📡On Technology: On Internet (2000-2009)

"To get a big company moving fast, especially on a many-headed opportunity like the Internet, you have to have hundreds of people participating and coming up with ideas." (Bill Gates, "Business at the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy", 2000)

"We must also promote global access to the Internet. We need to bridge the digital divide not just within our country, but among countries. Only by giving people around the world access to this technology can they tap into the potential of the Information Age." (Al Gore, [IPI speech] 2000)

"The fundamental digital divide is no measured by the number of connections to the Internet, but by the consequences of both connection and lack of connection." (Manuel Castells, "The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society" 2001) 

"The Internet Culture is the culture of the creators of the Internet." (Manuel Castells, "The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society" 2001)

"The Internet gives us everything and forces us to filter it not by the workings of culture, but with our own brains. This risks creating six billion separate encyclopedias, which would prevent any common understanding whatsoever." (Umberto Eco, "This is Not the End of the Book: A conversation curated by Jean-Philippe de Tonnac", 2001)

"The problems with software are just examples of the problems found generally with creativity. Our trend in copyright law has been to enclose as much as we can; the consequence of this enclosure is a stifling of creativity and innovation. If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they're free for people to build upon as they see fit." (Lawrence Lessig, "May the Source Be With You" 2001)

"The new information technology [...] Internet and e-mail [...] have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications." (Peter Drucker, "Managing in the Next Society" 2002)

"In the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better." (Michael Crichton, "Environmentalism as a Religion", [speech] 2003)

"One of the powerful things about networking technology like the Internet or the Web or the Semantic Web [...] is that the things we've just done with them far surpass the imagination of the people who invented them." (Tim Berners-Lee, "The Semantic Web: An Introduction", 2003)

"The Internet is a medium only at the bit level. At the human level, it is a conversation that, because of the persistence and linkedness of pages, has elements of a world. It could only be a medium if we absolutely didn't care about it." (David Weinberger, "The Internet is not a medium", [article] 2004) 

"It is not only a metaphor to transform the Internet to a superbrain with self-organizing features of learning and adapting. Information retrieval is already realized by neural networks adapting to the information preferences of a human user with synaptic plasticity. In sociobiology, we can 1 earn from populations of ants and termites how to organize traffic and information processing by swarm intelligence. From a technical point of view, we need intelligent programs distributed in the nets. There are already more or less intelligent virtual organisms {'agents'), learning, self-organizing and adapting to our individual preferences of information, to select our e-mails, to prepare economic transactions or to defend the attacks of hostile computer viruses, like the immune system of our body." (Klaus Mainzer, "Complexity Management in the Age of Globalization", 2006)

"Scale-free networks are particularly vulnerable to intentional attack: if someone wants to wreck the whole network, he simply needs to identify and destroy some of its hubs. And here we see how our world’s increasing connectivity really matters. Scientists have found that as a scale-free network like the Internet or our food-distribution system grows- as it adds more nodes - the new nodes tend to hook up with already highly connected hubs." (Thomas Homer-Dixon, "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization", 2006)

"The internet's perfect for all manner of things, but productive discussion ain't one of them. It provides scant room for debate and infinite opportunities for fruitless point-scoring: the heady combination of perceived anonymity, gestated responses, random heckling and a notional live audience quickly conspire to create a perfect storm of perpetual bickering." (Charlie Brooker, "Dawn of the Dumb" 2007)

"The real power of tribes has nothing to do with the Internet and everything to do with people." (Seth Godin, "Tribes: We need you to lead us", 2008)

📡On Technology: On Internet (2010-)

"As it turns out, complex networks are everywhere. Or, to be more precise, it turns out that if we model real-world situations in terms of networks, we often discover new things. What is striking, is that many real-world net- works look alike: the structure of the Internet resembles the organization of our brain, but also the organization of online social communities. Where these similarities come from is still a mystery, just as it is often very difficult to understand how certain networks were actually structured." (Maarten van Steen, "Graph Theory and Complex Networks: An Introduction", 2010)

"Net neutrality would require that every search engine produce an equal number of results that satisfy every disagreement about [every] issue... Just think of it as Fairness Doctrine for the Internet." (Rush Limbaugh, "On net neutrality", The Rush Limbaugh Show, 2010)

