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.

Since the rise of Homo sapiens, human beings have been the smartest minds around. But very shortly – on a historical scale, that is – we can expect technology to break the upper bound on...

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

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.

If you want to maximize your expected utility, you try to save the world and the future of intergalactic civilization instead of donating your money to the society for curing rare diseases and cute puppies.

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

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

My successes already accomplished have mostly been taking existing science and getting people to apply it in their everyday lives.

People go funny in the head when talking about politics. The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death....

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...

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!

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...

The purest case of an intelligence explosion would be an Artificial Intelligence rewriting its own source code. The key idea is that if you can improve intelligence even a little, the process accelerates. It’s a...

Applause” light that tells a studio audience when to clap.

I want to carry in my heart forever the key word of the Olympics – ‘passion.’

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!

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,...

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

Wow,” the empty air finally said. “Wow. That puts a pretty different perspective on things, I have to say. I’m going to remember this the next time I feel an impulse to blame myself for...

If our extinction proceeds slowly enough to allow a moment of horrified realization, the doers of the deed will likely be quite taken aback on realizing that they have actually destroyed the world. Therefore I...

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.

Though I have friends aplenty in academia, I don’t operate within the academic system myself.

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...

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.

Like that’s the only reason anyone would ever buy a first-aid kit? Don’t take this the wrong way, Professor McGonagall, but what sort of crazy children are you used to dealing with?””Gryffindors,” spat Professor McGonagall,...

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

In our skulls, we carry around 3 pounds of slimy, wet, greyish tissue, corrugated like crumpled toilet paper. You wouldn’t think, to look at the unappetizing lump, that it was some of the most powerful...

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...

Textbook science is beautiful! Textbook science is comprehensible, unlike mere fascinating words that can never be truly beautiful. Elementary science textbooks describe simple theories, and simplicity is the core of scientific beauty. Fascinating words have...

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,...

The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science, the very latest controversies, are worth reporting on. How often do you see headlines like ‘General Relativity still governing planetary orbits’ or ‘Phlogiston theory remains...

Why does any kind of cynicism appeal to people? Because it seems like a mark of maturity, of sophistication, like you’ve seen everything and know better. Or because putting something down feels like pushing yourself...

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.

The systematic experimental study of reproducible errors of human reasoning, and what these errors reveal about underlying mental processes, is known as the heuristics and biases program in cognitive psychology. This program has made discoveries...

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

If I could create a world where people lived forever, or at the very least a few billion years, I would do so. I don’t think humanity will always be stuck in the awkward stage...

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

I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow was the Final Dawn, the last sunrise before the Earth and Sun are reshaped into computing elements.

“Someday,” said the Boy-Who-Lived, “when the distant descendants of Homo sapiens are looking back over the history of the galaxy and wondering how it all went so wrong, they will conclude that the original mistake...

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

The human species was not born into a market economy. Bees won’t sell you honey if you offer them an electronic funds transfer. The human species imagined money into existence, and it exists – for...

Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence – in the form of Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human intelligence enhancement – wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change the...

The obvious choice isn’t always the best choice, but sometimes, by golly, it is. I don’t stop looking as soon I find an obvious answer, but if I go on looking, and the obvious-seeming answer...

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.

When something is universal enough in our everyday lives, we take it for granted to the point of forgetting it exists.

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...

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

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.

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...

I don’t care where I live, so long as there’s a roof to keep the rain off my books, and high-speed Internet access.