Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization - a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.

Are you living in a computer simulation?

We would want the solution to the safety problem before somebody figures out the solution to the AI problem.

There are some problems that technology can't solve.

How can we trace out the links between actions that people take today and really long-term outcomes for humanity - outcomes that stretch out indefinitely into the future? I call this effort macrostrategy - that is, to think about the really big strategic situation for having a positive impact on the long-term future. There's the butterfly effect: A small change in an initial condition could have arbitrarily large consequences.

Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder.

When we are headed the wrong way, the last thing we need is progress.