Quotes About Control

With regard to other animals, humans have long since become gods. We don't like to reflect on this too deeply, because we have not been particularly just or merciful gods.

As bureaucracies accumulate power, they become immune to their own mistakes. Instead of changing their stories to fit reality, they can change reality to fit their stories. In

But we don't have much experience in regulating the ownership of data,

Of all human collective activities, the one most difficult to organise is violence.

As a species, humans prefer power to truth.

Famine, plague and war will probably continue to claim millions of victims in the coming decades. Yet they are no longer unavoidable tragedies beyond the understanding and control of a helpless humanity.

Biological knowledge multiplied by Computing power multiplied by Data equals Ability to Hack Humans.

In the twenty-first century censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information.

People are afraid of being trapped inside a box, but they don't realize that they are already trapped inside a box—their brain—which is locked within the bigger box of human society with its myriad fictions.

When everybody uses the same oracle, and everybody believes the oracle, the oracle turns into a sovereign.

When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or other that takes priority over boring stuff like healthcare and pollution.

In the end, it's a simple empirical matter: if the algorithms indeed understand what's happening within you better than you understand it, authority will shift to them.

How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism?

As much as we should fear the power of big corporations, history suggests that we are not necessarily better off in the hands of overly mighty governments.

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty first century, censorship works by blocking the flow of information.

Truth and power can travel together only so far. Sooner or later they go their separate paths. If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power.

Doubting free will is not just a philosophical exercise. It has practical implications. If organisms indeed lack free will, it implies that we can manipulate and even control their desires using drugs, genetic engineering or direct brain stimulation.

Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfed and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?

In the twenty-first century, however, data will eclipse both land and machinery as the most important asset, and politics will be a struggle to control the flow of data. If data becomes concentrated in too few hands, humankind will split into different species.

If, however, you want to retain some control of your personal existence and of the future of life, you have to run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government, and get to know yourself before they do. To run fast, don't take much luggage with you. Leave all your illusions behind. They are very heavy.

In the late twentieth century democracies usually outperformed dictatorships because democracies were better at data processing.

You can do many things with bayonets, but it is rather uncomfortable to sit on them.

By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.8

The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century - the attempt to concentrate all information in one place - might become their decisive advantage in the twenty-first cenutry.