Eliezer Yudkowsky Quotes

There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

One of chief pieces of advice I give to aspiring rationalists is Don't try to be clever. And, Listen to those quiet, nagging doubts. If you don't know, you don't know what you don't know, you don't know how much you don't know, and you don't know how much you needed to know.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star they won’t tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they’re old enough to bear it and when they learn they’ll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

It's a most peculiar psychology—this business of 'Science is based on faith too, so there!' Typically this is said by people who claim that faith is a good thing. Then why do they say 'Science is based on faith too!' in that angry-triumphal tone, rather than as a compliment? And a rather dangerous compliment to give, one would think, from their perspective. If science is based on 'faith', then science is of the same kind as religion—directly comparable. If science is a religion, it is the religion that heals the sick and reveals the secrets of the stars. It would make sense to say, 'The priests of science can blatantly, publicly, verifiably walk on the Moon as a faith-based miracle, and your priests' faith can't do the same.' Are you sure you wish to go there, oh faithist? Perhaps, on further reflection, you would prefer to retract this whole business of 'Science is a religion too!

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Then you get the wrong answer and you can't go to the Moon that way! Nature isn't a person, you can't trick them into believing something else, if you try to tell the Moon it's made of cheese you can argue for days and it won't change the Moon! What you're talking about is rationalization, like starting with a sheet of paper, moving straight down to the bottom line, using ink to write 'and therefore, the Moon is made of cheese', and then moving back up to write all sorts of clever arguments above. But either the Moon is made of cheese or it isn't. The moment you wrote the bottom line, it was already true or already false. Whether or not the whole sheet of paper ends up with the right conclusion or the wrong conclusion is fixed the instant you write down the bottom line.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Most Muggles lived in a world defined by the limits of what you could do with cars and telephones. Even though Muggle physics explicitly permitted possibilities like molecular nanotechnology or the Penrose process for extracting energy from black holes, most people filed that away in the same section of their brain that stored fairy tales and history books, well away from their personal realities: Long ago and far away, ever so long ago.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

I only want power so I can get books.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

So the next time you doubt the strangeness of the future, remember how you were born in a hunter-gatherer tribe ten thousand years ago, when no one knew of Science at all. Remember how you were shocked, to the depths of your being, when Science explained the great and terrible sacred mysteries that you once revered so highly. Remember how you once believed that you could fly by eating the right mushrooms, and then you accepted with disappointment that you would never fly, and then you flew. Remember how you had always thought that slavery was right and proper, and then you changed your mind. Don't imagine how you could have predicted the change, for that is amnesia. Remember that, in fact, you did not guess. Remember how, century after century, the world changed in ways you did not guess.Maybe then you will be less shocked by what happens next.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

And then Harry Potter had launched in to a speech that was inspiring, yet vague. A speech to the effect that Fred and George and Lee had tremendous potential if they could just learn to be weirder. To make people's live surreal, instead of just surprising them with the equivalents of buckets of water propped above doors. (Fred and George had exchanged interested looks, they'd never thought of that one.) Harry Potter had invoked a picture of the prank they'd pulled on Neville - which, Harry had mentioned with some remorse, the Sorting Hat had chewed him out on - but which must have made Neville doubt his own sanity. For Neville it would have felt like being suddendly transported into an alternate universe. The same way everyone else had felt when they'd seen Snape apologize. That was the true power of pranking.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Without thinking about it at all, Harry stepped in front of Hermione.There was an intake of breath from behind him, and then a moment later Hermione brushed past and stepped in front of him. Run, Harry! she said. Boys shouldn't have to be in danger.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Since the beginningnot one unusual thinghas ever happened.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Because the way people are built, Hermione, the way people are built to feel inside - Harry put a hand over his own heart, in the anatomically correct position, then paused and moved his hand up to point toward his head at around the ear level, - is that they hurt when they see their friends hurting. Someone inside their circle of concern, a member of their own tribe. That feeling has an off-switch, an off-switch labeled 'enemy' or 'foreigner' or sometimes just 'stranger'. That's how people are, if they don't learn otherwise.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

People form close friendships by knowing private things about each other, and the reason most people don't make close friends is because they're too embarrassed to share anything really important about themselves.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

For an instant Harry imagined... Just for an instant, before his imagination blew a fuse and called an emergency shut down and told him never to imagine that again.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

He wanted to write someone and demand a refund on his dark side which clearly ought to have irresistible magical power but had turned out to be defective.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

You can only arrive at mastery by practicing the techniques you have learned, facing challenges and apprehending them, using to the fullest the tools you have been taught, until they shatter in your hands and you are left in the midst of wreckage absolute... I cannot create masters. I have never known how to create masters. Go, then, and fail... You have been shaped into something that may emerge from the wreckage, determined to remake your Art. I cannot create masters, but if you had not been taught, your chances would be less. The higher road begins after the Art seems to fail you; though the reality will be that it was you who failed your Art.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Ending up with that gigantic outsized brain must have taken some sort of runaway evolutionary process, something that would push and push without limits.And today's scientists had a pretty good guess at what that runaway evolutionary process had been.Harry had once read a famous book called Chimpanzee Politics. The book had described how an adult chimpanzee named Luit had confronted the aging alpha, Yeroen, with the help of a young, recently matured chimpanzee named Nikkie. Nikkie had not intervened directly in the fights between Luit and Yeroen, but had prevented Yeroen's other supporters in the tribe from coming to his aid, distracting them whenever a confrontation developed between Luit and Yeroen. And in time Luit had won, and become the new alpha, with Nikkie as the second most powerful......though it hadn't taken very long after that for Nikkie to form an alliance with the defeated Yeroen, overthrow Luit, and become the new new alpha.It really made you appreciate what millions of years of hominids trying to outwit each other - an evolutionary arms race without limit - had led to in the way of increased mental capacity.'Cause, y'know, a human would have totally seen that one coming.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Illusion of transparency: We always know what we mean by our words, and so we expect others to know it too. Reading our own writing, the intended interpretation falls easily into place, guided by our knowledge of what we really meant. It’s hard to empathize with someone who must interpret blindly, guided only by the words.Be not too quick to blame those who misunderstand your perfectly clear sentences, spoken or written. Chances are, your words are more ambiguous than you think.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

What does it mean to call for a “democratic” solution if you don’t have a conflict-resolution mechanism in mind?I think it means that you have said the word “democracy,” so the audience is supposed to cheer. It’s not so much a propositional statement, as the equivalent of the “Applause” light that tells a studio audience when to clap.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Be careful... any time you find yourself defining the winner as someone other than the agent who is currently smiling from on top of a giant heap of utility.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Be careful... any time you find yourself defining the winner as someone other than the agent who is currently smiling from on top of a giant heap of utility

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

You couldn't changed history. But you could get it right to start with. Do something differently the FIRST time around.This whole business with seeking Slytherin's secrets... seemed an awful lot like the sort of thing where, years later, you would look back and say, 'And THAT was where it all started to go wrong.'And he would wish desperately for the ability to fall back through time and make a different choice. Wish granted. Now what?

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Only God can tell a truly plausible lie.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky