“Many of these, I think, would have moral status, meaning it would matter how they are treated for their own sake—not just because an owner might be upset if you destroyed a data center, but because they would be moral patients in the same sense that humans, pigs, dogs, or other sentient creatures are.”
— Nick Bostrom
Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

The quote archive

Wisdom in fragments

A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.

It is probably safe to conclude that a part of this phenomenon is extraterrestrial, and that we are dealing with a number of different extraterrestrial races.

— Jonathan Caplan KC

So that is clearly a phenomenon, and it is a structured solid craft, and we have no idea what it represents.

— Jonathan Caplan KC

The star exhibit would be a crashed craft or a biologic, which we know have been in the possession of the United States, for example, since the 1940s.

— Jonathan Caplan KC

What you are really talking about are intelligent, non-human intelligences that are here in craft which perform in a way that is beyond our current technology.

— Jonathan Caplan KC

Optimism isn't just a private belief. It is information that we are sharing with other people that becomes evidence of progress and possibility.

— Michelle Gielan

Sometimes we fight so hard against the negative. But if we can bolster the positive, we can sometimes get to the same place.

— Michelle Gielan

Optimism is the expectation of good things to happen. Resilient optimism is optimism that is built on a set of behaviours and stays strong when it's tested.

— Michelle Gielan

You need to be able to hold two truths at the same time. Yes, this is difficult, and there's something we can do here. Yes, I don't know how the story ends, and I believe that my behaviour matters in this moment.

— Michelle Gielan

What I study in the research is rational optimism. It's how you take a realistic assessment of the present moment while maintaining a belief that your behaviour matters, especially in the face of challenges.

— Michelle Gielan

Optimism doesn't stop cars from hitting us. It doesn't stop reality from negatively affecting us.

— Michelle Gielan

It was not a psychological operation. It was good communication. And of course, so many of these things come back to good communication.

— Arthur Denaro

People should recognise, before they enter a conflict, that there has to be an end state. There has to be, first of all, an exit plan, which will depend on what your aims are in the first place. Because if you have not got any aims, it is difficult to see how to come out of it.

— Arthur Denaro