I am the bridge between the bleeding edge and the dead center. I stand between the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. I am the curtain.

I really wanted to talk to her. I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: You hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.

If the rest of your brain were conscious, it would probably regard you as the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert

But when the flash flood crosses your path, when the lion leaps at you from the grasses, advanced self-awareness is an unaffordable indulgence. The brain stem does its best.

Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it.

Humans didn't really fight over skin tone or ideology; those were just handy cues for kin-selection purposes. Ultimately it always came down to bloodlines and limited resources.