"Possibly worst of all, from the standpoint of the dedicated enemies of freedom, the Internet is a world that libertarians - having been marginalized for three decades by the establishment media - have made their own, almost without effort. It's an alternative reality (unlike 'meat-space' we live in) in which - exactly like intelligence, bravery, or virtue - the human capacity for violence is not additive, and in which it's impossible to initiate force against anybody." (L Neil Smith," Keep Your Filthy Hands Off The Internet", 2010)

"The quintessential exercise of free speech in a culture supposedly built on that concept and dedicated to it, the Internet's development is as historically important to humanity - perhaps even more so - as Gutenberg's invention of the printing press." (L Neil Smith," Keep Your Filthy Hands Off The Internet", 2010) 

"Internet use is diffusing fast, but this diffusion follows a spatial pattern that fragments its geography according to wealth, technology, and power: it is the new geography of development." (Manuel Castells, "The Internet Galaxy:Reflections on the Internet", 2001)

"An Internet search engine is a finite-state, deterministic machine, except at those junctures where people, individually and collectively, make a nondeterministic choice as to which results are selected as meaningful and given a click. These clicks are then immediately incorporated into the state of the deterministic machine, which grows ever so incrementally more knowledgeable with every click. This is what Turing defined as an oracle machine."  (George B Dyson, "Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe", 2012)

"As wearable devices, health tracking, and quantified self are gaining popularity, human beings are also becoming part of the Internet of things." (Newton Lee, "Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness" 2012)

"International trade in goods and services has expanded steadily over the past six decades thanks to declines in shipping and communication costs, globally negotiated reductions in government trade barriers, the widespread outsourcing of production activities, and a greater awareness of foreign cultures and products. New and better communications technologies, notably the Internet, have revolutionized the way people in all countries obtain and exchange information." (Paul Krugman, "Paul R. Krugman et al," International Economics: Theory & Policy" 9th ed., 2012)

"The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible." (Ben Horowitz, 2012)

"An open internet is an open platform for debating opposing views. It allows both popular and unpopular voices to be heard. It is a civilized outlet for frustrated individuals to express themselves without resorting to violence or terrorism." (Newton Lee, "Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness" 2013)

"The internet is not necessarily a golden goose yet, but we must fight to keep it safe, keep it level, keep it democratic, keep it open, keep it diverse so that when it becomes the golden goose, we independent artists can share and maybe at least get a wing or a thigh, even if we don't get the breast meat." (Lloyd Kaufman, 2013)

"A system might thus greatly boost its effective intellectual capability by absorbing pre-produced content accumulated through centuries of human science and civilization: for instance, by reading through the internet. If an AI reaches human level without previously having had access to this material or without having been able to digest it, then the AI’s overall recalcitrance will be low even if it is hard to improve its algorithmic architecture." (Nick Bostrom, "Superintelligence", 2014)

"Converting the Internet into a system of surveillance thus guts it of its core potential. Worse, it turns the Internet into a tool of repression, threatening to produce the most extreme and oppressive weapon of state intrusion human history has ever seen."  (Glenn Greenwald, "No Place to Hide", 2014)

"For many kids, the Internet is a means of self-actualization. It allows them to explore who they are and who they want to be, but that works only if we’re able to be private and anonymous, to make mistakes without them following us." (Glenn Greenwald, "No Place to Hide", 2014)

"To permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human interaction, planning, and even thought itself to comprehensive state examination." (Glenn Greenwald, "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State", 2014)

"What made the Internet so appealing was precisely that it afforded the ability to speak and act anonymously, which is so vital to individual exploration."  (Glenn Greenwald, "No Place to Hide", 2014)

"A system which is usually composed of large number of possibly heterogeneous interacting agents, which are seen to exhibit emergent behavior. Emergence implies that system level behavior (macro level) cannot be inferred from observation of individual level behavior of its constituents (micro level). This absence of explicit links between the micro and macro levels makes complex systems especially difficult to analyze using traditional statistical and analytical techniques to study the dynamics of behavior. One typically requires the use of bottom up simulation based methods to study such systems. Complex systems are ubiquitous - markets, societies, social networks, the Internet, weather, ecosystems, are just a few examples." (Stephen E Glavin & Abhijit Sengupta, "Modelling of Consumer Goods Markets: An Agent-Based Computational Approach", Handbook of Research on Managing and Influencing Consumer Behavior, 2015)

