"People aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're - we're feeling machines that happen to think."
Read quote
9 likes
Quote collection
Peter Watts quotes (page 1 of 2)
27 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There's no such things as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a solution's optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternative."
Read quote
8 likes
"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."
Read quote
7 likes
"What's the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you're alive?"
Read quote
7 likes
"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."
Read quote
7 likes
"The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest."
Read quote
7 likes
"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."
Read quote
7 likes
"Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it."
Read quote
7 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"Radar is too long in the tooth for fine detail."
Read quote
6 likes
"I really wanted to talk to her. I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit."
Read quote
6 likes
"But pattern-matching doesn't equal comprehension."
Read quote
6 likes
"If the rest of your brain were conscious, it would probably regard you as the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert"
Read quote
4 likes
"If believing absurd falsehoods increase the odds of getting laid or avoiding predators, your brain will believe those falsehoods with all its metaphorical little heart."
Read quote
4 likes
"We are not thinking machines."
Read quote
3 likes
"Are you kidding? That's the music of the spheres, commissar. It's beautiful. Like old jazz."
Read quote
3 likes
"What's the survival value of obsessing on a sunset?"
Read quote
3 likes
"Property damage is so much easier to live with than murder."
Read quote
3 likes
"Not even the most heavily-armed police state can exert brute force to all of its citizens all of the time. Meme management is so much subtler; the rose-tinted refraction of perceived reality, the contagious fear of threatening alternatives."
Read quote
3 likes
"Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors."
Read quote
3 likes