Eliezer Yudkowsky Quotes

You can only arrive at mastery by practicing the techniques you have learned, facing challenges and ...

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

Boys," said Hermione Granger, "should not be allowed to love girls without asking them first! This i...

I only want power so I can get books.

The purpose of a moral philosophy is not to look delightfully strange and counterintuitive or to pro...

We tend to see individual differences instead of human universals. Thus, when someone says the word ...

The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for s...

Textbook science is beautiful! Textbook science is comprehensible, unlike mere fascinating words tha...

Be careful... any time you find yourself defining the "winner" as someone other than the agent who i...

Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence - in the form of Artificial Intelli...

When you think of intelligence, don't think of a college professor; think of human beings as opposed...

The purest case of an intelligence explosion would be an Artificial Intelligence rewriting its own s...

Intelligence is the source of technology. If we can use technology to improve intelligence, that clo...

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

When you are older, you will learn that the first and foremost thing which any ordinary person does ...

Since the rise of Homo sapiens, human beings have been the smartest minds around. But very shortly -...

One of chief pieces of advice I give to aspiring rationalists is "Don't try to be clever." And, "Lis...

I am a full-time Research Fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a small 501(c)(3) p...

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

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

The Headmaster told Professor Flitwick that this was, indeed, a secret and delicate matter of which ...

And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star they won’t tell the child...

There's a popular concept of 'intelligence' as book smarts, like calculus or chess, as opposed to, s...

I keep trying to explain to people that the archetype of intelligence is not Dustin Hoffman in 'The ...

Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. If yo...

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

Be careful... any time you find yourself defining the "winner" as someone other than the agent who i...

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

Lies propagate, that's what I'm saying. You've got to tell more lies to cover them up, lie about eve...

Sometimes Harry thought the deepest split in his personality wasn't anything to do with his dark sid...

In a moral dilemma where you lost something either way, making the choice would feel bad either way,...

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

Wow," the empty air finally said. "Wow. That puts a pretty different perspective on things, I have t...

Many have stood their ground and faced the darkness when it comes for them. Fewer come for the darkn...

Okay, so either (a) I just teleported somewhere else entirely (b) they can fold space like no one's ...

For an instant Harry imagined... Just for an instant, before his imagination blew a fuse and called ...

Someday," said the Boy-Who-Lived, "when the distant descendants of Homo sapiens are looking back ove...

People form close friendships by knowing private things about each other, and the reason most people...

Ending up with that gigantic outsized brain must have taken some sort of runaway evolutionary proces...

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

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

Then you get the wrong answer and you can't go to the Moon that way! Nature isn't a person, you can'...

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

There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Univ...

You couldn't changed history. But you could get it right to start with. Do something differently the...

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

Only God can tell a truly plausible lie.

Illusion of transparency: We always know what we mean by our words, and so we expect others to know ...

It's a most peculiar psychology—this business of 'Science is based on faith too, so there!' Typicall...

So the next time you doubt the strangeness of the future, remember how you were born in a hunter-gat...

Logic stays true, wherever you may go,So logic never tells you where you live.

Since the beginningnot one unusual thinghas ever happened.

Because the way people are built, Hermione, the way people are built to feel inside -" Harry put a h...

And then Harry Potter had launched in to a speech that was inspiring, yet vague. A speech to the eff...

Like that's the only reason anyone would ever buy a first-aid kit? Don't take this the wrong way, Pr...

Why does any kind of cynicism appeal to people? Because it seems like a mark of maturity, of sophist...

Without thinking about it at all, Harry stepped in front of Hermione.There was an intake of breath f...

All right," Harry said coldly. "I'll answer your original question, then. You asked why Dark Wizards...

He wanted to write someone and demand a refund on his dark side which clearly ought to have irresist...

Most Muggles lived in a world defined by the limits of what you could do with cars and telephones. E...

What does it mean to call for a “democratic” solution if you don’t have a conflict-resolution mechan...