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How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.

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
Quails
Omniscient
Viewpoint
Viewpoints
Describe
Explain
Even

More quotes by 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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The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.
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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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
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How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?
Vernor Vinge
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He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.
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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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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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
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So much technology, so little talent.
Vernor Vinge
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It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.
Vernor Vinge
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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.
Vernor Vinge
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The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.
Vernor Vinge
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Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.
Vernor Vinge
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Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.
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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Pham Nuwen plunked himself down, stretching indolently.
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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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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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