"This common view of statistics as a basic ‘bag of tools’ is now facing major challenges. First, we are in an age of data science, in which large and complex data sets are collected from routine sources such as traffic monitors, social media posts and internet purchases, and used as a basis for technological innovations such as optimizing travel routes, targeted advertising or purchase recommendation systems [...]. Statistical training is increasingly seen as just one necessary component of being a data scientist, together with skills in data management, programming and algorithm development, as well as proper knowledge of the subject matter." (David Spiegelhalter, "The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data", 2019)

📡On Technology: On Internet (-2009)

"The Internet has come to resemble an enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor, and a continuous stream of new books being added helter-skelter to the piles." (Robert R Pool, Science, 1994) 

"Developments on the Internet over the next several years will set the course of our industry for a long time to come." (Bill Gates, "Internet Tidal Wave", [Microsoft internal memo], 1995)

"It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an information highway, but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies." (Mike Royko, Chicago Tribune, 1996)

"The Internet is an elite organization; most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call." (Noam Chomsky, The Observer, 1996) 

"The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had." (Eric Schmidt, [Speech at Netscape Communications Developers' conference], 1996)

"Information on the Internet is subject to the same rules and regulations as conversation at a bar." (George D Lundberg, "Alternative Medicine Online", 1997)

"The internet model has many lessons for the new economy but perhaps the most important is its embrace of dumb swarm power. The aim of swarm power is superior performance in a turbulent environment. When things happen fast and furious, they tend to route around central control. By interlinking many simple parts into a loose confederation, control devolves from the center to the lowest or outermost points, which collectively keep things on course. A successful system, though, requires more than simply relinquishing control completely to the networked mob." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"The Internet is going to change marketing before it changes almost anything else, and old marketing will die in its path." (Seth Godin, "Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers", 1999)

🌌On Cosmology: On Singularity (2000-)

"Mathematicians call the infinite curvature limit of spacetime a singularity. In this picture, then, the big bang emerges from a singularity. The best way to think about singularities is as boundaries or edges of spacetime. In this respect they are not, technically, part of spacetime itself." (Paul Davies," Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life", 2007)

"The best way to think about singularities is as boundaries or edges of spacetime. In this respect they are not, technically, part of spacetime itself." (Paul Davies," Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life", 2007)

"Catastrophe theory can be thought of as a link between classical analysis, dynamical systems, differential topology (including singularity theory), modern bifurcation theory and the theory of complex systems. [...] The name ‘catastrophe theory’ is used for a combination of singularity theory and its applications. [...] From the didactical point of view, there are two main positions for courses in catastrophe theory at university level: Trying to teach the theory as a perfect axiomatic system consisting of exact definitions, theorems and proofs or trying to teach mathematics as it can be developed from historical or from natural problems. (Werner Sanns, "Catastrophe Theory" [Mathematics of Complexity and Dynamical Systems, 2012])

"Classification is only one of the mathematical aspects of catastrophe theory. Another is stability. The stable states of natural systems are the ones that we can observe over a longer period of time. But the stable states of a system, which can be described by potential functions and their singularities, can become unstable if the potentials are changed by perturbations. So stability problems in nature lead to mathematical questions concerning the stability of the potential functions." (Werner Sanns, "Catastrophe Theory" [Mathematics of Complexity and Dynamical Systems, 2012])

"The Singularity is a hypothetical super-jump in the field of artificial intelligence, rendering our reliance on 'biological intelligence' obsolete, pushing us into a shared technological realm so advanced that it will be unrecognizable from the world of today."(Chuck Klosterman, "But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past", 2016)

"The primary aspects of the theory of complex manifolds are the geometric structure itself, its topological structure, coordinate systems, etc., and holomorphic functions and mappings and their properties. Algebraic geometry over the complex number field uses polynomial and rational functions of complex variables as the primary tools, but the underlying topological structures are similar to those that appear in complex manifold theory, and the nature of singularities in both the analytic and algebraic settings is also structurally very similar." (Raymond O Wells Jr, "Differential and Complex Geometry: Origins, Abstractions and Embeddings", 2017)

