Eliezer Yudkowsky Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

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

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Believe, People, World

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• 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.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Ignorance, Ignorant, Curiosity

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• Have I ever remarked on how completely ridiculous it is to ask high school students to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives and give them nearly no support in doing so? Support like, say, spending a day apiece watching twenty different jobs and then another week at their top three choices, with salary charts and projections and probabilities of graduating that subject given their test scores? The more so considering this is a central allocation question for the entire economy?

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Jobs, School, Giving

  "Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Memetic Hazards in Videogames - Less Wrong". lesswrong.com. September 10, 2010.

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• You will find ambiguity a great ally on your road to power. Give a sign of Slytherin on one day, and contradict it with a sign of Gryffindor the next; and the Slytherins will be enabled to believe what they wish, while the Gryffindors argue themselves into supporting you as well. So long as there is uncertainty, people can believe whatever seems to be to their own advantage. And so long as you appear strong, so long as you appear to be winning, their instincts will tell them that their advantage lies with you. Walk always in the shadow, and light and darkness both will follow.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Strong, Lying, Believe

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• 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

  Reality, Years, Names

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• If I'm teaching deep things, then I view it as important to make people feel like they're learning deep things, because otherwise, they will still have a hole in their mind for "deep truths" that needs filling, and they will go off and fill their heads with complete nonsense that has been written in a more satisfying style.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Teaching, Views, People

  "Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Mind Control and Me - Less Wrong". lesswrong.com. March 21, 2009.

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• My experience is that journalists report on the nearest-cliche algorithm, which is extremely uninformative because there aren't many cliches, the truth is often quite distant from any cliche, and the only thing you can infer about the actual event was that this was the closest cliche. It is simply not possible to appreciate the sheer awfulness of mainstream media reporting until someone has actually reported on you. It is so much worse than you think.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Thinking, Media, Appreciate

  Comment to the article "Predictible Fakers" by Robin Hanson, www.overcomingbias.com. January 20, 2009.

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• 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

  Rain, Moon, Men

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• 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

  Sarcastic, Hope, Sarcasm

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

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Dawn, Mystery, Humans

  "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". Book by Eliezer Yudkowsky, 2010.

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• 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 tipping point. Like trying to balance a pen on one end - as soon as it tilts even a little, it quickly falls the rest of the way.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Fall, Ideas, Keys

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• If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Zero, Outcomes, Explaining

  "Your Strength as a Rationalist" by Eliezer Yudkowsky, lesswrong.com. August 11, 2007.

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• Rationality is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Use, Masters, Rationality

  "Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians". lesswrong.com. April 20, 2011.

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

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Annoyed, Suffering, World

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• There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Credit, Facts, Surprising

  "Quantum Explanations" by Eliezer Yudkowsky, lesswrong.com. April 9, 2008.

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

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Ignorance, Sacred, Mystery

  "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". Book by Eliezer Yudkowsky, February 28, 2010 - March 14, 2015.

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• 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, Love You, Doe

  "Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk". Book by Eliezer Yudkowsky, intelligence.org. 2008.

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• It is triple ultra forbidden to respond to criticism with violence. There are a very few injunctions in the human art of rationality that have no ifs, ands, buts, or escape clauses. This is one of them. Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Never. Never ever never for ever.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Art, Philosophy, Criticism

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• There is light in the world, and it is us!

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Light, World, Rationality

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• 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

  Thinking, College, Games

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• Science has heroes, but no gods. The great Names are not our superiors, or even our rivals, they are passed milestones on our road; and the most important milestone is the hero yet to come.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Hero, Names, Important

  "Guardians of Ayn Rand" by Eliezer Yudkowsky, lesswrong.com. December 18, 2007.

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• 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

  Book, Reality, Long Ago

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• 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 ground only when forced, feeling cheated. Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Fighting, Blow, Feet

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• 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

  Zero, Outcomes, Persuasive

  "An Alien God" by Eliezer Yudkowsky, lesswrong.com. November 2, 2007.

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

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Clever, Hate, Hard Work

  "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". Book by Eliezer Yudkowsky, 2010.

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