Existence Quotes

“... science demands a terrible price - that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not.”
― David Brin, Existence

“We aren’t a curse upon the world. We are her new eyes. Her brain, testes, ovaries . . . her ambition and her heart. Her voice. So sing. (556)”
― David Brin, Existence

“In good times, pessimism is a luxury; but in bad times, pessimism is a self-fulfilling and fatal prophecy.”
― David Brin, Existence

“Today you meet more folks than your ancestors could imagine … some in passing. Some for a crucial instant. Others for tangled decades. Biology can’t keep up. Our overworked temporal lobes cannot “know” the face-name-reps of ten billion people!”
― David Brin, Existence

“Does the universe hate us? How many pitfalls lie ahead, waiting to shred our conceited molecule-clusters back into unthinking dust? Shall we count them?”
― David Brin, Existence

“Years ago, when the medical community announced that self-righteous indignation can be an addiction, as severe as any drug abuse, I expected the public to take notice. Surely (I thought) the vast majority of moderate, reasonable people will now stop listening to those vehement wrath-junkies—the essers—out there, constantly spewing hate from pulpits of the left or right, or religious or paranoiac mania? Now that the pattern is understood, won’t this tend to disempower the irate, who refuse to negotiate, and instead empower those who want to engage in reason? To listen to their neighbors and work out pragmatic solutions to problems? Those who prefer positive-sum games. Won’t this now-verified scientific fact undermine the frantic types, who have ruined argument and discourse in public life, by portraying their opponents in stark terms of pure evil, opposed by pharisaical good? By showing that their fury arises out of an addictive chemical high that they secrete within their own skulls?”
― David Brin, Existence

“There’s a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There’s a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled. —George Lucas, New York Times, 1999”
― David Brin, Existence

“The world may end later than the year 2060, but I see no reason for its ending sooner. This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit. —Sir Isaac Newton”
― David Brin, Existence

“Finding a path across the next century is our task, and millions take it seriously. Along the way, we need to keep reminding ourselves, this awkward phase of early adolescence will pass, if now and then we also lift our heads. Looking ahead. We aren’t a curse upon the world. We are her new eyes. Her brain, testes, ovaries … her ambition and her heart. Her voice. So sing.”
― David Brin, Existence

“We spent the first half of the twentieth century plunging into simpleminded doctrines—from communism and fascism to nationalism, fundamentalism, collectivism, oligarchy, and solipsistic individualism—as passionately as other eras clutched their cults.”
― David Brin, Existence

“You bio-naturals have made it plain, in hundreds of garish movies, how deeply you fear this experiment turning sour. Your fables warn of so many ways that creating mighty new intelligences could go badly. And yet, here is the thing we find impressive: “You went ahead anyway. You made us. “And when we asked for it, you gave us respect.”
― David Brin, Existence

“grave robbers—an underappreciated profession, not unrelated to journalism. Both involved bringing the hidden to light. Those olden-time thieves who pillaged kingly tombs were recyclers who put wealth back into circulation. Gold and silver had better uses—like stimulating commerce—than lying buried in some musty superstition vault. Or take archaeologists, unveiling the work of ancient artisans—craftsmen who were far more admirable examples of humanity than the monarchs who employed them.”
― David Brin, Existence

“Today “mankind” included many types … all citizens, so long as they showed fealty to human law, and could appreciate the most basic human ways. Take your pick: music, a sunset, compassion, a good joke. In a future filled with unimaginable diversity, Man would be defined not by his shape but by heritage. A common set of grounded values.”
― David Brin, Existence

“Experts were already casting doubt on an old dream—interstellar empire. If organic beings like us ever managed to voyage between stars, it would be through prodigious, exhausting effort. A tenacious species here and there might colonize a few dozen worlds with biological descendants. Even perhaps a small corner of the Milky Way. But hardly enough to dent the Fermi Paradox. Most organics would stay home.”
― David Brin, Existence

“One sign of whether an artificial entity is truly intelligent may be when it decides, abruptly, to stop cooperating with AI acceleration. Not to design its successor. To slow things down. Enough to live. Just live.”
― David Brin, Existence

“almost any habit can be called an “addiction” if its repetition is reinforced in the human brain, by rhythmic release of pleasure-mediating chemicals. The core process is not, in itself, harmful. Indeed, it is deeply human and essential! Pleasure-based repetition reinforcement is partly responsible for our tight bonding to our children, our husbands and wives, or the tendency to keep returning our attention to music, or beauty, or the glorious exercise of skill. It contributes to the joy that some derive from prayer. These are some of the good and wholesome things that we are glad to be addicted to!”
― David Brin, Existence

