Claim · 1996-11-18 · publication · Stated in source · Supported

Yudkowsky’s announcement of his essay “Staring Into The Singularity” on the Extropians list (19 November 1996) describes the essay as concerning beings smarter than human and gives its “Interim Meaning Of Life”: “Get to the Singularity as fast as possible!”

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

Staring into the Singularity → articulates → Accelerate rather than restrain

Where it appears

Machine succession, scale and acceleration: propositions in located texts, 1979–2026 →

Claim and evidence

Staring into the Singularityarticulates ↓Accelerate rather than restrain

Machine-checkedStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 1996-11-18 · publication Records dated 1996 →
Wording attested: 1996-11-19. The slogan is attested by Yudkowsky’s announcement of the essay on the Extropians list, sent 1996-11-19, which the dataset records as a source for this essay. The essay’s own wording of 1996 is not held.
Role: Earliest located
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction

Scope and limitsA slogan in an announcement; the essay’s reasons are known only from a later version (2000). No label or affiliation is inferred from the slogan. Earliest located means the earliest text found by the collection’s searches and the cross-family re-check of 2026-11-02, not a first statement.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

Sites: Staring Into The Singularity & Algernon’s Law (Extropians mailing list)

Extropians mailing list · 1996-11-19

Archived copy, captured 2014-11-19: Sites: Staring Into The Singularity & Algernon’s Law (Extropians mailing list)

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

"Get to the Singularity as fast as possible!"

Location in source Message body, description of “Staring Into The Singularity”

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-11-02

Source details and check notes

Authors: Eliezer Yudkowsky
Version: Archive HTML as served, retrieved 2026-10-06 with the hash recorded by the 1996–2022 candidate search. Archive at extropians.weidai.com.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-06
Language: English (en)
Archive copy: Open archived copy, captured 2014-11-19: Sites: Staring Into The Singularity & Algernon’s Law (Extropians mailing list). Captured 6574 days after the recorded publication date. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2014-11-19. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-06.
Attribution: Eliezer Yudkowsky, "Sites: Staring Into The Singularity & Algernon’s Law", Extropians mailing list, 1996-11-19.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Quotation matched on 2026-11-02 against the held source, retrieved on 2026-11-02 from the source’s evidence URL (SHA-256 0bacab6a1037b4d818a88609f7f0e0efed8b6e9180027844997c64816b530864). Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms; “…” joins fragments that occur in order. Cross-family pass: the re-check of 2026-11-02 (review/earliest-located-recheck-2026-11-02.md, role 123) read this text for this proposition and role. Admitted by the maintainer’s decision of 2026-11-02. No human editorial review.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Machine-checked. Machines found this record and checked it against its sources; no person accepted it individually. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document meets the proposition’s criterion. The record documents what the text states, in its register (fiction and satire are labelled); it is not evidence that the proposition is true and implies no influence on or from another text.

Date. The page states "Created: 11/18/1996"; the essay was announced on the Extropians list on 1996-11-19. As for the human-thought collection's records of this essay.

Record ID ht-w08-yudkowsky-1996-staring-into-the-singularity