Transhumanism Singularity Quotes

Singularity is seen as an event horizon. There's everything that comes before it and everything that comes after it and never the twain shall meet, in much the same way that Judeo-Christian theology presents its notion of the afterlife - there's a very clear and impermeable demarcation there. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

The resulting, stable singularities now carry the name BKL in honor of Belinsky, Khalatnikov, and Lifshitz. A BKL singularity is chaotic. Highly chaotic. And lethal. Highly lethal. ~ Kip S. Thorne

The bold code of the transhumanist will rise. That's an inevitable, undeniable fact. It's embedded in the undemocratic nature of technology and our own teleological evolutionary advancment. It is the future. We are the future like it or not. And it needs to molded, guided, and handled correctly by the strength and wisdom of transhumanist scientists with their nations and resources standing behind them, facilitating them. It needs to be supported in a way that we can make a successful transition into it, and not sacrifice ourselves - either by its overwhelming power or by a fear of harnessing that power. You need to put your resources into the technology. Into our education system. Into our universities, industries, and ideas. Into the strongest of our society. Into the brightest of our society. Into the best of our society So that we can attain the future. ~ Zoltan Istvan

The default mode of modern writing about art is to despise any notion of singularity as so much overheated genius-fetishism. ~ Simon Schama

Teach the legal rights of trees, the nobility of hills; respect the beauty of singularity, the value of solitude. ~ Josephine Winslow Johnson

All the same," I said, "when you read the prints in the snow and the evidence of the branches, you did not yet know Brunellus. In a certain sense those prints spoke of all horses, or at least all horses of that breed. Mustn't we say, then, that the book of nature speaks to us only of essences, as many distinguished theologians teach?"
"Not entirely, dear Adso," my master replied. "True, that kind of print expressed to me, if you like, the idea of 'horse,' the verbum mentis, and would have expressed the same to me wherever I might have found it. But the print in that place and at that hour of the day told me that at least one of all possible horses had passed that way. So I found myself halfway between the perception of the concept 'horse' and the knowledge of an individu?al horse. And in any case, what I knew of the universal horse had been given me by those traces, which were singular. I could say I was caught at that moment between the singularity of the traces and my ignorance, which assumed the quite diaphanous form of a univer?sal idea. If you see something from a distance, and you do not understand what it is, you will be content with defining it as a body of some dimension. When you come closer, you will then define it as an animal, even if you do not yet know whether it is a horse or an ass. And finally, when it is still closer, you will be able to say it is a horse even if you do not yet know whether it is Brunellus or Niger. And only when you are at the proper ~ Umberto Eco

She knows how to keep him interested in a thousand ways. And her peculiarity, her singularity may not always be easy for him to bear. But surely she has never bored him. Elle sait se faire désirer, but without pretenses. It is her way, and he is under her spell like a lover, and happy when he can touch her lightly to remind her of something! ~ Brigitte Hamann

We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living. ~ Rem Koolhaas

Some men develop their own singularity. Football makes men conform to stereotypes: the warrior or the hunter. Football produces a certain kind of masculinity - the drunk kind, the king who will yell the worst nationalist's ideas. In front of those, it is very difficult to be a dignified woman. ~ Orlan

The Singularity is at once an escape and a birth fantasy. I said to him: A Zeus dream that avoids the organic body altogether. Brand-new creatures burst forth from men's heads. Presto! The mother and her evil vagina disappears. ~ Siri Hustvedt

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be...
  This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking. ~ Isaac Asimov

For me, music is in no way ornamental or decorative, it's constitutive of who I am. ~ Cornel West

Childbearing is the most consistent of human events. Male and female alike, we have all been gestated inside a woman's body. As a phenomenon, childbearing is seemingly eternal and universal, yet like no other it highlights the gender divide, the singularity of individual experience and sociocultural diversities. ~ Joan Raphael-Leff

The 'tragedy' of the slow growth of immortalism pertains mostly to them, and perhaps to you – not so much to me or to us, the committed immortalists. We already have made our arrangements for cryostasis after clinical death – signed our contracts with existing organizations and allocated the money. We will have our chance, and with a little bit of luck will 'taste the wine of centuries unborn'. ~ Robert C.W. Ettinger

Until such time as duplications of individual nervous systems can be grown in tissue cultures (at this point no one knows "whose" consciousness they would have), our special identities will always be subject to being hit by a truck or dying in a plane crash. A sudden virus or heart seizure, even in the body's youth, may carry us off. Statistically, looking ahead thousands of years, the chances are that every human and even inanimate form will be broken sooner or later. But the distress felt by men and women today does not arise from the fear of such hazards. Rather, it comes from the certainty of aging and physical degeneration leading to death. It is the fear of losing our powers and being left alone, or in the hands of indifferent nurses, and knowing that the moment must come when we will not see the people we love any more, and everything will go black. ~ Alan Harrington

I promise you that for all our life together, I will seek worlds that we might never have encountered in our singularity and our solitude. I will shelter our family. I will share your tears. I will bind my happiness to yours. Our country is about to be born. Let us, too, have the chance to begin again. ~ Madeleine Thien

Losing faith in your own singularity is the start of wisdom, I suppose; also the first announcement of death. ~ Peter Conrad

All perception is the result of electrical impulses in the brain - the world of the individual is tantamount to a highly advanced computer running and analyzing programs in its working memory. ~ Kevin Michel

The sex even in serious pornography has less singularity than the mating of squirrels. ~ Storm Jameson

In a future time when most human thought has been accelerated by artificial intelligence and external memory can be shared on a universal matrix... GITS 2 ~ Masaki Yamada

