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.

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...