Vernor Vinge quotes
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“Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era". Vernor Vinge's remarks presented at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, edoras.sdsu.edu. March 30-31, 1993.
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“We will soon create intelligences greater than our own ... When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : Vernor Vinge (2010). “A Fire Upon The Deep”, p.72, Macmillan
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“Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era". Article for the VISION-21 Symposium, edoras.sdsu.edu. 1993.
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“Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood...and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : Vernor Vinge (2010). “A Fire Upon The Deep”, p.93, Macmillan
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“We’re long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : Vernor Vinge (2010). “Zones of Thought: A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky”, p.310, Hachette UK
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“The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : Vernor Vinge (2007). “A Deepness in the Sky”, p.26, Macmillan
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“Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : "The Children of the Sky". Book by Vernor Vinge, 2011.
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“Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all - no one's around to write horror stories.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : Vernor Vinge (2010). “A Fire Upon The Deep”, p.109, Macmillan
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“Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
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“The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
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“When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Poor humans; they will all die.""Poor us; we will not.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Life is a green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the season.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
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“I say, let's learn more and then speculate.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : Vernor Vinge (2010). “A Fire Upon The Deep”, p.122, Macmillan
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“Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years-and not one of them could come near to this!”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : Vernor Vinge (2010). “Zones of Thought: A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky”, p.368, Hachette UK
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“I have come to kill you."The death's heads shrugged. "You have come to try.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
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“The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : Vernor Vinge (2010). “Zones of Thought: A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky”, p.257, Hachette UK
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“Well, what do you know," Pham said. "Butterflies in jackboots.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
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“It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Hexapodia as the key insight...I haven't had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm, except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is it true that humans have six legs?”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
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“We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.”
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“In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It's a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity - a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied - and the world will pass beyond our understanding.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
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“One of his greatest talents was empathy; no ***** can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
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“Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“When I began writing science fiction in the middle 60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.”
-- Vernor Vinge#Profound Quotes #Research Quotes #Artificial Intelligence Quotes
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“How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era". Article by Vernor Vinge, for the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, www.wired.com. 1993.
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“But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
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“Pham Nuwen plunked himself down, stretching indolently.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era". Book by Vernor Vinge, 1993.
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“The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.”
-- Vernor Vinge -
“So much technology, so little talent.”
-- Vernor VingeSource : Vernor Vinge (2011). “Rainbow's End”, p.52, Pan Macmillan
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