Home / Library / The Enemies of Civilization Move Fast

Notable Quote

"The world doesn't just contain optimists and pessimists, and wise and unwise technology users. It contains enemies of civilization as well. And knowledge is impartial. It can be used for good or evil. But the enemies of civilization all necessarily have one thing in common. They are wrong. And so they fear error correction and truth. And that's why they resist changes in their ideas, which makes them less creative and slower to innovate. So our defense against the existential danger from malevolent uses of technology, the only defense, is speed. The good guys must use their only advantage to stay ahead."

— Deutsch, David

Context: Spoken by David Deutsch at the RSA event "Optimism, Knowledge and the Future of Enlightenment" (The RSA, London), alongside cosmologist Martin Rees. Not from a book. The argument: enemies of civilization are necessarily wrong, and because they fear error correction, they resist new ideas — making them slower to innovate. The good guys' only defense against malevolent uses of technology is therefore speed: the capacity to out-innovate by staying committed to truth.

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