Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.

Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.

Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.

He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.

Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It's a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity - a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied - and the world will pass beyond our understanding.