The purpose of a moral philosophy is not to look delightfully strange and counterintuitive or to provide employment to bioethicists. The purpose is to guide our choices toward life, health, beauty, happiness, fun, laughter, challenge, and learning. Eliezer Yudkowsky More Quotes by Eliezer Yudkowsky More Quotes From 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 mystery humans dawn 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. Eliezer Yudkowsky college games thinking There is light in the world, and it is us! Eliezer Yudkowsky rationality light world There were mysterious questions, but a mysterious answer was a contradiction in terms. Eliezer Yudkowsky mysterious contradiction answers I keep trying to explain to people that the archetype of intelligence is not Dustin Hoffman in 'The Rain Man;' it is a human being, period. It is squishy things that explode in a vacuum, leaving footprints on their moon. Eliezer Yudkowsky moon rain men Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit. Eliezer Yudkowsky black lonely school The human brain cannot release enough neurotransmitters to feel emotion a thousand times as strong as the grief of one funeral. A prospective risk going from 10,000,000 deaths to 100,000,000 deaths does not multiply by ten the strength of our determination to stop it. It adds one more zero on paper for our eyes to glaze over. Eliezer Yudkowsky zero strong determination The important graphs are the ones where some things are not connected to some other things. When the unenlightened ones try to be profound, they draw endless verbal comparisons between this topic, and that topic, which is like this, which is like that; until their graph is fully connected and also totally useless. Eliezer Yudkowsky important trying profound Our coherent extrapolated volition is our wish if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted. Eliezer Yudkowsky wish together people 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. Eliezer Yudkowsky glasses character water Reality has been around since long before you showed up. Don't go calling it nasty names like 'bizarre' or 'incredible'. The universe was propagating complex amplitudes through configuration space for ten billion years before life ever emerged on Earth. Quantum physics is not 'weird'. You are weird. Eliezer Yudkowsky names reality years Physiologically adult humans are not meant to spend an additional 10 years in a school system; their brains map that onto "I have been assigned low tribal status". And so, of course, they plot rebellion - accuse the existing tribal overlords of corruption plot, perhaps to split off their own little tribe in the savanna, not realizing that this is impossible in the Modern World. Eliezer Yudkowsky brain years school If you don’t sign up your kids for cryonics then you are a lousy parent. Eliezer Yudkowsky parent ifs kids World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation. Eliezer Yudkowsky ugly phrases world 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. Eliezer Yudkowsky decision process running I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organised. Eliezer Yudkowsky organised want thinking I am tempted to say that a doctorate in AI would be negatively useful, but I am not one to hold someone’s reckless youth against them – just because you acquired a doctorate in AI doesn’t mean you should be permanently disqualified. Eliezer Yudkowsky youth would-be mean 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 okay space somewhere-else - Every time someone cries out in prayer and I can't answer, I feel guilty about not being God. - That doesn't sound good. - I understand that I have a problem, and I know what I need to do to solve it, all right? I'm working on it. Of course, Harry hadn't said what the solution was. The solution, obviously, was to hurry up and become God. Eliezer Yudkowsky prayer sound needs Between hindsight bias, fake causality, positive bias, anchoring/priming, et cetera et cetera, and above all the dreaded confirmation bias, once an idea gets into your head, it's probably going to stay there. Eliezer Yudkowsky causality fake ideas
