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The Singularity Blinds Sci-Fi
foobsr writes "Popular Science has an article discussing the growing difficulties that Sci-Fi writers encounter when it comes to extrapolating current trends. Doctorow and
Stross , both former computer programmers, are rated to be prototypes of a new breed of guides to a future which due to
Vinge's Singularity might not happen for humanity once a proper super-intelligence - maybe as a Matrioshka Brain - has been created."
I'm sorry if this is too off-topic, but that story summary made absolutely no sense to me. I'm not a scientist, but I've got a decent education in science. I'm also a fan of sci-fi books, short stories, television, and movies... what am I missing? Or, what should I be reading/watching so that this stuff isn't so far over my head?
The Singularity will probably occur near when scientists can pinpoint the human soul and consciousness. Much of the PopSci article involves creating an electronic copy of the human brain and possibly connecting a chip wired with one's mind to a human body less the brain. One fictional space traveler mentioned leaves behind a copy of herself on Earth and uploads her brain into a small virtual spaceship. This leads to questions such as: will the traveler on the spaceship be conscious, or will it be a mechanized human, emulating human qualities but not itself being human? Will the traveler as the one who planned the trip only be conscious of the copy on earth, or can she switch to only being conscious of the copy in space (leaving the Earth copy as an e-human or a separate soul)? At what point, both in evolution and in the womb, does one become conscious? If two people (successfully) switch brains in transplants, who is who?
If scientists can answer (or satisfactorily dismiss) these questions, we will be close to the fundamental change needed for the Singularity.
Another author for ya: Greg Egan. I never got to finish Quarantine, but good science fiction like his tries to make you think 'outside of the box' compared to your usual spaceship/futuristic fare.
Mind, I don't read many books for fun... the last book I actually bought with the Butlerian Jihad, got halfway through it before I realised the Dune Prelude series was a pile of steaming crap.
Just my $0.02
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
When reading through the article's talk of the Singularity ushering in a posthuman era of genetic modifications, human implants, and computer brains that exceed people's own abilities, I remembered a hugely popular story from 1999 that dealt with all of these issues and more. What book did the story appear in? It didn't appear in any book. Was it at the multiplex? No, you didn't watch it in theatres (neither live nor screened) or on television.
You played it on your computer. That game was Deus Ex.
I think the article was narrowminded in that it was expecting modern science fiction to surface in the same medium as it had in its heyday. (Remember too that except in the U.S., most of the world had a serious paper shortage in the late 40s and early 50s following the war, so the print industry today isn't necessarily equipped to be the proper breeding ground). But Science Fiction comes in the form of computer games (single player or MMORG), little Flash animations, and the like. The "authors" of Deus Ex imagined a future world that had much of what the article was yearning for, and maybe the authors of the article just need to accept that storytelling can take differing forms.
I'm a writer and a programmer and I didn't understand the description either.
One thing I can say, though, is that fiction doesn't have to be true. Hence the name! Basing what science fiction authors can or cannot do in terms of what is likely to happen in the future, is absurd. I know someone will say that truth is stranger than fiction, and that fiction must hew close to the truth. Anyone who actually takes that pap seriously should not be reading sci-fi (hard or otherwise) or any other form of fiction, for that matter, since it is speculative. (Blah, blah blah, probability, spare me. Prove to me that Genghis Khan did not come from a distant galaxy.)
The real assumption is that there is macro-truth (background, history, physics, etc.) and micro-truth (characters behaving, their interactions, etc). If the term fiction can apply, authors should be given the liberty to fake whatever they please. (And again, spare me any argument involving economics and who is going to read a book about talking toasters from the 35th century, etc..)
His assertion that this depends on the progress of computing hardware seems absurd to me. We already have as much computing hardware as we need, where computing hardware is all essentially capable of handling Turing-complete computation (in the lax sense of the phrase, obviously computational power and storage are finite, but not so limited that it's hampering our ability to simulate human intelligence).
Then he makes the assumption that if we are able to create a human-level artificial intelligence (which is itself a somewhat ill-defined concept), it will be able to figure out how to improve itself to be substantially "better" than human intelligence. But do we really have any metric for what that even means? I mean, we still don't have a firm grasp on even measuring human intelligence very well.
I am not saying his scenario is impossible or that it won't happen. Computers can already do certain tasks far better than humans, and that will continue to be the case. He seems to want a program capable of designing other programs. Is the first program Turing-test passing? Is it "smarter" than humans because it is better at recognizing patterns and reacting to them? Or smarter because it can generate and test hypotheses more rapidly? I feel very uncomfortable with drawing lots of conclusions about the future rate of progress of a topic that feels so ill defined to me.
I agree that mastering consciousness and thought, and understanding the human brain will be one of the next great frontiers of science, and with that mastery ought to eventually come much better ability to simulate it in silico. But I'm not willing to speculate too much farther ahead than that.
The article claims that suddenly technology is too hard to predict. I just don't see how that's new. The article mentions Clarke's idea of geosynchronous satellites, but that has to be one of the few technologies actually predicted by SF. In general, SF is pretty laughable when it comes to prediction. 1950's SF regularly had FTL travel and intelligent robots -- but people used slide rules -- computer technology was completely ignored. Even visionary 1960's writers like John Brunner, who predicted a sort of Internet, assumed that computers would be centralized and what everyone would have would just be terminals.
The basic point I suspect the article is trying to make is thus: the field of speculative science fiction is no longer what it once was. Look back at the middle of the century, and you'll see that the predictive writings of science fiction authors all contained major assumptions about the social and cultural settings of the future. Even the ones that realized that fact, and tried to compensate, still failed for a lack of ability to predict. Absolutely no one in 1950 had an inkling of what the computer would do to society in fifty years. Looking at the history of science fiction, you see that while on occasion a few skilled authors make an accurate prediction or two, the vast majority of speculative sci fi fails dramatically to come close to reality. In the last two or three decades, it is generally considered that this situation has been growing steadily worse. Cultural changes are effectively impossible to predict long-term, because of their very nature (many small meme introductions over a long period of time), but now it becomes increasingly difficult to predict scientific and social changes. If the WWW had such an incredible impact on global economy within a span of nine or ten years, how can anyone hope to guess what will happen in eighty or ninety years?
Just want to recommend Ken MacLeods Newton's wake as post-singularity SF book.
Singularity Sky by Charles Stross should also be good, but I haven't read that one yet.
TC - My Photos..
I mean, you use your terminal (aka "web browser") to connect to the master server that holds the content and responds to your queries (aka the "web site") all the time, don't you? None of that stuff is actually on your home machine, you're just accessing it remotely...
Hey, if these Brains are surround stars for power they'd have to start their creation on both sides of the planet to prevent the sun from orbiting around the increasingly massive brain. If that was the case the two halves of the brain would have to orbit around the sun as they grew until they connected. So depending on the speed of their orbit, before the two halves connected, you'd get something that looked like a pulsar from our perspective.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
There is no reason to assume that bipedal intelligent life will be rare. Consider the evolutionary trail we followed. Four legged creatures walk and run very well, but six legged creatures are problematic--they tend to stumble and jerk a lot. Not a problem if you're a small light animal like an ant, but military research into six legged miltary ATV's was aborted because of this problem. The bigger the creature, the more pronounced the problem.
Intelligent, tool using animals must readapt at least some of their limbs to prehnensile appendages. Given that their predecessors will probably begin with four legs, you end up with a creature that walks upright, with two limbs for manipulation, sense organs located high up for good vantage, close to the brain for high speed transmission of information. In other words, humanoid.
It is possible to start with eight legs and end up with six, or six and end up with four on the floor, and high gravity species may well take this route. But there is still that problematic number six before or after, and there is also the problem of energy expenditure of moving all those extra limbs, especially in high gravity.
The singularity is a possibility, but the increasing ignorance of science, not to mention growing political naivety, threatens this. It is hard to build a vast distributed intelligence when ignorance seems to be growing more common. The singularity also threatens more archaic world views, which will become more militant as this threat becomes apparent to them. The singularity would either eradicate religion entirely, or become the dominant religion itself. This is the real root of the conflicts in the middle east--an attempt to preserve what is essentially a medieval world view against the assault of modernity itself. The singularity is also partially dependent on the availability of energy. If we can make fusion work as a safe, cheap, energy supply, we're home free. Otherwise the singularity may recede even if the science and technology is available to make it possible.
There is one last problem with any vision of the future: if the prophet can understand the messiah, then the prophet is the messiah. The messiah here is any radical, Copernican revolution which changes the entire world view. You could not predict the theory of general relativity unless you already had it, that is, unless you had already worked it out yourself. Nearly all hard science fiction works upon the technological consequences of existing science. Science fiction fills in the blanks for things we know we should be able to do but cannot do yet. That target moves with each advance in science.
