“Keep a spirited Christian horse and a useful ethical donkey. But don t try to breed a mule.”
“Aster had come to trust the diviner implicitly. The lessons had burned such an indelible mark in her memory that she could recount, with the utmost ease, all twenty-three creatures that had fallen from the grace of God, and the nine ethnic groups that the Almighty had meant to be slaves. She accepted that one shall not kill one s neighbor, unless it is to encourage others to do the same; one shall not steal, unless one can prove oneself lord-designate; and one shall show deference to an elder, unless it is decidedly evident that the elder is from one of the nine fallen ethnic groups.”
“Denial is a request to Creation for a more dramatic lesson.”
“What if companies just had a simple underlying mission, which was making people’s lives better around the world.”
“Universal ethics is a corollary of universal kinship. Moral obligation is as boundless as feeling.”
“My reason to live is to love, my reason to get is to give. - The Lord is my witness.”
“Thankfulness is a lethal weapon of unimaginable power. And because it is, it allows us to rise far above all of the dark and maniacal forces that assail us. And in refusing to lower ourselves to the squalid terrain from which these forces have launched their sordid attacks they are doomed to surrender, not because we outwitted them in battle, but because we stole the battle.”
“The real problem is not the existential threat of AI. Instead, it is in the development of ethical AI systems.”
“I do not doubt the ability of mankind to aspire to lofty ideals and the most pristine of principles. But what I doubt is the willingness of mankind to incur the sacrifices involved in moving from aspiring these things to actually embracing them. And in such a conundrum as this, I would suggest that to stop at ‘aspiring’ and never move to ‘embracing’ is without a doubt the greatest sacrifice of all.”
“Now there was a supply of anonymous parts for anyone who wanted them. And even if you didn t want younger hands or brighter eyes, there were advertisements everywhere to convince you that you did. A new you from the inside out! the billboards said. Add fifty years to your life. Sonia shakes her head bitterly. They created want...and want turned to need...and unwinding became woven into the fabric of everything.”
“Everybody works according to his ability, some doing more, some doing less, but everyone ought to know whether he is doing good or harm.”
“It will end the way you Wanted Make sure you Create it the way you Want”
“Goodness is giving up power and acting upon the world negatively. The good are unimaginable.”
“You love your work when your work is with people you love.”
“Humans are not the pinnacle of evolution we imagine ourselves to be.”
“Our efforts to protect primates will be much more effective if we dismantle the artificial line that we have created between ourselves and other animals.”
“To suggest that we look to the past, to Freud and Lacan, in order to find a new ethical code may seem counterintuitive, but when capital reterritorializes the psyche into systems based on their compatibility with viral market shares of the mental health topographical map, it is hard to argue for an ever-forward, arc of history that always bends toward justice. This is where ethics must come into play.”