Toby Ord

“Consider a child with high longterm potential: with futures open to her in which she leads a great life. It is important that her potential is preserved: that her best futures aren’t cut off due to accident, trauma or lack of education. It is important that her potential is protected: that we build in safeguards to make such a loss of potential extremely unlikely. And it is important that she ultimately fulfills her potential: that she ends up taking one of the best paths open to her. So too for humanity.”
― Toby Ord

“Consider, for example, how little we know of how ultraviolet light looks to a finch; of how echolocation feels to a bat, or a dolphin; of the way that a red fox, or a homing pigeon, experiences the Earth’s magnetic field. Such uncharted experiences exist in minds much less sophisticated than our own. What experiences, possibly of immense value, could be accessible, then, to minds much greater? Mice know very little of music, art or humor. Toward what experiences are we as mice? What beauties are we blind to?”
― Toby Ord