Finally, most works of science fiction work by extrapolating current social and political trends, which can change suddenly and without notice. Cold War science fiction often extrapolated the Cold war into the far future; William Gibson's Neuromancer, written at the height of Japan's rise as an economic dynamo, had Japanese culture permeating all things western. This aspect of it has become somewhat dated. I suspect that a lot of science fiction writers might be tempted to extrapolate the current religious tensions into the far future. But I suspect that a lot of Muslims may be getting tired of being medieval peasants and having their neighbourhoods blown up by fanatics and the armies sent to fight them. This too could change, and the change may be very swift when it comes.
The internet did not cause a "massive transformation of human culture". It has made hardly any difference at all to human culture.
The telegraph, now there's an invention that had a big effect. The telephone less so, the mobile phone and pager less again, and the internet less than all these. There's a law of diminishing returns about these advances: the effects they have on our lives are less and less than that which went before. Compare the effects of the steam engine to the effects of the internal combustion engine. Compare your vaunted DOOMIII to DOOMII (it is a little bit slicker, that's all) as compared to DOOM and what went before.
Computers have changed hardly at all in the last thirty years, even. The sort of software running on your desktop at a kernel level is not exactly revolutionary, it is just the same sort of thing as 30 years ago. COmputers, they may get faster, and a little slicker, but I think they're about done as far as radical change goes.
Humanity is screeching to a halt. New technology has little to no effect on people's lives any more.
It is sad that the most revolutionary and transforming effects could be acheived with the simple technologies we have already developed, like anti-malarial drugs, vitamin supplements, fertilisers, and so on, than can possibly be acheived by any future development that is remotely likely.
But still the Cory Doctorows of the world will try to convince us that some shiny new silicon bauble is more life-transforming than giving a life-saving drug invented in 1920 to a community of African peasants.
The internet did not cause a "massive transformation of human culture". It has made hardly any difference at all to human culture.
Some of the unexpected changes:
1) The free press no longer belongs to "the man who can afford one." Everybody has the equivalent of their own printing press. Individual bloggers, unaffiliated with major news organizations, are now a significant influence on political races.
2) Distribution of music has been transformed, and the control of traditional studios of media distribution is eroding.
3) Virtually everybody worldwide has access to research capabilities that were previously available only to the wealthy and those who had access to a major library are now available worldwide.
4) Government control of information distribution has become enormously more difficult. Interdiction of taboo political or cultural information (e.g. pornography) is much weaker.
5) There is now a market available to the average citizen worldwide in almost any product you can identify, new or used.
Computers have changed hardly at all in the last thirty years, even. The sort of software running on your desktop at a kernel level is not exactly revolutionary, it is just the same sort of thing as 30 years ago.
However, applications and interfaces have changed enormously. Almost everybody now has access to music, photo, typesetting, and video editing facilities that were available only to professionals 30 years ago.
It is sad that the most revolutionary and transforming effects could be acheived with the simple technologies we have already developed, like anti-malarial drugs, vitamin supplements, fertilisers, and so on, than can possibly be acheived by any future development that is remotely likely.
Yes, if only we could make more rational, more humanistic use of the resources we already have, the world would be transformed. But practically speaking, this is as much fantasy as orcs and wizards. While the technology of doing more with computers is rapidly advancing, the "social technology" of achieving in practice the sort of "revolutionary and transforming effects" that you envision seems to have stalled decades ago.
It is typical of spoiled first-worlders to talk as if no other people exist, other than spoiled first-worlders, and to think that incremental improvements on their quality of life are great cultural revolutiona.
Are you adequate?
To be honest, I really hate articles like this. I predict that the
future will be pretty much like the present only with more people and
more problems.
SF utopians please note:
- With regards to the human brain, we are just barely getting started.
We can't cure or even partially remedy any of the diseases related to
brain/nerve damage (strokes, Alzheimer's, cord injuries). The idea
that we will ever be able to create Matrix-style VR or "upload"
people's minds is just wishful thinking at this point.
- We haven't solved the strong AI problem (P=NP).
- We haven't solved the problem of getting spaceships into orbit
without using bulky multi-stage rockets and ungodly amounts of fuel.
No one really knows how we will get to Mars let alone past the Solar
System.
- We haven't solved the basic unification problem in Physics
(reconciling QM with GR so we can have some clue about the nature of
gravity). Fifty years after Einstein's death we are still working on
the same riddles he left behind.
