Thomas Nagel Quotes

Not only have computers changed the way we think, they've also discovered what makes humans think - or think we're thinking. At least enough to predict and even influence it.

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

The computer is not, in our opinion, a good model of the mind, but it is as the trumpet is to the orchestra - you really need it. And so, we have very massive simulations in computers because the problem is, of course, very complex.

If the clockwork universe equated the human body with the mechanics of the clock, the digital universe now equates human consciousness with the processing of the computer. We joke that things don't compute, that we need a reboot, or that our memory has been wiped.

The idea [of the Quantum Computer] is to create a machine that is as intelligence as humans, and probably much more so.

Moore's Law-based technology is so much easier than neuroscience. The brain works in such a different way from the way a computer does.

Our computers double in capability on time scales of only a few years. It's hardly outrageous to believe that we will successfully develop thinking machines within a handful of decades, or at most a century or two. If that happens, these artificial sentients will quickly leave us behind.

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

I don't look at computers as opponents. For me it is much more interesting to beat humans.

In chess, computers show that what we call 'strategy' is reducible to tactics, ultimately. It only looks creative to us. They are still just glorified cash registers. This should make us feel uncomfortable, whether or not we think computers will ever be good composers of music or artistic painters.

If the history of resistance to Darwinian thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long after every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by 'mere machines,' there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend.

I do two things. I design mobile computers and I study brains.

Because I believe that humans are computers, I conjectured that computers, like people, can have left- and right-handed versions.

When computers came along, I felt for the first time that I had the proper tools for the kind of theoretical work I wanted to do. So I moved over to that, and that got me into psychology.

By 2020, most home computers will have the computing power of a human brain. That doesn't mean that they are brains, but it means that in terms of raw processing, they can process bits as fast as a brain can. So the question is, how far behind that is the development of a machine that's as smart as we are?

It seems like everything that we see perceived in the brain before we actually use our own eyes, that everything we see is coming through computers or machines and then is being input in our brain cells. So that really worries me.

The human brain must continue to frame the problems for the electronic machine to solve.

Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have.

We could construct a machine that is more intelligent than we can understand. It's possible Google is that kind of thing already. It scales so fast.

I think Lenat is headed in the right direction, but someone needs to include a knowledge base about learning.

I don't think there's anything unique about human intelligence.

The computer is a moron.

Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.

The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation.

I first got interested in the brain through computers.