Quotes About Evolution

Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, once declared, "I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the machines.

And Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, said in 1943, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

The Fate of the Earth, points

The olfactory sensors of dogs, he said, had evolved over millions of years to be able to detect a handful of molecules, and that kind of sensitivity is extremely difficult to match, even with our most finely tuned sensors. It's likely that we will continue to rely on dogs at airports for the foreseeable future.

For an animal, the past is largely a waste of precious resources, since it gives them little evolutionary advantage. But simulating the future, given the lessons of the past, is an essential reason why humans became intelligent.

Why go to the stars? Because we are the descendants of those primates who chose to look over the next hill. Because we won't survive here indefinitely. Because the stars are there, beckoning with fresh horizons. —JAMES AND GREGORY BENFORD

L]iking something is very important evolutionarily, because most things are harmful to us. Of the millions of objects that we bump into every day, only a handful are beneficial to us. Hence to like something is to make a decision between one out of the tiny fraction of things that can help us over against the millions of things that might harm us.

But Planck would always reassure Einstein. He would write, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because the opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

When we force a smile, we activate facial muscles with our prefrontal cortex. But when we smile because we are in a good mood, our nerves are controlled by our limbic system, which activates a slightly different set of muscles. Our brains can tell the subtle difference between the two, which was beneficial for our evolution.)

Theories have four stages of acceptance: i. this is worthless nonsense; ii. this is interesting, but perverse; iii. this is true, but quite unimportant; iv. I always said so. —J. B. S. HALDANE, 1963

If we look at the rise of our own civilization over the past 100,000 years, since modern humans emerged in Africa, it can be seen as the story of rising energy consumption.

I'm as fond of my body as anyone, but if I can be 200 with a body of silicon, I'll take it. —DANIEL HILL, COFOUNDER OF THINKING MACHINES CORP.

Social animals, on the other hand, are more intelligent than those with just a reptilian brain.

La ley de Moore dice simplemente que la potencia de los ordenadores se duplica más o menos cada dieciocho meses.

La idea de crear máquinas pensantes que sean al menos tan listas como los animales, y quizá tan listas o más que nosotros, se hará una realidad si podemos superar el colapso de la ley de Moore y el problema del sentido común, quizá incluso a finales de este siglo.

The most ancient part of our brain is at the very back, where balance, territoriality, and instincts are processed. The brain expanded in the forward direction and developed the limbic system, the monkey brain of emotions, located in the center of the brain. This progression from the back to the front is also the way a child's brain matures.

It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter. We may perhaps learn to deprive large masses of their gravity, and give them absolute levity, for the sake of easy transport. Agriculture may diminish its labor and double its produce; all diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of old age, and our lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian standard.

Acaso los robots heredarán la Tierra? Sí, pero serán nuestros hijos. MARVIN MINSKY

cuando se produce un conflicto entre la tecnología moderna y los deseos de nuestros primitivos antepasados, los deseos primitivos siempre ganan. Este es el Principio del Hombre de las Cavernas.

el hito siguiente en la historia de la IA: aplicar una ingeniería inversa al cerebro humano.

la ley de Moore, que afirma que la potencia de computación se duplica cada dieciocho meses.

The corollary to the Cave Man Principle is that if you want to predict the social interactions of humans in the future, simply imagine our social interactions 100,000 years ago and multiply by a billion. This means there will be a premium placed on gossip, social networking, and entertainment

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right. —LARRY NIVEN

will we no longer be the most intelligent being on earth