Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Eliezer Yudkowsky
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: September 11
Artificial Intelligence Researcher
Blogger
Computer Scientist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky
Zero
Equally
Explanation
Allows
Prohibits
Strength
Persuasive
Theory
Invent
Knowledge
Outcome
Outcomes

More quotes by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Image
The important graphs are the ones where some things are not connected to some other things. When the unenlightened ones try to be profound, they draw endless verbal comparisons between this topic, and that topic, which is like this, which is like that until their graph is fully connected and also totally useless.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
The police officer who puts their life on the line with no superpowers, no X-Ray vision, no super-strength, no ability to fly, and above all no invulnerability to bullets, reveals far greater virtue than Superman - who is only a mere superhero.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
I'm lazy! I hate work! Hate hard work in all its forms! Clever shortcuts, that's all I'm about!
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
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!
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it is hot, and if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
If you don’t sign up your kids for cryonics then you are a lousy parent.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
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.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
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.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
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 intelligence that has held for the last few tens of thousands of years.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
Remember, if you succeed in everything you try in life, you're living below your full potential and you should take up more difficult or daring things.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
Through rationality we shall become awesome, and invent and test systematic methods for making people awesome, and plot to optimize everything in sight, and the more fun we have the more people will want to join us.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
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 skills reside in the brain, not the kidneys.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
To worship a sacred mystery was just to worship your own ignorance.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
I'm wondering if there's a spell to make lightning flash in the background whenever I make an ominous resolution.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
If you want to build a recursively self-improving AI, have it go through a billion sequential self-modifications, become vastly smarter than you, and not die, you've got to work to a pretty precise standard.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
- With respect, Professor McGonagall, I'm not quite sure you understand what I'm trying to do here. - With respect, Mr. Potter, I'm quite sure I don't. Unless - this is a guess, mind - you're trying to take over the world? - No! I mean yes - well, NO! - I think i should perhaps be alarmed that you have trouble answering the question.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
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
Image
If cryonics were a scam it would have far better marketing and be far more popular.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Image
Part of the rationalist ethos is binding yourself emotionally to an absolutely lawful reductionistic universe - a universe containing no ontologically basic mental things such as souls or magic and pouring all your hope and all your care into that merely real universe and its possibilities, without disappointment.
Eliezer Yudkowsky