Eliezer Yudkowsky Quotes

Moore's Law of Mad Science: Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point.

You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.

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.

By far the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.

Trying and getting hurt can't possibly be worse for you than being... stuck.

To worship a sacred mystery was just to worship your own ignorance.

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.

When you are older, you will learn that the first and foremost thing which any ordinary person does is nothing.

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.

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.

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.

There were mysterious questions, but a mysterious answer was a contradiction in terms.

To confess your fallibility and then do nothing about it is not humble; it is boasting of your modesty.

Science has heroes, but no gods. The great Names are not our superiors, or even our rivals, they are passed milestones on our road; and the most important milestone is the hero yet to come.

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.

I'm lazy! I hate work! Hate hard work in all its forms! Clever shortcuts, that's all I'm about!

Not every change is an improvement but every improvement is a change; you can't do anything BETTER unless you can manage to do it DIFFERENTLY, you've got to let yourself do better than other people!

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.

There is light in the world, and it is us!

Every mystery ever solved had been a puzzle from the dawn of the human species right up until someone solved it.

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.

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?

If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.

Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.

There's something in science like the shine of the Patronus Charm, driving back all sorts of darkness and madness.

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.

When you think of intelligence, don't think of a college professor; think of human beings as opposed to chimpanzees. If you don't have human intelligence, you're not even in the game.

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.

If cryonics were a scam it would have far better marketing and be far more popular.

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.

If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it is hot, and if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool.

A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance.

I only want power so I can get books.

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.

I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organised.

What people really believe doesn't feel like a BELIEF, it feels like the way the world IS.

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.

World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation.

That which the truth nourishes should thrive.

Boys," said Hermione Granger, "should not be allowed to love girls without asking them first! This is true in a number of ways and especially when it comes to gluing people to the ceiling!

I'm wondering if there's a spell to make lightning flash in the background whenever I make an ominous resolution.

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.

Rationality is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use.

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.

If you don’t sign up your kids for cryonics then you are a lousy parent.

We tend to see individual differences instead of human universals. Thus, when someone says the word 'intelligence,' we think of Einstein instead of humans.

Existential depression has always annoyed me; it is one of the world's most pointless forms of suffering.

But it is cute. It's such a boy thing to do.Drop dead.Aw, you say the most romantic things.

A friend isn't someone you use once and then throw away, a friend is someone you use over and over again.

If you once tell a lie, the truth is ever after your enemy.