The Second Intelligent Species Quotes

“Humans have these notions of power, control, hierarchy, greed, anger, envy, lust, etc. It really is quite bizarre where these tendencies lead us. We have human billionaires on planet earth who choose to gather more and more wealth at the expense of everyone else. But why? Once all of a person's human needs have been supplied, to unimaginable levels of luxury, what is the point of having more? To have power and control over other humans?”
― Marshall Brain, The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches

“Five important goals are listed below. If we can achieve these goals, in a context where robots are dramatically increasing productivity and doing more and more of the mindless work that wastes human potential, we will have an economy whose strength and growth defies imagination. How do we achieve these goals? Goal #1 - For the strongest possible economy, we need to create the largest possible pool of consumers, and those consumers need to have money to spend. Goal #2 - For the strongest possible economy, we need maximum economic stability. Every economic downturn has occurred when people stop spending money, either because they don't have money to spend through unemployment, or because they are afraid to let go of their money for fear of future unemployment. Consumers need to have confidence in the economy, both on the spending and the receiving ends of the equation. Goal #3 - For the strongest possible economy, we need to create the largest possible pool of innovators - people who create innovative new businesses, new inventions, new products, new art (films, music, etc.) and new intellectual property. Capitalism is strongest when new ideas are maximized. Goal #4 - For the strongest possible economy, we need for people to invest in these new ideas, both individually and in groups. An idea is nothing unless it is put into action. Without the money provided by investment, there can be no new businesses and no new products. Goal #5 - For the strongest possible economy, we need for people to have maximum freedom. People need the freedom to choose the products they want from an open marketplace of maximum size. They need to be free to start businesses of their own. They need to be free to work on their ideas and carry them as far as possible. At the same time, people need to be free to take time off and relax as they so choose. The notion that people should have to work 60 hours a week to make ends meet is the antithesis of freedom.”
― Marshall Brain, The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches

“There are millions of people living in the United States – one of the richest countries on earth – who are denied access to basic health services, as are billions of other people. We are fishing the oceans so ferociously that stocks of many species are collapsing. Millions of sharks are caught, de-finned and then thrown back in the ocean to die each year. We are tearing down rain forests at breakneck pace. Rhinos, tigers and elephants are nearly extinct in the wild. Humans kill and eat 50 billion chickens per year. Humans pump gigatons of carbon from fossil fuels into the atmosphere each year knowing that it will cause a global catastrophe. Millions of humans are enslaved, and millions more are economically forced into the near-equivalent of slavery. Meanwhile, people in rich nations happily consume the products of these slaves without giving it a second thought.”
― Marshall Brain, The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches

“Three billion of the people on the planet – approximately half – are destitute. They live in shocking poverty. There are 10 million children dying of easily preventable causes every year - things like starvation, thirst, cholera. Billions of people lack any form of health care. Billions of people lack access to basics like clean water, adequate food and safe housing. Environmentally, we are raping the planet in hundreds of ways. A mass extinction event is looming on the horizon, yet we appear unmotivated to do anything at all to prevent it. Humans are constantly at war, constantly killing one another somewhere in the world. Crime seems rampant. In the United states, over two million citizens are incarcerated. We have thousands of nuclear warheads, enough to kill all of humanity many times over, all loaded into rockets that we can launch at a moment's notice simply by pushing a few buttons. We have spent trillions of dollars building and stockpiling conventional weapons designed to kill fellow humans in a thousand different ways. We can shoot them, bomb them, grenade them, poison them, burn them, etc. Humans often seem intent on bringing misery to other humans: terrorism, dictatorships, warlords, slavery, torture, unjust imprisonment, sweatshops, corruption, murder, mayhem, crime, etc. can be found all over the planet. The concentration of wealth is extreme and seems unstoppable, so a very small percentage of the planet's population owns half of the planet's wealth, while billions of others have nothing. In many cases and at many different levels we seem unable to control ourselves or to stop ourselves even when we know we are wrong.”
― Marshall Brain, The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches

“The following statement is something we all understand, but it bears repeating because it is perhaps the coolest, most interesting scientific fact that we know about our universe and human existence:   Hydrogen, given sufficient time, turns into people.   It is an amazing statement if you think about it. A collection of simple atoms swirling around in the early universe, combined with the ordinary laws of nature like gravity, created human beings living here on planet earth over the course of billions of years.”
― Marshall Brain, The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches