QUOTABLE and NOTABLE

Is the universe a computer simulation?

2015-06-10T09:17:00.003-07:00

"If we are living in a simulation, then the cosmos that we are observing is just a tiny piece of the totality of physical existence. The physics in the universe where the computer is situated that is running the simulation may or may not resemble the physics of the world that we observe. While the world we see is in some sense 'real', it is not located at the fundamental level of reality."

Nick Bostrom, "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?"

Max Tegmark interviews Elon Musk on life, the future and everything

2015-01-19T16:20:00.003-08:00

[Max Tegmark / YouTube]

Dire Predictions on Future Gigabit Internet

2014-10-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

"Texting and tweeting will be replaced by 3D video ‘face-to-face’ communications that are not limited to two participants. People will regain the use of their thumbs for other purposes, as they experience the electronic co-presence of their family, friends, co-workers, boss, merchants, advertisers, spammers, stalkers, and government surveillance personnel. Dissident groups will experiment with coded text messages in the scenery and musical backgrounds. The Internet of Things will take an ugly turn as hackers, cyber security swat teams, advertisers, and terrorists run amok through citizens' and nations' refrigerators, heating systems, power grids, and pacemakers. A sub-specialty of lawyers will arise to deal with Internet-connected objects' product liability, in turn giving rise to laws absolving manufacturers of fault. Problems with rogue nanobots and genetically engineered diseases will dwarf concerns about the Internet. The monopolization of the world's food and fresh water resources by a small group of countries will lead to the first war of nation states against corporations. Renewable energy resources will be nearly universal; sustainable manufacturing and lifestyles will be the norm.” -- Judith Perrolle, a professor at Northeastern University, based in Boston, quoted in Killer Apps in the Gigabit Age

Our Cyborg Future

2014-09-08T20:23:00.002-07:00

In all these science fiction stories, there’s always this thing that bolts into somebody’s head or you become half robot or you have a really strong arm that can throw boulders or something. But what is the difference between that and having a phone with you -- sorry, a computer with you -- all the time that is tracking where you are, which you’re using for storing all of your personal information, your memories, your friends, your communications, that knows where you are and does all kinds of powerful things and speaks different languages? -- Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu

Many Worlds

2014-07-31T07:17:00.002-07:00

"Our job as scientists is to formulate the best possible description of the world as it is, not to force the world to bend to our pre-conceptions ... Multiple worlds automatically occur in quantum mechanics. They are an inevitable part of the formalism." -- physicist Sean Carroll

Human survival

2014-06-18T20:23:00.003-07:00

"We'll either be a multi-planet species and out there among the stars or a single planet species until some eventual extinction event, either natural or man-made." -- Elon Musk

Alien Mind

2014-06-03T18:20:00.001-07:00

"Now think about when we encounter intelligent life that is more intelligent than us. They may see the world totally differently. Their world may be a world of smells, a world of sounds rather than a world of eyesight like our brain is constructed. And most important, they may be able to see the outcome of future events much better than us. They’ll be able to actually run circles around us because they see the future." -- Michio Kaku

'Mad' Max Tegmark

2014-04-17T11:32:00.002-07:00

"To me, physics is the greatest mystery of them all, the mystery of understanding reality. We find ourselves self-aware parts of this Universe. What’s going on here? Where does everything come from? What is all this stuff? What happened to it? I find it incredibly exciting that we little humans, through serious reasoning, have actually been able to understand so much of it already, that we’ve been able, to a certain extent, to take charge of our destinies and change the Universe to make it more humane for us."

-- Cosmologist 'Mad' Max Tegmark, MIT, to Motherboard.Vice.com

2014-01-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist ... We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, farewell speech, 17 January 1961

2013-12-12T12:02:00.002-08:00

"I'm breaking through, I'm bending spoons, I'm keeping flowers in full bloom, I'm looking for answers from the great beyond ..." -- REM, lyrics from "Answers from the Great Beyond"

2013-11-25T12:59:00.001-08:00

“I've been a researcher and student of U.F.O.’s for many, many years. Anybody that does research, if people bother to do quality research, come away absolutely convinced. You don’t have to have personal encounters ... People have been killed. People have been hurt. It’s more than observational kind of data.”

Aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, quoted in the New York Times in an article by Kenneth Chang

2013-10-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

"Whether or not telepathic communication is a real, presumably natural (quantum mind?) phenomenon, sooner or later it will become an artificially produced and controlled technology. Imagine Google Super-Telepathy-Plus or Mind Book, a kind of social networking shared directly from your personal conscious thoughts onto a vast network of computer mediated information ... And when the real extraterrestrial alien super-intelligence arrives, how will they interface with human beings? I suspect the experience — mediated by plugging human brain-minds into an otherworldly Internet — will be more like a psychedelic trip than the nice kind of conversation envisioned by the good folks of SETI." -- Gary S. Bekkum, Mind reading and the (extraterrestrial alien?) Telepathic Internet

2013-08-27T16:50:00.002-07:00

"We all know that world-views do keep changing. Our present worldview is dominated by modernism or scientific materialism, which has been very inimical to every spiritual tradition. I labor under the impression that not only is the paradigm of scientific materialism vulnerable, but, in fact, there are quite a few individuals, more or less associated with the international intelligence community, who have very specific information concerning ongoing phenomena which, when considered as whole, would shatter what we commonly refer to as the modern scientific worldview. The only problem is how best to disclose the information to the rest of the world." -- Dan Throop Smith

2013-08-26T19:50:00.002-07:00

"President Obama has also been in close touch with the leaders of our key allies, and the President will be making an informed decision about how to respond to this indiscriminate use of chemical weapons. But make no mistake: President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people. Nothing today is more serious and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny." -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, August 26, 2013

2013-08-17T21:12:00.002-07:00

"If you want to go into virtual reality the nanobots shut down the signals coming from your real senses and replace them with the signals that your brain would be receiving if you were actually in the virtual environment. So this will provide full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses. You will have a body in these virtual-reality environments that you can control just like your real body, but it does not need to be the same body that you have in real reality. We'll be able to interact with people in any way in these virtual-reality environments. That will replace most travel, but we'll also have new travel technologies for our real bodies using nanotechnology." -- Ray Kurzweil, from "A look into the mind-bending Google Glass of 2029" at C|NET

2013-07-30T17:50:00.000-07:00

“It appears that Ron wants me to be a ‘bus’ driver -- he wants me to obtain a ‘bus’ and paint it to look like an ‘official’ MTA bus and go around the city picking up passengers at the bus stops, but instead of delivering them to their usual destinations, I will take them on an eschatological [end-times] tour. When I told Ron that this might be construed as being illegal, he did not seem perturbed.” -- Dan Smith, reporting on his friend Ron Pandolfi of the CIA in September 2000.

2013-06-25T08:50:00.003-07:00

“The [NSA] source says the program encountered problems when when foreign targets were being blocked by an extraterrestrial source that has never been identified.” -- Author Gus Russo to STARstream Research

2013-06-18T17:09:00.002-07:00

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.” -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

2013-06-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

"Why should we have our telephone records, the records of whom we call, when we speak to them, how long we're talking -- why should we have that turned over -- to the Defense Department?" -- Representative Alan Grayson

2013-06-07T19:53:00.002-07:00

"The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals." -- reporter Glenn Greenwald, "On whistleblowers and government threats of investigation" following leaks on NSA surveillance

2013-06-06T10:14:00.004-07:00

"The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April." --
Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian, Wednesday 5 June 2013

2013-06-03T10:27:00.004-07:00

“NSA considers remote viewing a valid SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) tool. The program was relocated from CIA and is one of the most highly classified at NSA.” -- investigative author Gus Russo

2013-05-29T14:19:00.001-07:00

"At the time we were talking to [former Air Force officer Rick] Doty he worked with the New Mexico Department of Public Safety and I presume that he still does. I don't know what kind of relationship he now has with the military, but he was able to take my colleague John Lundberg and I on a brief tour of Kirtland AFB, which was fascinating. Doty showed a card to the guard at the gate, who saluted without asking Rick who his two shifty-looking passengers were." -- Mark Pilkington, author of "Mirage Men," to Wired UK

2013-05-22T11:35:00.001-07:00

"That all the people who claim to have been abducted by aliens are crazy does not fit the evidence." Col. John B. Alexander, government consultant in his book "UFOs"

2013-05-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

"Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow." -- Dr. David Deutsch, from his book "The Beginning of Infinity"