Litmus test: If you can't describe Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage and explain why people find it counterintuitive, you don't know enough about economics to direct any criticism or praise at "capitalism" because you don't know what other people are referring to when they use that word.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

Categorized in : People Law Criticism

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

Eliezer Yudkowsky

mad law science

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

Eliezer Yudkowsky

ethical responsible becoming

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

darkness bravery faces

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.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

full-potential succeed trying

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

Eliezer Yudkowsky

artificial-intelligence danger people

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

stars law sky

Crocker's Rules didn't give you the right to say anything offensive, but other people could say potentially offensive things to you, and it was your responsibility not to be offended. This was surprisingly hard to explain to people; many people would read the careful explanation and hear, "Crocker's Rules mean you can say offensive things to other people."

Eliezer Yudkowsky

responsibility mean people

If dragons were common, and you could look at one in the zoo - but zebras were a rare legendary creature that had finally been decided to be mythical - then there's a certain sort of person who would ignore dragons, who would never bother to look at dragons, and chase after rumors of zebras. The grass is always greener on the other side of reality. Which is rather setting ourselves up for eternal disappointment, eh? If we cannot take joy in the merely real, our lives shall be empty indeed.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

zebras disappointment zoos

The police officer who puts their life on the line with no superpowers, no X-Ray vision, no super-strength, no ability to fly, and above all no invulnerability to bullets, reveals far greater virtue than Superman - who is only a mere superhero.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

superhero vision police

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

Eliezer Yudkowsky

effort hurt courage

Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud. Submit yourself to ordeals and test yourself in fire. Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief, and seek to feel fully that emotion which fits the facts.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

fire facts thinking

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.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

effort skills people

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

Eliezer Yudkowsky

doe ordinary firsts

You cannot rationalize what is not rational to begin with - as if lying were called truthization. There is no way to obtain more truth for a proposition by bribery, flattery, or the most passionate argument - you can make more people believe the proposition, but you cannot make it more true.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

believe lying people

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.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

sarcasm sarcastic hope

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

Eliezer Yudkowsky

sacred mystery ignorance

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?

Eliezer Yudkowsky

fundamentals believe thinking

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

hate doe love-you

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

long-ago book reality

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.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

persuasive outcomes zero