Belt of Shingles

Posted by Guessedworker on June 03, 2008, 06:16 PM | #

OK.

Singularism (?) is a game for grown-up children with IQ’s above 120.  It’s sole effect is to soak up a bit of creative imagination that might profitably be used elsewhere.

Posted by Lurker on June 03, 2008, 09:00 PM | #

I had a look, they seem to have left out all those cutting edge Indian software people, the ones we just can’t manage without. No doubt this will be corrected in time…

Posted by David B. Wildgoose on June 06, 2008, 04:46 AM | #

Thanks for the link - I suppose I’m one of those grown up children with an IQ above 120.

It is worth pointing out that there’s nothing new about singularities (plural) happening.

They’ve happened before.

Mastering fire was a singularity.  The night was no longer cold and dark, and predators stayed away.

The invention of writing was a singularity.  Conversations could now be held across centuries, different peoples, great distances in time, space and thought.

Neither of these could be foretold, and would have been impossible to accurately predict what the eventual result of both of these would be, whether metallurgy from fire, or mass printing and dissemination of information (e.g. the Internet) from writing.

And now another one is due.

And its impossible to predict what its effects are.

We just have to survive, fighting off the foot-soldiers of a return to the Dark Ages until we get there.

Posted by Guessedworker on June 06, 2008, 09:57 AM | #

David B. Wildgoose,

I don’t see that the status of “singularity” can be ascribed simply to technological advances, however major.  It seems to me that the issue is more fundamental than that, and involves the assumption of the active principle.

Thus, because it was formative in the evolution of Homo erectus, the spread of grassland might be said to be a singularity.  Because it was formative in the evolution of human bio-diversity, Out of Africa might be said to be another.

Really it’s a who whom issue.  Politically today, the active principle has been assumed by the Power Elites, who are driving European Man to extinction.  They could be said to be a singularity.

But fire and metallurgy, printing and the internet, no.  There the singularity remained Man himself.

Posted by Svigor on June 06, 2008, 06:25 PM | #

Singularism (?) is a game for grown-up children with IQ’s above 120.  It’s sole effect is to soak up a bit of creative imagination that might profitably be used elsewhere.

Transhumanism (though you can probably find a Singularist somewhere to argue semantics with you.  They love that crap).

I’m a flexible strategist, and a materialist, so I think the essence of Transhumanism is entirely plausible.  The trouble for me is the bifurcation in the anti-T camp.  On one hand there’s the broad mass of people who don’t buy it because of lack of imagination, or ignorance, or both.  On the other hand there are the experts who come up with arguments against a Singularity that are over my head.  Then of course there’s the semantics and nitpicking, which are pretty boring.

All I know is that accelerating change is suggestive, man is machine already, and the material is what I believe;  The idea that blind evolution can do what intellect cannot is preposterous to me, on its face.  I also know that the slant-eyes don’t share our hangups about any of this stuff and will cut our throats if we don’t play our hand well (no rancor intended in that statement).

Flexible strategies, eggs and baskets.  No need to go “all in” on the more speculative strategies, but no need to be dismissive, either.

Posted by Svigor on June 06, 2008, 06:33 PM | #

I’ve posted this here before I think, but repetition is good.  I think the arguments against AI are facile.  We already have a working example of intelligence, in man.  You take the logic system that is the brain and you replicated it, whether in software or in hardware.  I think software’s a better idea, because it’s easier to modify and control.  In other words, you map the brain, every neuron.  You recreate that map inside a computer.  If Moore’s trend holds, this will eventually be possible.  Give what I read about computing, it might not be that long a wait.  Economies of scale take over, and you have an arbitrary number of the world’s best minds living in virtual realities, working away at whatever problem we give them (obviously motivation is a question, but it shouldn’t be too hard).  I see no good reason we couldn’t crank the clock speed way up, too.  How long would it really take them to breeze past us on the freeway, so to speak?  It starts to be more sensible to talk about the limits of physics than anything else at that point, IMO.

Posted by Svigor on June 06, 2008, 06:51 PM | #

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jun08/6311/2

This is the first sort of “skepticism” (I have too much regard for skepticism to apply it to this sort without scare quotes) I mentioned above.  Total drivel.  “False, um, cuz it’s different.  Cuz I can’t get my head ‘round it.”

What we do know is that the brain’s complexity dwarfs anything we’ve managed to fully understand, let alone build.

This is irrelevant.  One needn’t know how something works to build it.  Does a mechanic understand the internal combustion engine?  If given a complete set of blueprints, instructions, parts and tools, could he not build one, without any understanding of how it works?  Sure, the process would no doubt increase his understanding, but would he really, necessarily, understand any of the chemistry involved?  The physics?

Sure, we couldn’t do this with the internal combustion engine because nature never evolved one, but we’ve got billions of existing intelligences to study in the case of AI.  We don’t need to fully understand the brain to replicate its functions.  We need blueprints, instructions, parts and tools.

Posted by Lurker on June 06, 2008, 09:35 PM | #

I suspect, though I certainly dont know, that AI will be achieved by merging human minds with computers (uploading, whatever) rather than machines being made intelligent/self-aware in their own right. Just my take.

Posted by Al Ross on June 08, 2008, 03:25 AM | #

As that old fraud, Churchill remarked when introduced to a gentleman named Ball, “How very singular”.

Posted by Elias on July 03, 2008, 08:03 AM | #

Thanks for the interesting and informative post. That’s definitely what I’ve been looking for.