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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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Vernor Vinge
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: October 2
Computer Scientist
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Waukesha
Wisconsin
Vernor Steffen Vinge
Within
Singularity
Means
Superhuman
Human
Technological
Humans
Eras
Mean
Ended
Years
Thirty
Intelligence
Create
Shortly

More quotes by 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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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.
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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.
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The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.
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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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The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?
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I have come to kill you.The death's heads shrugged. You have come to try.
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He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.
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Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.
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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The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.
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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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We’re long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.
Vernor Vinge
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The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.
Vernor Vinge
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Well, what do you know, Pham said. Butterflies in jackboots.
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The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.
Vernor Vinge
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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!
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Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.
Vernor Vinge
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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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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