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.

Transhumanists are not fond of death. We would stop it if we could. To this end, we support research that holds out hope of a future in which humanity has defeated death.

I only want power so I can get books.

Nothing you’ll read as breaking news will ever hold a candle to the sheer beauty of settled science. Textbook science has carefully phrased explanations for new students, math derived step by step, plenty of experiments...

The Headmaster told Professor Flitwick that this was, indeed, a secret and delicate matter of which he had already been informed, and that he did not think pressing it at this time would help me...

Existential depression has always annoyed me; it is one of the world’s most pointless forms of suffering.

To be clever in argument is not rationality but rationalization.

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 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...

We tend to see individual differences instead of human universals. Thus, when someone says the word ‘intelligence,’ we think of Einstein instead of humans.

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.

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,...

Lies propagate, that’s what I’m saying. You’ve got to tell more lies to cover them up, lie about every fact that’s connected to the first lie. And if you kept on lying, and you kept...

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...

An anthropologist will not excitedly report of a newly discovered tribe: ‘They eat food! They breathe air! They use tools! They tell each other stories!’ We humans forget how alike we are, living in a...

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...

A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance.

A true rationalist ought to be effective in the real world.

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.

There’s a popular concept of ‘intelligence’ as book smarts, like calculus or chess, as opposed to, say, social skills. So people say that ‘it takes more than intelligence to succeed in human society.’ But social...

Sometimes Harry thought the deepest split in his personality wasn’t anything to do with his dark side; rather it was the divide between the altruistic and forgiving Abstract Reasoning Harry, versus the frustrated and angry...

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

My parents were early adopters, and I’ve been online since a rather young age. You should regard anything from 2001 or earlier as having been written by a different person who also happens to be...

[…] intelligent people only have a certain amount of time (measured in subjective time spent thinking about religion) to become atheists. After a certain point, if you’re smart, have spent time thinking about and defending...

Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own. Beware lest you fight a rearguard retreat against the evidence, grudgingly conceding each foot of...

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...

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

A scientist worthy of a lab coat should be able to make original discoveries while wearing a clown suit, or give a lecture in a high squeaky voice from inhaling helium. It is written nowhere...

In a moral dilemma where you lost something either way, making the choice would feel bad either way, so you could temporarily save yourself a little mental pain by refusing to decide. At the cost...

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

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.

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.