Eliezer Yudkowsky Quotes

Most of the time, the things that really change the world exist for something fundamentally selfish and then the world-changing ends up being a side-effect of that.

I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.

The law of unintended consequences pushes us ceaselessly through the years, permitting no pause for perspective.

O! many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken!

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

Every bad precedent originated as a justifiable measure.

Anybody can be very destructive in that position without at all meaning to be, and I know that I have been inadvertently destructive in the past for certain people on certain occasions.

All laws have unintended consequences.

Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of men. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world.

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.

What part of 9/11 is big? If the future continues to reinterpret the past, it could be argued that 9/11 provides irrefutable proof that unless there is some other way that we learn to deal with our technology or deal with our brothers and sisters, it is goodbye as a species. That genie does not leave that bottle.

My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first.

You never know when you are doing something that is affecting someone.

In fighting nature, man can win every battle except the last. If he should win that too, he will perish, like an embryo cutting its own umbilical cord.

Man now has the power to put an end to his own history.

...all wars eventually act as boomerangs and the victor suffers as much as the vanquished

We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction

We begin by trying to alter what we can see, but the tremors which our action starts sometimes run through the entire depth our society; levels to which we pay no conscious attention are stirred, and all kinds of unintended results ensue.

The human race has today the means for annihilating itself—either in a fit of complete lunacy ... or by a careless handling of atomic technology, through the slow poisoning and of deterioration in its genetic structure.

Successful parties create their own monsters.

Actions can have unintended adverse consequences.

In world history man’s actions result in something quite different from what he purposes or intends.

A weapon is an enemy even to its owner.

History is the unfolding of miscalculations