70 Quotes by Nick Bostrom

We should recognize that there can exist instrumentally powerful information processing systems - intelligent systems - that are neither inherently good nor reliably wise.

Many of the points made in this book are probably wrong. It is also likely that there are considerations of critical importance that I fail to take into account, thereby invalidating some or all of my conclusions.

Nanotechnology has been moving a little faster than I expected, virtual reality a little slower.

Traits acquired during one's lifetime - muscles built up in the gym, for example - cannot be passed on to the next generation. Now with technology, as it happens, we might indeed be able to transfer some of our acquired traits on to our selected offspring by genetic engineering.

Discovering traces of life on Mars would be of tremendous scientific significance: The first time that any signs of extraterrestrial life had ever been detected. Many people would also find it heartening to learn that we're not entirely alone in this vast, cold cosmos.

For healthy adult people, the really big thing we can foresee are ways of intervening in the ageing process, either by slowing or reversing it.

There are some problems that technology can't solve.

Once a discovery has been published, there is no way of un-publishing it.

I personally don't think of myself as either an optimist or a pessimist.