Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and acrobat knows en…

- Peter Watts

People aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're - we're feeling machines that happen to think.

- Peter Watts

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: You hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.

- Peter Watts

I am the bridge between the bleeding edge and the dead center. I stand between the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. I am the curtain.

- Peter Watts

There's no such things as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a solution's optimal. All that mat…

- Peter Watts

The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.

- Peter Watts

Radar is too long in the tooth for fine detail.

- Peter Watts

If believing absurd falsehoods increase the odds of getting laid or avoiding predators, your brain will believe those falsehoods with all its metapho…

- Peter Watts

What's the survival value of obsessing on a sunset?

- Peter Watts