"Even strong proponents of a utopian future based on advance‐ments in AI must agree that a dystopian future after a technological singularity cannot be fully excluded. Since the consequences might be catastrophic, dystopian outcomes must play a role in broader discussions about AI and superintelligence." (Yves Hilpisch, "Artificial Intelligence in Finance A Python-Based Guide", 2021)

🌌On Cosmology: On Big Bang (2000-)

"A more extreme form of exponential growth was probably responsible for the start of the universe. Astronomer and physicists now generally accept the Big Bang theory, according to which the universe started at an unimaginably small size and then doubled in a split second 100 times, enough to make it the size of a small grapefruit. This period of 'inflation' or exponential growth then ended, and linear growth took over, with an expanding fireball creating the universe that we know today." (Richar Koch, "The Power Laws", 2000)

"String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe - from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies - are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation." (Brian Greene, "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory", 2000)

"Zero is behind all of the big puzzles in physics. The infinite density of the black hole is a division by zero. The big bang creation from the void is a division by zero. The infinite energy of the vacuum is a division by zero. Yet dividing by zero destroys the fabric of mathematics and the framework of logic - and threatens to undermine the very basis of science. […] The universe begins and ends with zero." (Charles Seife ."Zero, the Biography of a Dangerous Idea", 2000)

"Zero was at the heart of the battle between East and West. Zero was at the center of the struggle between religion and science. Zero became the language of nature and the most important tool in mathematics. And the most profound problems in physics - the dark core of a black hole and the brilliant flash of the big bang - are struggles to defeat zero." (Charles Seife ."Zero, the Biography of a Dangerous Idea", 2000)

"In string theory, to understand the nature of the Big Bang, or the quantum fate of a black hole, or the nature of the vacuum state that determines the properties of the elementary particles, requires information beyond perturbation theory [...] Perturbation theory is not everything. It is just the way the [string] theory was discovered." (Edward Witten, "The Past and Future of String Theory", 2003)

"The universe is noisy on all scales even if the universe itself is not noise. The fading noise of the ancient big bang explosion fills the cosmos. It still gently hisses and crackles all around us in the form of junk microwave radiation." (Bart Kosko, "Noise", 2006)

"Mathematicians call the infinite curvature limit of spacetime a singularity. In this picture, then, the big bang emerges from a singularity. The best way to think about singularities is as boundaries or edges of spacetime. In this respect they are not, technically, part of spacetime itself." (Paul Davies," Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life", 2007)

"The standard big bang model doesn’t explain the smoothness and flatness of the universe, so it’s been embellished by an additional component: inflation. A minuscule fraction of a second after the big bang, the universe was propelled into an exponential expansion that increased its size from a proton to a grapefruit. […] Moreover, if we accept the theory that the universe emerged from a quantum seed and exponentially expanded in the big bang, there is the possibility that other regions of space-time exist, remote in time or space from our universe. Due to the random nature of quantum processes, these parallel universes could have wildly different properties. This extravagant concept is called the multiverse." (Chris Impey, "The Living Cosmos: Our search for life in the universe", 2007)

"Basis real and imaginary numbers have eternal and necessary reality. Complex numbers do not. They are temporal and contingent in the sense that for complex numbers to exist, we first have to carry out an operation: adding basis real and imaginary numbers together. Complex numbers therefore do not exist in their own right. They are constructed. They are derived. Symmetry breaking is exactly where constructed numbers come into existence. The very act of adding a sine wave to a cosine wave is the sufficient condition to create a broken symmetry: a complex number. The 'Big Bang', mathematically, is simply where a perfect array of basis sine and cosine waves start entering into linear combinations, creating a chain reaction, an 'explosion', of complex numbers - which corresponds to the “physical” universe." (Thomas Stark, "God Is Mathematics: The Proofs of the Eternal Existence of Mathematics", 2018)

"Ontological mathematics is operating in such a way as to organize itself into a zero-entropy structure – mathematical perfection. The 'Big Bang' is equivalent to the total scrambling of a cosmic Rubik’s Cube. The task of ontological mathematics is then to unscramble the Cube and return it to its original, pristine configuration. Emotionally, this amounts to returning to perfect Love and Bliss. Intellectually, it means reaching a state of perfect logic and reason [...] thinking perfectly." (Thomas Stark, "God Is Mathematics: The Proofs of the Eternal Existence of Mathematics", 2018)

"[...] imagine that at some point, this flickering chaos was suddenly influenced by a shift in the rules – perhaps the laws of physics as we know them didn't always apply. If these laws changed, they could have triggered a colossal release of energy, forcing spacetime to stabilize and expand – creating the Big Bang. In this view, the Big Bang wasn’t the true beginning but more like a dramatic phase transition, similar to water turning into steam when heated." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

🌌On Cosmology: On Big Bang (-1999)

"Earlier theories […] were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past." (Sir Fred Hoyle, [From microfilmed Speaker's Copy of a radio script held at the BBC Written Archive Centre, for Hoyle's radio talk on the BBC Third Programme] 1949)  [Coining the 'big bang']

"The universe starts with a big bang, expands to a maximum dimension, then recontracts and collapses: no more awe-inspiring prediction was ever made. It is preposterous." (John A Wheeler et al, "Gravitation", 1973

"[The Big Bang is] followed by what? By a dull-as-ditchwater expansion which degrades itself adiabatically until it is incapable of doing anything at all. The notion that galaxies form, to be followed by an active astronomical history, is an illusion. Nothing forms, the thing is as dead as a door-nail." (Sir Fred Hoyle, 'The Big Bang in Astronomy', New Scientist, 1981)

"The most abstract conservation laws of physics come into their being in describing equilibrium in the most extreme conditions. They are the most rigorous conservation laws, the last to break down. The more extreme the conditions, the fewer the conserved structures. [...] In a deep sense, we understand the interior of the sun better that the interior of the earth, and the early stages of the big bang best of all."  (Frank Wilczek, "Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics", 1987)

"In fact, all our theories of science are formulated on the assumption that space-time is smooth and nearly flat, so they break down at the big bang singularity, where the curvature of space-time is infinite." (Stephen W Hawking, "A Brief History of Time", 1988)

"As a general scientific principle, it is undesirable to depend crucially on what is unobservable to explain what is observable, as happens frequently in Big Bang cosmology." (Halton Christian Arp, 1990)

"A universe that came from nothing in the big bang will disappear into nothing in the big crunch, its glorious few zillion years of existence not even a memory." (P C W Davies, "The Last Three Minutes: Conjectures About The Ultimate Fate Of The Universe", 1994

"God created two acts of folly. First, He created the Universe in a Big Bang. Second, He was negligent enough to leave behind evidence for this act, in the form of the microwave radiation." (Paul Erdős [in Paul Hoffman's "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth", 1998])

On Chaos IX

"Mathematicians are beginning to view order and chaos as two distinct manifestations of an underlying determinism. And neither state exists in isolation. The typical system can exist in a variety of states, some ordered, some chaotic. Instead of two opposed polarities, there is a continuous spectrum. As harmony and discord combine in musical beauty, so order and chaos combine in mathematical [and physical] beauty." (Ian Stewart, "Does God Play Dice: The New Mathematics of Chaos", 1989)

"Let us tum to the question, 'What is chaos?' Certainly the typical answer, 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions', is reasonable. But to be relevant to physics, more is required: the property should be robust or preserved under perturbations of the system. A response &lat involves a mechanism and meets the criteria is: 'Chaos is the presence of a (transversal) homoclinic point'." (Steven Smale, "What is chaos?", 1990)

"Summarizing, we have indicated why homoclinic points imply chaos. The converse is less formalizable, but I believe it is basically true. However,  there is a stronger notion of chaos, which we might call full chaos, where the set of initial conditions with sensitive dependence has positive or even full measure. In this case the corresponding homoclinic point could well be associated with a chaotic attractor, such as the Lorenz attractor. " (Steven Smale, "What is chaos?", 1990)

"Systems are thus seen by complexity as being ‘on the edge of chaos'. Order and chaos are in a kind of balance where the components are neither fully locked into place but yet do not fully dissolve into anarchy. chaos is not complete anarchic randomness but there is a kind of 'orderly disorder' present within all such dynamic systems." (John Urry, "Global Complexity", 2003)

"[...] imagine that at some point, this flickering chaos was suddenly influenced by a shift in the rules – perhaps the laws of physics as we know them didn't always apply. If these laws changed, they could have triggered a colossal release of energy, forcing spacetime to stabilize and expand – creating the Big Bang. In this view, the Big Bang wasn’t the true beginning but more like a dramatic phase transition, similar to water turning into steam when heated." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

Lars Tvede - Collected Quotes

"Consciousness is the bridge between merely existing and living fully. It is the difference between seeing a sunset and experiencing it – losing oneself in the symphony of colors, feeling the awe in one's chest and feeling a deep gratitude for witnessing the beauty of nature. Consciousness gives us the ability to reflect on our existence, to feel, understand, and marvel at the world around us." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"Historically, technology has overwhelmingly improved our lives, elevating living standards, fostering innovation, and, after transitional periods, even promoting environmental progress. This is evident as people often migrate from less affluent to more prosperous nations. [...] While acknowledging potential pitfalls – such as temporary job displacement, privacy concerns, and hypothetical risks of malicious AI – we believe it's crucial to highlight the vast opportunities these technologies present. Ultimately, focusing on potential benefits drives innovation and steers us toward a brighter future. Moreover, beyond optimistic or pessimistic views, one can adopt a realistic perspective: most technologies will evolve regardless of our preferences. The first step, therefore, is to understand them." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"[...] imagine that at some point, this flickering chaos was suddenly influenced by a shift in the rules – perhaps the laws of physics as we know them didn't always apply. If these laws changed, they could have triggered a colossal release of energy, forcing spacetime to stabilize and expand – creating the Big Bang. In this view, the Big Bang wasn’t the true beginning but more like a dramatic phase transition, similar to water turning into steam when heated." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"In reality, the growth of complexity in the universe does not happen smoothly; it tends to unfold in bursts. Imagine that a new element appears in a system, which triggers a cascade of combinations and possibilities. It gives a creative explosion, but only until the system reaches its immediate limits. In the following, we call this world of possibilities in a creative explosion a 'design space'. In other words, a space of possibilities. The outer edge of the design space is called a 'scaling barrier', as previously mentioned. Creativity goes that far, but no further." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"Math is not a human invention. Mathematical relationships existed before us; we just discovered them. And they will be recognized by any intelligent life form that may exist anywhere in the universe. Even in hypothetical universes with different physical laws, the underlying principles of logic and mathematics would likely remain consistent." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025) 

"Nature and other dynamic systems are constantly discovering structures that are either just there and can enchant us like snowflakes. Or that we encounter because they, like the shape of broccoli, bring success. By understanding these patterns, we can model things from the ground up and explain how complexity and intelligence evolve over time and eventually become hyperintelligence." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"Nature thus has a fascinating ability to create complexity. This often happens through emergence processes, where especially compact clusters of matter, energy, or something else entirely, such as information, suddenly trigger the formation of something completely new. We call this triggering factor 'critical density' , and it plays a crucial role in the development of the universe and its evolving intelligence." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"So the universe is filled with fascinating and perplexing puzzles. Among the most baffling questions are surely these three: First, what triggered the Big Bang? Second, what existed before the Big Bang? And third, where do the laws of physics come from? Many religions answer the first two questions by assuming that God created the universe. However, this leads to a philosophical dead end known as the infinite regress problem, which can be incredibly frustrating. “If God created the universe, who or what created God?” This line of thinking leads to an endless chain of creators, leaving the ultimate origin unanswered." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"Stars are cosmic alchemists that transform lighter elements into heavier elements through nuclear fusion. They primarily fuse hydrogen into helium, then helium into beryllium, then into carbon and oxygen and so on, creating ever heavier elements up to iron. This process, along with something called reionization, shaped the early universe. Ionization occurred when the first stars began to shine. Their strong light blew electrons away from hydrogen atoms. Without electrons, the hydrogen atoms became protons. This ionization of the gas made the universe more transparent." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"This phenomenon, known as transfer learning, enables AI to apply insights from one task to another, significantly accelerating learning and enhancing performance across different domains. But AI doesn't just learn – it shares. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle of intelligence, where each breakthrough strengthens the whole system." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"In effect, AI is transforming the entire globe into a gigantic meta-brain – a vast, interconnected web of intelligence, continuously fed by humans, AI models, robots, self-driving cars, and autonomous systems of every kind. As this process accelerates, critical data density reaches unprecedented levels, driving AI into a self-reinforcing spiral of perpetual improvement, where each new insight compounds into an unstoppable force of exponential progress." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025) 

