We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment.
If you want to build a recursively self-improving AI, have it go through a billion sequential self-modifications, become vastly smarter than you, and not die, you've got to work to a pretty precise standard.
To change the printout of the body, you must learn to rewrite the software of the mind.
Something I've realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we're smart about it.
I wish people used wishes to modify themselves instead of others. Wish to be low maintenance. Wish to be autonomous, even.
The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!
A person whose desires and impulses are his own - are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture - is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character.
The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.
The genome is a book that wrote itself, continually adding, deleting and amending over four billion years.
If you don't like the way you are, don't worry about it. You can change the way you are.
I've always wanted to get a tattoo.
You are the only person you can actually change
I do my own tattoos.
I have no tattoos that I regret - I have had some that I have had changed according to how my life was.
What we do modifies us more than what is done to us.
It's my body and if I want to do it like Michael Jackson, I will. My nose bothered me for a long time. Now it's smaller and I'm happy. If I wanna put my tits on my back, they're mine!
Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.
Not even analysis, by itself, can transform you. You must still do the changing yourself.
I went through a phase where I loved tattoos, and I loved the feeling of getting tattooed.
I got a heart tattooed on my foot. It's my first tattoo.
The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.
As technology and science advances, I think the ability to alter yourself should be embraced.
Modifying ourselves is a natural process because we are a product of nature and what we do is a product of nature. Therefore, if one day we have three time bigger brain and two hearts instead of one (because one is not enough) then this is all part of nature.
Augmenting your appearance so drastically that it elicits a reaction from literally every acquaintance you greet is a sea change.
Metaprograms are programs that manipulate themselves or other programs as data.
