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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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Vernor Vinge
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: October 2
Computer Scientist
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Waukesha
Wisconsin
Vernor Steffen Vinge
Take
Personally
Good
Admire
Comfort
Simply
Evil
Universe
Villainy
Nature
Twisted
Cannot
Petty

More quotes by Vernor Vinge

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The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.
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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?
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What we have is a data glut.
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Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood...and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.
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I have come to kill you.The death's heads shrugged. You have come to try.
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So much technology, so little talent.
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Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all – no one's around to write horror stories.
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Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever.
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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.
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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.
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If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.
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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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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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
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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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I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.
Vernor Vinge
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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
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We’re long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.
Vernor Vinge
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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 Vinge
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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