# Quote — Charles Stross, Accelerando

> Here we are, sixty something human minds. We’ve been migrated—while still awake—right out of our own heads using an amazing combination of nanotechnology and electron spin resonance mapping, and we’re now running as software in an operating system designed to virtualize multiple physics models and provide a simulation of reality that doesn’t let us go mad from sensory deprivation! And this whole package is about the size of a fingertip, crammed into a starship the size of your grandmother’s old Walkman, in orbit around a brown dwarf just over three light-years from home, on its way to plug into a network router created by incredibly ancient alien intelligences, and you can tell me that the idea of a fundamental change in the human condition is nonsense?

- Author: [Charles Stross](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross.md)
- Book: [Accelerando](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross/accelerando.md)
- Page: 184
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Stross#Accelerando_(2005)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross/accelerando/here-we-are

## More from this book

> “Now, consciousness. That’s a fun thing, isn’t it? Product of an arms race between predators and prey. If you watch a cat creeping up on a mouse, you’ll be able to impute to the cat intentions that are most easily explained by the cat having a theory of mind concerning the mouse—an internal simulation of the mouse’s likely behavior when it notices the predator. Which way to run, for example. And the cat will use its theory of mind to optimize its attack strategy. Meanwhile, prey species that are complex enough to have a theory of mind are at a defensive advantage if they can anticipate a predator’s actions. Eventually this very mammalian arms race gave us a species of social ape that used its theory of mind to facilitate signaling—so the tribe could work collectively—and then reflexively, to simulate the individual’s own inner states. Put the two things together, signaling and introspective simulation, and you’ve got human-level consciousness, with language thrown in as a bonus—signaling that transmits information about internal states, not just crude signals such as ‘predator here’ or ‘food there.’”

p. 397 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross/accelerando/now-consciousness-thats.md)

> The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.

p. 1 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross/accelerando/the-question-of-whether.md)

> His ideas are informed by a painfully honest humanism, and everyone—even his enemies—agrees that he is one of the greatest theoreticians of the post-EU era. But his intellectual integrity prevents him from rising to the very top, and his fellow travelers are much ruder about him than his ideological enemies, accusing him of the ultimate political crime—valuing truth over power.

p. 60 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-stross/accelerando/his-ideas-are.md)