- We haven't solved the energy problem. Sustainable fusion keeps
getting pushed further back each decade.
- And, more fundamentally, we haven't solved the problem of our own
natures. Every time we have a technological breakthrough the first
thing we worry about is someone using it to blow us all up. The "Star
Trek" ideal that Earth will eventually be a unified planet is, well,
just turn on the news, folks...
Let's all try to work on that stuff before we start worrying about
Verner Vinge-style singularities. Okay thanks...
Surely an important point missing from any discussion of future trends is the eventual depletion of our nice and transportable instant-energy-in-a-tank natural resources. Assuming this isn't errant nonsense, how exactly are we to achieve a singularity without constant electricity from the burning of oil, coal or gas? It's all very well assuming that science will come up with the answer, but personally I see no reason why that assumption is valid. Current forms of alternate electricity generation are unsatisfactory, either from the long lasting pollution and inherent danger of nuclear power, or the unpredictability of wind, wave or sea power.
To believe in a singularity in 50 years is to ignore the restructuring and jealous guarding of stocks that will increasingly take place in the next 30 years. I'm personally sure that our descendent generations will curse us for squandering our natural resources on flimflam entertainments and unnecessary luxuries like SUVs and computers.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
Essentially, the expansion of the internet into almost every country, and the continued growth of open source software methods has created a sort of "mini-singularity".
Through cooperation and collaberation on the internet, people have the ability to create and expand software much much rapidly than could have been concieved of.. even as late as the 1990s.
As internet service is expanded to more and more sections of the world, and as computer literacy keeps rising, expect this trend to develop exponentially.
Don't think in terms of simply computing power, but think in terms of creative power.
From a certain viewpoint, isn't the internet just a way to link human brains and creativity to create a "beowulf cluster" of people?
And aren't the rapid development of things like the wikipedia, GNU tools, the linux kernal, and so on, a result of this new cluster of people?
Who needs to manufacture a super-human machine intelligence, when you already have 6 billion Human beings that you can link into a cluster?
I can't remember any stories where the characters use the toilet, but I assume they still crap in the future.
Maybe we can assume cell-phones are like crappers; everywhere and not worth mentioning.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Okay -- I'll go out on a limb and say they'll be no smarter-than-human intelligence in, say, the next 1000 years.
Of course, a definition of intelligence would be helpful, and we don't have a very good one yet. The Turing test, which I like for recognizing intelligence, doesn't help much determining how intelligent something is.
I think we can all agree that number crunching isn't intelligence. I think of intelligence as the ability to find similarities between things that are different, and differences between things that are similary. Basically an ambiguity processing engine. Needs to be terribly adaptable, too.
Anyways, I think the human brain stopped developing a long time ago because it already contains all the processing power needed for such actions. In fact, it's overkill. The proof is that while our hardware is all very similar, our "intelligence" varies greatly. Our current limitations on intelligence are limitations on learning, not on processing. Even if we built a better brain, we wouldn't have any idea what to feed it. We don't have any idea how to feed ourselves. Most geniuses arise by chance.
Also, I think we strive for the elimination of all ambiguity, and concoct ideas of super-intelligence, or God, to represent this ideal. But I also think that we're fooling ourselves if we think there is a "right" answer to every question. If we were really intelligent we might realize the limits on intelligence are inherent, and not a lack of.
So I think people can be smarter than they are today, and that a super-brain could be built. But i think the technology would be in education and environment. And I think that it would still be confused most of the time, kind of like us.
Cheers.
One of the problems with the type of extrapolation which the SF writers are talking about is that they can't or don't account for the plateau, it's been mentioned in the thread already but trends simply cannot continue increasing to the point where they reach singularity in the real world, some limit always kicks in to form a plateau. We simply can't see what it is at the moment.
In many cases, physical limits intervene. Exponential increase in speed of travel does not imply that we'll find a way to break the light speed barrier (but we might). But the singularity being spoken of here is not a physical singularity, but a singularity of extrapolation--a kind of discontinuity or state transition beyond which simple extrapolation is impossible, because what lies on the other side is qualitatively different from what came before. And those are actually rather common in the real world.
I've been trying to explain to laymen and peers for the past four years that Google and Deja are more important to mankind than the human genome project. But I've never been able to get anyone to appreciate the importance of IA. When Deja died a couple of years ago I was distraught. When Google picked them up my sense of relief was immense. For the past two weeks access to Google has been unreliable; and it's been awful to experience. I truly believe we are allowing Google too much power and control over the single greatest accumulation of information in history. I may sound melodramatic - but I am very sincere.
