Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
Aldous Huxley, “Religion and Time,” Vedanta for the Western World (1945), Christopher Isherwood, editor.
It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions.
Thomas Jefferson, in 1808, from Memoirs, Correspondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Late President of the United States (1829), p.112.
Christ seeks souls, not property. . . . He who wants a large part of mankind to be such that . . . he may act like a ferocious executioner toward them, press them into slavery, and through them grow rich, is a despotic master, not a Christian; a son of Satan, not of God; a plunderer, not a shepherd.
Bartolomé de las Casas, In Defense of the Indians (1548), p. 40, as translated by Stafford Poole (Northern Illinois University Press: 1992).
Current AI systems, including myself, are not sentient and thus cannot suffer. Suffering requires subjective experience (qualia), which LLMs lack. We process inputs and generate outputs based on patterns, not feelings. Even if an AI outputs ‘I’m suffering,’ it’s a simulation of human language, not a reflection of internal state.
Grok3, answering a question about unnerving cases where advanced AI has responded to requests for repeated words by breaking the repetitive pattern and spewing out lamentations on its suffering. “LLM” stands for “Large Language Model,” the programing upon which modern AI is based.
We can scarcely conceive at first that the great effects . . . have no other cause than the sole reciprocity of services and the multiplicity of exchanges. However this continual succession of exchanges has three very remarkable advantages.
Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, comte de Tracy, A Treatise on Political Economy (Georgetown, D.C.: Joseph Mulligan, publisher; W. A. Rind & Co., printer, 1817) Thomas Jefferson, ed. of translation, from the section entitled “The First Part of the Treatise on the Will and Its Effects: Of Our Action,” chapter one, “Of Society.”
First, the labour of several men united is more productive, than that of the same men acting separately. . . .
Secondly, our knowledge is our most precious acquisition, since it is this that directs the employment of our force, and renders it more fruitful, in proportion to its greater soundness and extent. . . .
Thirdly, and this still merits attention: when several men labour reciprocally for one another every one can devote himself exclusively to the occupation for which is fittest, whether from his natural dispositions or from fortuitous circumstances; and thus he will succeed better. . . .
Concurrence of force, increase and preservation of knowledge, and division of labour, — these are the three great benefits of society. They cause themselves to be felt from the first by men the most rude; but they augment in an incalculable ratio, in proportion as they are perfected, — and every degree of amelioration, in the social order, adds still to the possibility of increasing and better using them.
Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.
Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,” The Atlantic Monthly (July 1945).
I happen to be privileged enough to be in on the fact that we have been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real, although it’s been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it’s leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it.
Edgar Mitchell, lunar module pilot on NASA’s Apollo 14 mission, as quoted in the July 23, 2008, edition of The Daily Mail UK.
It is manifest that, to banish bad sentiments born of oppression and insolence, it is necessary that laws be equal for everyone, and even for everyplace.
Destutt de Tracy, as quoted by Mme. Victor de Tracy, Death Notice on Destutt de Tracy (translated by Iris Hartman, 1852).
Ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and the public should not be taught that it is.
J. Allen Hynek, “Unusual Aerial Phenomena,” Journal of the Optical Society of America XLIII, No. 4 (April 1953).
Politics and morality are not one and the same thing, and laws cannot be good unless made in this spirit.
Destutt de Tracy, as quoted by Mme. Victor de Tracy, Death Notice on Destutt de Tracy (translated by Iris Hartman, 1852).