Ely > Ely's Quotes

“It gets very hard to predict the future once you have smarter-than-human things around. In the same way that it gets very hard for a chimp to predict what is going to happen because there are smarter-than-chimp things around. That’s what the Singularity is: it’s the point past which you expect you can’t see.”
― Nate Soares

“Courage isn't about being fearless; it's about being able to do the right thing even if you're afraid.

And similarly, addressing the major problems of our time isn't about feeling a strong compulsion to do so. It's about trying to address them even when internal compulsion utterly fails to capture the scope of the problems we face.

It's easy to look at especially virtuous people — Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela — and conclude that they must have cared more than we do. But I don't think that's the case.

Nobody gets to comprehend the scope of these problems. The closest we can get is doing the multiplication: finding something we care about, putting a number on it, and multiplying. And then trusting the numbers more than we trust our feelings.

Because our feelings lie to us.

When you do the multiplication, you realize that addressing global poverty and building a brighter future deserve more resources than currently exist. There is not enough money, time, or effort in the world to do what we need to do.

There is only you, and me, and everyone else who is trying anyway.”
― Nate Soares