The problems of sci-fi aren't the singularity. The problem is that the genre has undergone a huge paradigm shift. Take a look at the current sci-fi shelves and you'll find half of it is outright fantasy, another quarter is a rehash of the last two decade's themes, and the rest are "biting social commentaries" set in a space opera or cyberpunk milieu. Out of the hundreds of scifi novels published each year, you might find half a dozen that break out of the mold.
What happened to popular music is happening to science fiction.
We are in the bronze age of science fiction. The golen age was marked by an unabashed love of science and technology, with a dash of unadulterated libertarianism thrown in. Stories of this era showed that a free individual could solve any problem given enough gadgetry and smarts. Next was the silver age of scifi, when we started to invent alient societies and extrapolate cultures into the future. No longer were Mesklinites mere copies of human beings. The science took a back seat in the new wave authors' vehicles, but the science was still there.
Now we're in the bronze age, and frankly it's a fizzle. Most of it is fantasy with a thin veneer of techno-trappings. A signficant amount of it is downright hostile to science and technology. All of the genre's rigorousness has evaporated. It isn't just books, it's movies and television too.
The problem isn't the singularity, the problem is that science fiction has become popular.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
This silliness reveals the lack of understanding in a list like this. It needs to be remembered that these are works of fiction, and events in them are story elements, not predictions. Science fiction writers are not mediums peering into crystal balls. To the extent that science fiction can be judged on predictive abilities, it is in the general shape of future technology, and the effects it has on people's lives. Furthermore, elements of technology can be in the story, not because the author believes them probable or even possible, but because it allows a certain kind of story to be told. For example, rapid and common interstellar travel is part of the background of many stories just because it is the only way to tell that sort of story. Especially, conflating elements from various stories into a timeline is only reasonable if the author has included them into a coherent "future history", which many stories are not.
(KM) Sounds like a control problem. That we have trouble making a six legged vehicle walk smoothly does not mean that nature will have trouble making a six legged creature walk smoothly. Do you have anything else to back this assertion?
(Thangodin) Intelligent, tool using animals must readapt at least some of their limbs to prehensile appendages.
(KM) Er, No. It doesn't have to be a walking limb. Spiders manipulate things very well and thay haven't readapted anything. My dog manipulates things with his mouth and elephants manipulate things with their noses. Beavers manipulate things with their tails. Give them a little incentive and a quarter of a million years to practice up, and they'll manipulate things as well as you or I.
(Thangodin) Given that their predecessors will probably begin with four legs,
(KM) Four legs is common among large terrestrial animals, but I don't see any particular reason why this must be so elsewhere. Four works well, but so would fourty.
(Thangodin) you end up with a creature that walks upright,
(KM) Walking upright gives you the chance for a better view, and is good for developing a finely tuned sense of balance, but I don't see how it is generally better than a downright position.
(Thangodin) with two limbs for manipulation,
(KM) There's nothing special about two. One would work, or three, or twenty-three.
(Thangodin) sense organs located high up for good vantage,
(KM) This is highly dependent of the details of your circumstances. Butterflies taste with their feet. Fish "hear" with their sides. Scorpions "hear" with their feet.
(Thangodin) close to the brain for high speed transmission of information. In other words, humanoid.
(KM) Putting your main brain way up high off the ground makes it vulnerable to falling and having your fellow humanoids wack you on the head to good effect. Me, I'd rather have the brain safely tucked away in the torso somewhere, or maybe be a distributed organ like the immune sytem.
(KM) I'm not convinced that the transmission lag is all that bad. I can shuffle along a path in the dark by feeling it with my feet , and that's a full length two way trip for the signals.
(Thangodin) there is also the problem of energy expenditure of moving all those extra limbs, especially in high gravity.
(KM) Make twice as many supports, but with the same total mass, and you gain redundancy and use about the same energy.
(KM) Nature has not used every possible shape or form here on Earth. Evolution is quirky and follows tight constraints that depend on your initial conditions. Because a thing isn't in service here doesn't mean it can't be the number one favorite elsewhere.
Ooh, that wouldn't be a veiled censorship-avoiding way of talking about the issues of torture in present society and its war on terrorism, would it?