"This process of spontaneously generating complexity and intelligence is not only fascinating, it is downright overwhelming because the way it creates combinatorial cascades is itself a combinatorial cascade. Wild, but true: The creation of complexity thus exhibits self-similarity, and the logic behind intelligence itself becomes more intelligent. For example, it is fundamental innovations that the universe can write code, and that code can then create intelligence, and that intelligence can then create technology." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"[...] what we understand as hyperintelligence may only be realized in an artificial form. This suggests an inner evolutionary logic that drives the development towards hyperintelligence. Namely, that when any species in the universe reaches a level of intelligence equivalent to ours – and thus learns to master fire, language, and trade – the development of advanced AI becomes almost inevitable. Even though it may then take hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of years to move from the mastery of fire to the development of AI, any species that reaches this level will sooner or later combine itself further to create computers and AI technology. These technologies will then develop trillions of times faster than their biological creators. Even if living beings with access to AI will be able to do some genetic uplifting towards higher IQ, ultimately it will then be their computers, and not the biological beings themselves, that achieve hyperintelligence." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"When we explore the mathematics behind the natural world, we encounter a fascinating phenomenon: the principle of combinatorial complexity. This principle explains the exponential increase in possibilities that arise when we combine even a small number of elements." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

"While the universe as a whole tends towards greater disorder, there are local, pinched pockets where complexity spontaneously increases. And such processes can, as we have seen, continue even over billions of years and come a very long way. We live in such a pocket, and the complexity in it is growing exponentially – and on some fronts hyperexponentially." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

🪷On Mind: On Superintelligence

"A question distinct from, but related to, the question of kinetics is whether there will be one superintelligent power or many? Might an intelligence explosion propel one project so far ahead of all others as to make it able to dictate the future? Or will progress be more uniform, unfurling across a wide front, with many projects participating but none securing an overwhelming and permanent lead?" (Nick Bostrom, "Superintelligence", 2014)

"A system that has the intelligence amplification superpower could use it to bootstrap itself to higher levels of intelligence and to acquire any of the other intellectual superpowers that it does not possess at the outset. But using an intelligence amplification superpower is not the only way for a system to become a full-fledged superintelligence. A system that has the strategizing superpower, for instance, might use it to devise a plan that will eventually bring an increase in intelligence (e.g. by positioning the system so as to become the focus for intelligence amplification work performed by human programmers and computer science researchers)." (Nick Bostrom, "Superintelligence", 2014)

"Some paths to superintelligence require great resources and are therefore likely to be the preserve of large well-funded projects. Whole brain emulation, for instance, requires many different kinds of expertise and lots of equipment. Biological intelligence enhancements and brain–computer interfaces would also have a large scale factor: while a small biotech firm might invent one or two drugs, achieving superintelligence along one of these paths (if doable at all) would likely require many inventions and many tests, and therefore the backing of an industrial sector or a well-funded national program. Achieving collective superintelligence by making organizations and networks more efficient requires even more extensive input, involving much of the world economy." (Nick Bostrom, "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies", 2014)

"We can tentatively define a superintelligence as any intellect that greatly exceeds the cog‐ nitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest." (Nick Bostrom, "Superintelligence", 2014)

"[...] we use the term 'superintelligence' to refer to intellects that greatly outperform the best current human minds across many very general cognitive domains. This is still quite vague. Different kinds of system with rather disparate performance attributes could qualify as superintelligences under this definition. To advance the analysis, it is helpful to disaggregate this simple notion of superintelligence by distinguishing different bundles of intellectual super-capabilities. There are many ways in which such decomposition could be done. Here we will differentiate between three forms: speed superintelligence, collective superintelligence, and quality superintelligence." (Nick Bostrom, "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies", 2014)

"We are teaching AI software that will evolve into superintelligence; and superintelligence will in turn teach humankind and explain the Scriptures." (Newton Lee American, "The Transhumanism Handbook", 2019

