From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Jun 01 2003 - 07:13:45 MDT
Olga Bourlin wrote:
>
> Certainly, I can understand why a 13-year-old would think that (most
> teenagers are prone to narcissism, anyway - it's probably even an important
> developmental step). I was just saying that that's an arrogant statement
> (and I still think it is, even though understandable as in the case of Greg
> Smith). Years ago Carl Sagan wrote an article (it's reprinted in one of his
> books, I don't remember which one offhand) for Parade Magazine with the
> title: "We Are Nothing Special." He got it right.
This from one of the oldest sentient beings in existence, one of the six
billion Eldest, of whom there are fewer than one to a galaxy? You, whose
memories stretch back to the Afterglow of the Big Bang, when hydrogen
gathered in clumps and burned by fusion? You, one of the Founders, a mind
whose existence predates the System itself? Have some sense of perspective.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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