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Agona Apell Books

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“People of great faith are almost always lacking in reason, while people possessed of great reason often suffer from a pitiful lack of faith. So it always happens that people of great faith can move the world but cannot steer it, while people possessed of great reason excel at steering the world but are hopeless at moving it”

“If man evolved spontaneously from nothingness to flesh then man must be immortal. Why? Well, man in his development from nothingness to substance did not exist in a controlled environment and so lay prone to countless assaults from elements of his coarse environment. To preserve his viability, he had to ride materially unscathed through all those assaults. So it is reasonable to expect that man must be immune to destruction by all malevolent forces whose vicious tackles he stumbled through in the course of his development from cell to flesh. For how can he in the stoutness of maturity be susceptible to destruction by blows that he absorbed without peril in his infancy?”

“Our global definition of human success proves its practical value each time that the artificial intelligence (AI) industry agonizes about how to address the spectre of super-intelligent robots someday gaining the capacity to oust man from his pre-eminent position on earth and relegate us to subservience or, worse, irrelevance. Such fear will never materialize if the makers of these robots design them to gravitate to actions that align with the cause of human success in the context of our given definition. If, however, we persist in the folly that the definition of human success is arbitrary, then robots that adopt this stance of mind shall tend to inflict injury on society quite like likeminded people have hitherto done. In a nutshell, the world agonizes about what AI success will mean because the world has never defined what human success should mean universally. If we had such a definition, the concept of AI safety would not be problematic: it would automatically be aligned with the global definition of human success because AI success is a subset of human success.”

“The Patriots erred in the Boston Tea Party: they seized Oligarch tea & dumped it in the sea but left Oligarch gold untouched. It's that gold that has troubled the nation from that day to this. Next time, go for the gold. Hence these words: "... yes, not British tea but Oligarch gold must down Boston harbour go ...”

“I rebuke societies that impart to their flowers their cold and rigid demeanour. Flowers should not stand with the stiffness of a soldier on parade but must carry themselves with the relaxedness of a dancer, their arms outstretched above a shaggy mane. Life reveals few sights as distressing as the look of flowers standing mournfully at attention unstirred by the kisses of a million bees. This infection of uncomely reserve is the handiwork of sombre gardeners bred in sombre societies who will not consider their work done till their flowers exude in aspect that stiffness they esteem. They forget that God intended that we mingle with flowers and not merely admire them from afar. But there is a look in a fastidiously manicured garden that makes me keep my distance, a look that draws my eyes but scorns my touch, and that is why I condemn them.”