the way the world IS.
Though I have friends aplenty in academia, I don't operate within the academic system myself.
I'm lazy! I hate work! Hate hard work in all its forms! Clever shortcuts, that's all I'm about!
If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it is hot, and if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool.
To confess your fallibility and then do nothing about it is not humble; it is boasting of your modesty.
Existential depression has always annoyed me; it is one of the world's most pointless forms of suffering.
When you are older, you will learn that the first and foremost thing which any ordinary person does is nothing.
Every mystery ever solved had been a puzzle from the dawn of the human species right up until someone solved it.
By far the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.
I'm wondering if there's a spell to make lightning flash in the background whenever I make an ominous resolution.
By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.
The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.
After all, if you had the complete decision process, you could run it as an AI, and I'd be coding it up right now.
There's something in science like the shine of the Patronus Charm, driving back all sorts of darkness and madness.
I don't care where I live, so long as there's a roof to keep the rain off my books, and high-speed Internet access.
Moore's Law of Mad Science: Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point.
Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.
When something is universal enough in our everyday lives, we take it for granted to the point of forgetting it exists.
My successes already accomplished have mostly been taking existing science and getting people to apply it in their everyday lives.
Many have stood their ground and faced the darkness when it comes for them. Fewer come for the darkness and force it to face them.
If you handed [character] a glass that was 90% full, he'd tell you that the 10% empty part proved that no one really cared about water.
I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow was the Final Dawn, the last sunrise before the Earth and Sun are reshaped into computing elements.
There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model.
I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?
Singularitarians are the munchkins of the real world. We just ignore all the usual dungeons and head straight for the cycle of infinite wish spells.
The people I know who seem to make unusual efforts at rationality, are unusually honest, or, failing that, at least have unusually bad social skills.
Remember, if you succeed in everything you try in life, you're living below your full potential and you should take up more difficult or daring things.
We tend to see individual differences instead of human universals. Thus, when someone says the word 'intelligence,' we think of Einstein instead of humans.
Okay, so either (a) I just teleported somewhere else entirely (b) they can fold space like no one's business or (c) they are simply ignoring all the rules.
I see little hope for democracy as an effective form of government, but I admire the poetry of how it makes its victims complicit in their own destruction.
I am a full-time Research Fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a small 501(c)(3) public charity supported primarily by individual donations.
Intelligence is the source of technology. If we can use technology to improve intelligence, that closes the loop and potentially creates a positive feedback cycle.
If people got hit on the head by a baseball bat every week, pretty soon they would invent reasons why getting hit on the head with a baseball bat was a good thing.
The strength of a theory is not what it allows, but what it prohibits; if you can invent an equally persuasive explanation for any outcome, you have zero knowledge.
Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.