"All in all, it seems questionable whether a superintelligence can be properly and systematically controlled when it has reached that level. After all, its superpowers can at least in principle be used to overcome any human-designed control mechanism." (Yves Hilpisch, "Artificial Intelligence in Finance A Python-Based Guide", 2021)

"It is to be assumed that any form of superintelligence will have instrumental goals that are independent of its main goal. This might lead to a number of unintended consequences, such as the insatiable quest to acquire ever more resources with any means that seem promising." (Yves Hilpisch, "Artificial Intelligence in Finance A Python-Based Guide", 2021)

"Of all the possible paths to superintelligence, AI seems to be the most promising one. Recent successes in the field based on rein‐ forcement learning and neural networks have led to another AI spring, after a number of AI winters. Many even now believe that a superintelligence might not be as far away as we thought even a few years ago. The field currently is characterized by much faster advancements than originally predicted by experts only a short while ago." (Yves Hilpisch, "Artificial Intelligence in Finance A Python-Based Guide", 2021)

"[...] what we understand as hyperintelligence may only be realized in an artificial form. This suggests an inner evolutionary logic that drives the development towards hyperintelligence. Namely, that when any species in the universe reaches a level of intelligence equivalent to ours – and thus learns to master fire, language, and trade – the development of advanced AI becomes almost inevitable. Even though it may then take hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of years to move from the mastery of fire to the development of AI, any species that reaches this level will sooner or later combine itself further to create computers and AI technology. These technologies will then develop trillions of times faster than their biological creators. Even if living beings with access to AI will be able to do some genetic uplifting towards higher IQ, ultimately it will then be their computers, and not the biological beings themselves, that achieve hyperintelligence." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)

🪷On Mind: On Enlightenment in Science

"This adventure of the physical sciences […] could not be observed without enlightened men seeking to follow it up in the other sciences; at each step it held out to them the model to be followed." (Nicolas de Condorcet, , "Outlines Of An Historical View Of The Progress Of The Human Mind", 1795)

"Those sciences, created almost in our own days, the object of which is man himself, the direct goal of which is the happiness of man, will enjoy a progress no less sure than that of the physical sciences; and this sweet idea - that our nephews will surpass us in wisdom as in enlightenment - is no longer an illusion." (Nicolas de Condorcet, "Outlines Of An Historical View Of The Progress Of The Human Mind", 1795)

"[...] the public is composed of the class or classes directly addressed by any work, and not of the heterogeneous mass of readers. Mathematicians do not write for the circulating library. Science is not addressed to poets. Philosophy is meant for students, not for idle readers. If the members of a class do not understand - if those directly addressed fail to listen, or listening, fail to recognise a power in the voice - surely the fault lies with the speaker, who, having attempted to secure their attention and enlighten their understandings, has failed in the attempt? The mathematician who is without value to mathematicians, the thinker who is obscure or meaningless to thinkers, the dramatist who fails to move the pit, may be wise, may be eminent, but as an author he has failed." (George H Lewes, "The Principles of Success in Literature", 1865)

"Science is a matter of disinterested observation, patient ratiocination within some system of logically correlated concepts. In real-life conflicts between reason and passion the issue is uncertain. Passion and prejudice are always able to mobilize their forces more rapidly and press the attack with greater fury; but in the long run (and often, of course, too late) enlightened self-interest may rouse itself, launch a counterattack and win the day for reason." (Aldous L Huxley, "Literature and Science", 1963)

"Often the very fact that the words of science are the same as those of our common life and tongues can be more misleading than enlightening, more frustrating to understanding than recognizably technical jargon." (J Robert Oppenheimer, "Science and the Common Understanding", 1954)

"In sum, an enlightened understanding of both physical and social phenomena is possible through modeling, as various stages of inquiry. Just as real world models are inseparable from experiences of the empirical world, a narrative is thoroughly implicated in a social encounter. Actors resort to narratives as they respond to the movements of others and project possibilities for future encounters. An actor becomes a virtual witness to an idealized scene, drawing upon past encounters to construct a picture of future, hypothetical events." (Daniel Rothbart [Ed.], "Modeling: Gateway to the Unknown", 2004)