Nobody ever said all hard sci-fi types have to have the same requirements for "hard"-ness. And incidentally, believing in giant cats and human beings who are bred for luck violates absolutely 0 laws of physics. Giant cats are perfectly plausible form of aliens (and they aren't exactly cats anyway), while luck is, by nature, beyond science, so whether or not the lottery winners of Ringworld are actually lucky through some manipulation of quantum state parameters (which are ultimately just probabilities, so who's to say the working of the whole universe isn't dictated by luck?), or it's just a massive coincidence, again a concept disjoint from science.
Actually, I've never thought of Niven's work as hard science fiction under the traditional definition of hard (in which the author tries to work out the scientific principles to everything he uses to the 500th degree), as I consider it to be more fantastical than engrossed in the principles, but I can see the poster's point, in that Niven does put a lot of effort into making sure that his stories aren't scientific impossibilities (like, oh, a Death Star that can zap a planet with one satisfyingly dramatic but energistically implausible shot), and basically wrote the sequel to Ringworld just to address a number of items he didn't explain/overlooked, like the stability of the ringworld.
Fans of hard science fiction probably read it more because they appreciate the effort the author has put in to crafting a story that doesn't make them gag, since these fans actually know a little bit about the real underpinnings of the science involved (unlike probably most readers of sci-fi, who would probably be just as happy to accept magical trolls in a sci-fi story). Some of the curtain has been pulled back for these folks, and it'd just be painful to read something that doesn't respect some basic ground rules (cue the rants about the behavior of sound and gravity in space). That doesn't mean they can't suspend disbelief in other areas, or that they don't have good imaginations and can enjoy a flight of fantasy (in fact, such people are likely to be scientists or engineers, so they probably have highly developed imaginations, more so than what your average administrative assistant or even code monkey might have). To say otherwise is just being elitist, as if the only way you can have an expansive imagination is by believing in wizards and elfs.
As for myself, I can enjoy almost anything, but please, how enjoyable would a contemporary novel be if the author didn't even bother to take into account the most trivial aspects of everyday living? You could call it a brilliant piece of fantasy if the author neglects to mention how a character makes their living, or their motivations, or even describes how one thing ends up affecting something else, but it's more likely to be just plain bad writing, of which there is nearly infinitely more than good.
Enough has been written about The Singularity that any SF writer writing about 50+ years into the future should at least explain why if one isn't in their universe. Doesn't have to be a long explanation: put it in and go on with the story. Good SF writing hasn't been stopped by actual advances in science. Discovering that Venus is 700 degrees, going to the moon, or widespread PCs outdated some earlier SF stories' technology. But those events inspired many more new writers and new stories. The possibility of a singularity in a few decades should have less of an effect than those actual advances.
And if a singularity does happen, there could be a second golden age of SF. You don't just write about universes, you create them. Certainly Alternate History will be filled with that, like "what would happen if Reagan *won* the 1980 election?" versions of earth being run within the trillions of ongoing simulations (and no, the Matrix wasn't original- SF movies are usually far behind the SF literature.)
SF writers who are particularly good at sensawunda in a post singularity (and/or humans dealing with beings larger than ourselves) universe include Greg Benford, the 'can make you empathize with loss in the life of regular deathless people' Greg Egan, the 'pulls off multiple believable economic systems in one novel' Ken Macleod, the recently reviewed Richard Morgan, Ian Banks, and of course Cory Doctorow and the early Slashdot adoptor (and I worry that he's going to hit an Algernon moment soon- how can he keep writing so well?) Charlie Stross.
Many are scientists, but you don't have to be a scientist to be a good SF writer. You do have t
I don't see how this article could be considered anything other than a rehash of concerns that've been aired before, time and time again.
SF writers have always been in the prediction bind. They do the best they can with what they have. The vast majority of the time they're completely, utterly wrong. This was true in the past, is true today, and will be true in the future.
So what? Most stories aren't about technology anyway, but about people. This is true no matter what the genre. The idea that SF writers are having more difficulty predicting the future than they have in the past is just plain bullshit; for reference, pick damned near anything from the 30's to the 70's and see just how laughable most of those 'predictions' are today.
Not that it matters. It's the story that counts, not the technology (or lack of it) that's described.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
The same holds for robots. If we manage to engineer robots that are just as intelligent as us, all it takes to design robots that are MORE intelligent than us is to allow random variations in the design specs, and use methods such as crossover to promote the design variations that are evaluated as most successful. Yes, it will result in a lot of failures, but many could be discarded by validation and simulation, and would eventually be successfull.