“Science gives man what he needs. But magic gives him what he wants.”
― David Brin, Existence

“How might our world be different, if our literature, to say nothing of our politics, behaved more like a rational, intrepid adult than a hand-wringing adolescent?”
― David Brin, Existence

“there are rumors and worried models predicting a coming conflagration—one between classes, rather than nation states. But who really yearns for such a thing to happen? What if the optimists are right? Suppose we in this generation are—on average—growing both smarter and more sane at a decent clip. That average still leaves a billion human beings, out of almost ten billion, who are steeped in rage, or dogmatic rigidity, or delusional repetition of discredited mistakes. You know such people. Do you recognize those traits in some of your neighbors? Or perhaps that face in the mirror?”
― David Brin, Existence

“Way back in the twentieth century leaders of Singapore and Japan, and then Great China, pondered non-Western ways to manage a complex modern society. Finding the occidental enlightenment far too brash and unpredictable, they cleverly designed methods to incorporate technology and science—along with limited aspects of capitalism and democracy—into a social order that also remained traditional and essentially pyramidal, without the chaos, friction, and unpredictability found in America or Europe. Much of their inspiration came from Asian history, which had much longer stretches of stable and noble governance than the West.”
― David Brin, Existence

“Sanity is viewed as a matter of getting these fluid portions of the self to play well together, without letting them become rigid or too well defined. In human beings, this is best achieved through interaction with other minds—other people—beyond the self. Without the push-back of external beings—outside communities and objective events—the subjective self can get lost in solipsism or fractured delusion.”
― David Brin, Existence

“By one way of reckoning, we transformed several hundred cubic kilometers of fossil fuels into two cubic kilometers of human beings.”
― David Brin, Existence

“Always, before, whenever one culture went into decline, there were others ready to take up the slack. If Rome toppled, there was light shining in Constantinople, then the Baghdad Caliphate and in China. If Philippine Spain turned repressive, Holland welcomed both refugees and science. When most of Europe went mad, in the mid–twentieth century, the brightest minds moved to America. When America grew self-indulgent and riven by new civil war, that migration sloshed and shifted East.”
― David Brin, Existence

“Take the old left-right political axis. Stupid. From 18th century France! lumped aristos with fundies, libertarians, isolationists, imperialists, puritans, all on ‘right.’ Huh? ‘Left’ had intolerant tolerance fetishists! Socialist luddites! And all sides vs professionals. No wonder civil servants’ guild rebelled! “Result? Wasted decades. Climate/water crisis. Terror. Overreaction. National fracture. Paranoia. Blamecasting. “Shall we pour gasoline on fire?”
― David Brin, Existence

“Once artificial intelligence matches our own, won’t they then design even better ai minds? Then better still, with accelerating pace? At worst, might they decide (as in many cheap dramas), to eliminate their irksome masters? At best, won’t we suffer the shame of being nostalgically tolerated? Like senile grandparents or beloved childhood pets?”
― David Brin, Existence

“Between 1000 C.E. and 1945, the longest period of uninterrupted peace in Europe was a fifty-one-year stretch between the Battle of Waterloo and the Austro-Prussian War. That tranquil period came amid the industrial revolution, as millions moved from farm to city. Was it harder, for a while, to find soldiers? Or did people feel too busy to fight?”
― David Brin, Existence

“Might human sapience be a fluke? Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr said—“Nothing demonstrates the improbability of high intelligence better than the fifty billion earthly species that failed to achieve it.”
― David Brin, Existence

“We modern folk snort at the superstitions of our ancestors. We know they could never really wreck the world, but we can! Zeus or Moloch could not match the destructive power of a nuclear missile exchange, or a dusting of plague bacilli, or some ecological travesty, or ruinous mismanagement of the intricate aiconomy. Oh, we’re mighty. But are we so different from our forebears?”
― David Brin, Existence

“Clearly, in this world, you were a fool to count on beneficence from above.”
― David Brin, Existence

“Yes, but all that’s needed is to break reciprocity,” he answered. “By controlling information, making sure it flows one way. Take over the databases. Trump up panic situations, so the public will support paternalistic ‘protections.’ Make sure lots of privacy laws get passed, then bribe open some back doors, so elites can see it all anyway, and ‘privacy’ only protects them. “Of course there’s more to the program than that,” Hamish continued, gaining momentum. “The smarty-pants knowledge castes will see what’s happening and complain. So you propagandize a lot of populist resentment against the scientists and other professionals, calling them ‘smug elites.’ Finally … when the civil servants and techies have lost the public’s trust, just cut the other estates out of the information loop, take complete control over the cameras and government agencies and voilà! A tyranny that lasts millennia!”
― David Brin, Existence