Quotes from Douglas E. Richards

Look," said the Speaker, "the founders purposely designed our government so that passing legislation isn't easy. Trying to get Congress to pull in one direction is worse than herding cats. It's herding self-interested, narcissistic, opportunistic cats. Who only care about getting reelected, no matter how much they pretend to care about their constituencies.

We can learn from our past mistakes. But we're not allowed to ruin the now by beating ourselves up over the then.

I began toying with the idea of a million human worlds.

What I find the most insidious about this," said Joe Allen, "is how fervent, how zealous, his followers seem to be. Even if they don't always like his personality, they believe in his cause." "His cause?" said Jenna in disgust. "Ruling the world is a cause?

In an ideal world, what purpose should a government serve?" asked Craft. Then answering his own question he said, "It should protect its people from internal and external dangers. It should help build infrastructure and help society run smoothly. It should police society so commercial interactions are conducted fairly. And it should help provide citizens what they need to excel, the infrastructure and means. And that's about it.

You really don't get it, do you? Most people are sheep. Stupid and uninformed. And they don't dig. They don't think for themselves. They'll trust a sincere voiceover and whatever the television tells them.

instantly see the answer.

The moral: the dimwitted and impulsive might not be able to hold a job or learn algebra, but they sure knew how to screw each other—and reproduce like crazy.

Jordan Two, on the other hand, was condemned to a state of being that made the harshest solitary confinement look like a mercy. Condemned to do nothing but think for an eternity, without sleep, and in a state of almost perfect paralysis inside a body whose every blink seemed to take hours to complete. Jordan

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014) by Nick Bostrom, a Professor at Oxford.

The purpose of consciousness—any consciousness—was to achieve infinite comprehension.

The Tasman Sea covers about a million square miles, located more or less between Australia and New Zealand. And east of Tasmania, which is a large island with over a thousand smaller islands around it. But we aren't on any of these.

The purpose of consciousness—any consciousness—was to achieve infinite comprehension. It was as simple as that. If a God existed, humanity must strive to discover this God and help this deity become omniscient, not just in one infinity, but in an infinity of infinities.

Computers were once bigger than houses. When this was the case, abuse was virtually nonexistent. A current example is the large hadron collider. We certainly don't have to worry about one of these being misused, simply because there is only one of these.

The idea of proposing marriage with a diamond ring seems like a tradition so old, and so steeped in our culture, you'd think it was one of the Ten Commandments delivered to Moses on Mt. Sinai. But it's a recent, man-made creation. De Beers brilliantly fostered this shared mythology, taking a relatively abundant, relatively inexpensive item that wasn't selling, and convincing the public over decades that a diamond engagement ring was an indispensable

The process of creation is the exact opposite of making something out of nothing. It is, on the contrary, a filtering process that makes something out of everything.

In 1830, America's farmers comprised seventy-one percent of the workforce. Yet, in modern times, this number had plummeted to less than two percent. Improved automation of farms had impacted a greater percentage of the workforce than autonomous vehicles ever could. Even so, society had readily absorbed the loss of these farming jobs, which had morphed into opportunities in other sectors.

don't know what weapons will be used to fight World War III. But World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." —Albert Einstein

perfected mass-brainwashing techniques early on after extensive experimentation on their populations.

True courage is being scared out of your mind, having everything to lose, and acting anyway.

Fifteen years ago, Elon Musk calculated that the probability we're living our lives in base reality, rather than a simulation, was infinitesimally small.

There was a great joke in there somewhere. A Jewish girl, an ex-priest, and a Muslim god go into a bar . . . .

But evolution never optimized. Once it found a solution good enough to ensure species survival, it was content.

You're wired by evolution to find bad news more motivational than good. To seek it out.