God abhors a naked singularity because that's when things stop making sense. Predictability breaks down. That's why the universe takes all its dirty little secrets and hides them in the centre of a black hole. ~ Gavin G. Smith

I mean just look at haiku, the idea of it. We want to focus on that singularity, on that simplicity, but we still want to add features and add value, but we want to do it in a way that fits in with that mentality of simplicity. You have to spend a lot of time thinking about it. ~ Biz Stone

Someday they would discover that the stars were not sacred, but made from the same material as their bodies. They would learn it was the stars that created their worlds, that worlds created their minds, that minds created tools, and tools could create stars. Growing, sprawling, thriving until they too became masters of their own understanding, chasing enlightenment with the fervor of having nothing to lose, launching from their homelands like fireworks with glorious yellow tails. ~ Jake Vander Ark

You leave the analyst's office aware of your singularity and your solitude alike. It's you who lives in the prison of your skin. No one gets the afterglow they want. Everyone dies alone. Analysis is a process. The process is a slow procession. It is a cortège. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

What is a human being, then?'
'A seed.'
'A ... seed?'
'An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree. ~ David Zindell

What happens is that as the scripts are rewritten and re-edited in order to make the story more compelling, you sometimes end up with what you could call a time singularity - where there's no way for everything that happens to happen in real time. It's something that you need to wink at. ~ Michael Loceff

Avoid all affectation and singularity. What is according to nature is best, and what is contrary to it is always distasteful. Nothing is graceful that is not our own. ~ Jeremy Collier

Cosmopolitanism promotes a sense of new _we-ness as regarding every individual human being as a citizen of the cosmos. However, the _we-cosmic-citizens_ are not to promote the _we-ness-in-sameness_, but rather the we-ness-in-alterity_.Unlike the solidarity-in-sameness, cosmopolitan _solidarity-in-alterity_ celebrates the singularity and difference of each individual human being while not denying the historical necessity of the strategic construction of _we_ to challenge the very sociopolitically imposed category ~ Namsoon Kang

Our minds work in real time, which begins at the Big Bang and will end, if there is a Big Crunch - which seems unlikely, now, from the latest data showing accelerating expansion. Consciousness would come to an end at a singularity. ~ Stephen Hawking

It was stuck in a state of collapse, this pit - a tiny, organ-shaped singularity, sucking down the bleeding ravaged bits of who she used to be. ~ Claire Legrand

When one is in love one thinks only of one. ~ Will Advise

The most exciting part of finding out who we are is discovering our own uniqueness, who we are outside the box, beyond the categories in a Psychology 101 textbook. In our inimitable singularity, there is an infinite range of possibility that cannot be tied to any one description of what it means to be human or healthy. ~ David Richo

I'm no one ... I don't want to be anyone. I stepped into singularity to exist within a void. I'm no one ... However, I am becoming ... Imagination. I am grabbing conception, and leaving humanity behind. Humans have lost their sight, and individuality makes people blind to the truth. It makes people believe that anything is possible. Only nothing is possible. But then again, my words are the words of no one. ~ Lionel Suggs

If human beings are losing every time, it doesn't matter whether they're losing to a conscious machine or an completely non conscious machine, they still lost. The singularity is about the quality of decision-making, which is not consciousness at all. ~ Stuart J. Russell

A lot of people recoil from the word "drugs" - which is understandable given today's noxious street drugs and their uninspiring medical counterparts. Yet even academics and intellectuals in our society typically take the prototypical dumb drug, ethyl alcohol. If it's socially acceptable to take a drug that makes you temporarily happy and stupid, then why not rationally design drugs to make people perpetually happier and smarter? Presumably, in order to limit abuse-potential, one would want any ideal pleasure drug to be akin - in one limited but important sense - to nicotine, where the smoker's brain finely calibrates its optimal level: there is no uncontrolled dose-escalation. ~ David Pearce

I believe modern SF needs to at least be aware of the singularity, if only so that it can dismiss it intelligently (or work around it). But I suspect the singularity is like faster-than-light travel for the IT generation. We may hope for it, and the rules don't forbid it, but we don't know how to do it yet (and it may not be possible). ~ Charles Stross

Love and honor. They are the two great things, and now they're dimmed and blighted. Today, love is just sex and sentimentality. Love is really a recognition of truth, a recognition of another person's integrity and truth in a way that is compatible with - that makes both of you light up when you recognize the quality in the other. That's what love is. It's a recognition of singularity… And love is giving and giving and giving … not looking for any return. Until you do that, you can't love. ~ Robert Graves

Actors, who should pride themselves on their singularity, are forever trying to be someone else. It isn't necessary for you, the actor, to like yourself - self-love isn't easy to come by for most of us - but you must learn to trust who you are. There is no one else like you. ~ Michael Shurtleff

What use was time to those who'd soon achieve Digital Immortality? ~ Clyde DeSouza

Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any. ~ Marilynne Robinson

My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension. ~ Benjamin Franklin

In the distance, the cat hears the sound of lobster minds singing in the void, a distant feed streaming from their cometary home as it drifts silently out through the asteroid belt, en route to a chilly encounter beyond Neptune. The lobsters sing of alienation and obsolescence, of intelligence too slow and tenuous to support the vicious pace of change that has sandblasted the human world until all the edges people cling to are jagged and brittle. ~ Charles Stross

Our task is to make nature, the blind force of nature, into an instrument of universal resuscitation and to become a union of immortal beings. ~ Nikolai F. Fedorov