Eliezer Yudkowsky Quotes

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.

In the universe where everything works the way it common-sensically ought to, everything about the study of Artificial General Intelligence is driven by the one overwhelming fact of the indescribably huge effects: initial conditions and unfolding patterns whose consequences will resound for as long as causal chains continue out of Earth, until all the stars and galaxies in the night sky have burned down to cold iron, and maybe long afterward, or forever into infinity if the true laws of physics should happen to permit that. To deliberately thrust your mortal brain onto that stage, as it plays out on ancient Earth the first root of life, is an act so far beyond "audacity" as to set the word on fire, an act which can only be excused by the terrifying knowledge that the empty skies offer no higher authority.

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

Many boys and girls are heroes in their dreams," Dumbledore said quietly. He did not look at any of the other girls, only at her. "Fewer in the waking 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. It is a hard life, sometimes lonely, often short. I have told none to refuse that calling, but neither would I wish to increase their number.

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.

Ever since I adopted the rule of "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be," I've also come to realize "That which the truth nourishes should thrive." When something good happens, I am happy, and there is no confusion in my mind about whether it is rational for me to be happy. When something terrible happens, I do not flee my sadness by searching for fake consolations and false silver linings. I visualize the past and future of humankind, the tens of billions of deaths over our history, the misery and fear, the search for answers, the trembling hands reaching upward out of so much blood, what we could become someday when we make the stars our cities, all that darkness and all that light — I know that I can never truly understand it, and I haven't the words to say.

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?

Crocker's Rules didn't give you the right to say anything offensive, but other people could say potentially offensive things to you, and it was your responsibility not to be offended. This was surprisingly hard to explain to people; many people would read the careful explanation and hear, "Crocker's Rules mean you can say offensive things to other people."

Litmus test: If you can't describe Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage and explain why people find it counterintuitive, you don't know enough about economics to direct any criticism or praise at "capitalism" because you don't know what other people are referring to when they use that word.

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.

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.

People cling to their intuitions, I think, not so much because they believe their cognitive algorithms are perfectly reliable, but because they can't see their intuitions as the way their cognitive algorithms happen to look from the inside. And so everything you try to say about how the native cognitive algorithm goes astray, ends up being contrasted to their direct perception of the Way Things Really Are—and discarded as obviously wrong.

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.

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 which rests upon a mistaken belief, and seek to feel fully that emotion which fits the facts. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is hot, and it is cool, the Way opposes your fear. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is cool, and it is hot, the Way opposes your calm. Evaluate your beliefs first and then arrive at your emotions. Let yourself say: “If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it is hot, and if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool.”

We underestimate the distance between ourselves and others. Not just inferential distance, but distances of temperament and ability, distances of situation and resource, distances of unspoken knowledge and unnoticed skills and luck, distances of interior landscape.