"We can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals."

Vernor Vinge Literature See all quotes by Vernor Vinge →

React to this quote

More by Vernor Vinge

“Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.”

“Sometimes the biggest disasters aren’t noticed at all—no one’s around to write horror stories.”

“All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him.”

“Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

“If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.”

“The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Many of the greatest masters of the mathematical sciences were first attracted to mathematical inquiry by problems relating to numbers, and no one can glance at the periodicals of the present day whic…"

— James Whitbread Lee Glaisher

Mathematics1848–1928

#time

"You will have very large quantities of clothes to disinfect, ten or twenty times as much as the "Textiles Collection," which is only being carried out in order to camouflage the origin of the Jewish, …"

— Odilo Globocnik

Music1904–1945

#time

"I had a lot of problems with my name … my first name Declan is really not very well known outside of Ireland, MacManus is a name they could never spell ... if you think about the names of '76, '77 … I…"

— Elvis Costello

Music1954

#time

"I think the answer is that the case stands for the proposition that business people who feel that their faith is being burdened, that they get to come into court and have their day at court and make t…"

— Josh Hawley

Politics1979

#time