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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

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Vernor Vinge
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: October 2
Computer Scientist
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Waukesha
Wisconsin
Vernor Steffen Vinge
Terror
Works
Least
Pain
Levers
Best
Manipulation
Sometimes
Elegant
Deception
Expensive

More quotes by Vernor Vinge

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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
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We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.
Vernor Vinge
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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 Vinge
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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
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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
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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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Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood...and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.
Vernor Vinge
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But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.
Vernor Vinge
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The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.
Vernor Vinge
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The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.
Vernor Vinge
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Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.
Vernor Vinge
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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 Vinge
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It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.
Vernor Vinge
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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
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So much technology, so little talent.
Vernor Vinge
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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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We’re long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.
Vernor Vinge
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Well, what do you know, Pham said. Butterflies in jackboots.
Vernor Vinge
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The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.
Vernor Vinge
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I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.
Vernor Vinge