The "singularity"

[DespondentFishdeathMasochismo]

So, apparently the singularity will be an exponential growth in technology. I've heard of things like gene therapy, eliminating aging, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, quantum computers, basic income, modular cities, virtual reality. So much of this stuff, predicted to happen in the near future. To think, that society has progressed so fast in the past 100 years, we're on the advent of a society where all of this will probably be possible. 

I don't really know specifically what the "singularity" is besides the snippets of information I've heard. I haven't read ray kurzweil or watched his lectures, besides a bunch of videos my friend has showed me about futurism. I know it's supposed to be a rapid advancement of technology, but I have no idea what the details of this are. I've heard the word singularity thrown around, but I only have a vague idea of what it actually means.

[DespondentFishdeathMasochismo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7xfJVvlqdE

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I just watched this lecture on artificial super intelligence. Really, really fascinating stuff.

[Amine]

The Singularity Is Near was one of the most life-changing books I've ever read. I mean I don't think the specific predictions are all that important but it did make me put change in perspective and realize how inconceivable the present would be to someone even 50-100 years ago. Why? Because that's how it will be to us. The main idea, though, is what Kurzweil calls the Law of Accelerating Returns. That concept seems logical enough. New technologies are built on faster and better new technologies. If Moore's Law continues (or the exponential growth in computing power, whatever medium we use), yes, by the 2030s or so, we will essentially have the power of gods, as a computer will be able to perform all of the history of human thought in something like a microsecond. The 2040s don't even make sense to think about. That "event horizon" is how I think of the singularity. Plenty of other people have made their own definitions, and I'm not that picky about it. I think the term 'transhumanism' says all that needs to be said. I'm for radical life extension and radical life expansion.

Kurzweil and the singularity is just the beginning of the futurism rabbit hole. I found home when I came to the writings of David Pearce, a transhumanist philosopher who writes about, roughly speaking, superhappiness. There is quite a lot of focus on superlongevity, and even more on superintelligence, but that third one is just barely beginning to get some attention. Sam Harris wrote The Moral Landscape about how we should strive to create a society that maximizes wellbeing. Pearce gets into specifics. He was one of the first biohackers, and a long time psychonaut who wrote a manifesto in 1996 called The Hedonistic Imperative. Nick Bostrom discovered it and then they cofounded the World Transhumanist Organization, which is now Humanity+.



David Pearce and Sasha Shulgin

I got into Pearce when I stumbled upon his interview with "Socrates" on Singularity 1 on 1. At first I thought, "ew, this guy is a vegan? Sounds boring..." But then I listened to it and was rather surprised at what he said. I looked him up and found a critique he wrote of Brave New World and the rest was history. I drank the abolitionist koolaid. A few months later I had pretty much gone vegetarian myself, as Pearce's writing on anti-speciesism was impossible to argue against. My mind was changed. And my broader purpose in life became the wellbeing of the planet. That's what gets me out of bed every morning to this day, fighting to help the cause.

Other than that? Well, there is a lot to talk about. I don't think there will be an intelligence explosion. I don't even know if classical computers can be conscious at all. But I do think, Kurzweil believes, that we will continue to merge with our technology, and that the possibilities are probably endless.

[DespondentFishdeathMasochismo]

Well said Amine. I think the really fascinating thing about artificial superintelligence is this notion that it's the logical conclusion to evolution. Also the notion that it doesn't have human thoughts and desires. It really harkens me back to movies I've watched about artificial intelligence, like Ghost In The Shell. It really may be the single most inspiring thing I've ever heard about in my whole life. It really puts our existence into perspective, I don't even like to use the word "life" because that seems to have preconceived notions attached.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Kurzweil is a media scientist out to put his name about and an idiot to boot. His reasoning about reaching super human intelligence by the 2040's is wrong on so many levels.

He sees a neuron as the processing equivalent of a byte whereas a real neuron requires an entire computer to simulate. He's also ignoring the need to evolve, which adds many more orders or magnitude of processing power. And then to understand what you have evolved. Or the ability to measure what happens in real brains and then to understand the data. The limit here is how slow it takes us to figure these things out and to disseminate that information. That needs to be done in order to reach the singularity.

Kurzweil and his ilk, e.g. Kevin Warwick, also do not fundamentally understand the nature and challenge of intelligence because they are so bothered about promoting himself and their books rather than trying to create it.

One thing that you can count on with the progress of technology is that it never takes the path that is most obvious. There are always other uses or constraints that become apparent over time. For example Moore's law is already faltering and there is also the long emergency to contend with where we run out of natural resources.

That's not to say that there won't be an economic revolution because of AI, but it will be more like an economic boom like the dot com boom.

I'm convinced that the revolution that will truly be life changing for everyone will be asteroid mining if we can pull it off. Otherwise the future looks quite grim. AI will be ideal for asteroid mining.