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IEEE Special Report On the Singularity
jbcarr83 writes "The IEEE Spectrum is running a special issue on the technological singularity as envisioned by Vernor Vinge and others. Articles on both sides of the will it/won't it divide appear, though most take the it will approach. I found Richard A.L. Jones' contribution, 'Rupturing The Nanotech Rapture,' to be of particular interest. He puts forward some very sound objections to nanomachines of the Drexler variety."
Mankind has been progressing technologically in steps that seem to get closer and closer together. The theory is that at some point, technological advances will begin to happen all at once, with the emergence of things like sentient AI and usable quantum engineering. Basically, technological transcendence.
It's a pretty silly idea, but everyone has their own vision of nirvana.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
http://www.simulation-argument.com/classic.html That's what you're thinking of. And honestly, it does make some sense, but I'm not sure if replacing God with unbounded recursion is much more pleasing.
IIRC the term singularity can refer to anyplace that predictive systems appear break down.
I was listening to a talk on hypercanes quite some time ago, and the lecturer was using the term singularity to describe the point beyond which the weather system became self-sustaining, a situation for which the predictive equations could not account. Once the predictive systems are expanded the 'singularity' is 'pushed back' to the point where the systems break down again.
Look it up on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity It's the point where machines will be able to evolve technology faster than human thinking can. So, it's the point where we are no longer the most significant sentient race on this planet.
In this context it refers to a technological singularity as posited by Vernor Vinge, Eric Drexler et. al.: An accelerating feedback loop of technology leading to better, faster technology is cycling down towards zero time between improvements at which point progress will literally leap forward faster than we can imagine - a singularity in technology.
Most singulitarians expect the first human-equivalent AIs circa 2025 and the singularity circa 2045.
There's a reason it's also called the Rapture of the Nerds :)
Minor nitpick: Futurists make a distinction between "strongly" and "weakly" Godlike AI. Strongly Godlike AI refers to an intelligence that is for all meaningful purposes God - effectively unbounded control over space and time. Weakly Godlike AI refers to a being that intellectually transcends us in ways we can't imagine, but is still bound by the laws of the universe. Most talk about the Singularity focuses on a weakly Godlike scenario.
Christianity and the belief in a technological singularity are not mutually exclusive.
It is not possible to build such a simulation given our current knowledge of the laws of the universe. So whoever built this simulation ensured that it would not just devolve into turtles.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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More than likely I will die. But substantially later than someone 200 years ago would. Life expectancy has been going up and up. Life expectancy topped out at about 40 in the early 20th century in Britain, and about 30 in the Middle Ages in Britain. Actually, I'd say that I've got a much better shot of living to be 100 or 120 than anyone did 200 years ago. So it's technically not accurate to say that I will die just as surely as someone from then.
Ray Kurzweil, in his book The Singularity Is Near (the only book I've read on the topic), sets the date for around 2045. He makes further predictions for things before that; here's a nice list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Kurzweil#Future_Predictions
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
I am reminded of an article published in Analog around 1970 showing the exponential curve of the speed of human travel. It plotted very nicely: horse, locomotive, aeroplane, rocket. At the time human speed had recently hit a new high: the Apollo moon missions with humans traveling at 11.09 km/sec (Apollo 10 in 1969 was the fastest). The author projected we would be traveling close to the speed of light and be prepared to colonize the galaxy before 2000.
Almost 40 years later the fastest any human has ever travelled is (drum roll) 11.09 km/sec on Apollo 10. It looks like, with luck, humans may again travel about as fast in another 20 years.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
says it all
End of lineI agree that melting the planet into grey goo is unlikely to happen on any short scale in the forseeable future.
In terms of what we do that is better than nature:
* reproducing sound & video
* travel long distances
* travel at great speeds
* convert sunlight, air & water into calories (nitrogen fertilizer; caveat: we use semi-natural plants to do it)
* blow shit up
* survive a variety of harsh environments (cold, heat, vacuum, high pressure)
* build shelter
And some things we do that afaik nature (at least, other living things) just doesn't do:
* produce massive energy densities (fission & fusion)
* heat & cool our environments (really probably belongs under "harsh environments", above)
* simulation
Of course, since man and his technologies are really part of the natural world, this gets ambiguous - by "doing it better than nature", I mean doing it better than any other comparable animal does it with their technology & physiology.
The term "singularity" for the center bit of a black hole was stolen from the existing definition of "the point at which the model fails", because it was the point at which the model fails. The usage in TFA is proper.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Exponential growth is nevertheless unsustainable:
* Assume the Earth can sustain 1000 times as many people as it does now.
* Assume the solar system can sustain 1000 times that many people (Dyson sphere, whatever, who knows).
* Assume the nearby galaxy is fantasticly rich in resources, with a system that can support this same high population every 100 cubic light years.
* Assume that we can colonize all systems within the light cone of "now" - that is, we have the resources of every system we can reach at the speed of light.
These assumpions are all remarkable optimistic, and yet we'd reach the limit of exponential growth quickly: at a 2% annual rate of population growth, we'd hit the wall within 2000 years, having consumed all possible resources within a sphere 4000 light years across.
Exponential growth of anything is never sustainable, long term.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Nature reproduces sound and video in our heads pretty damn well.
As for long distance travel, many animals are capable of traveling much further without refueling/maintenance than any machine (outside of a space craft) can.
We do 'great speeds' better than nature, given.
Any process based on plant energy conversion can not beat the efficiency of plants themselves. However, plants convert less than 1% of sunlight into usable energy. With PV, we have them beat by an order of magnitude in efficiency. As far as total calories converted per year, plants have us beat, though.
Blow shit up: given, but some animals do use explosives (bombardier beetles) or mechanical shock-waves (mantis shrimp ) to attack or defend.
Survive a variety of harsh environments: not even close. Nature has us beat, hands down. Just look at extremophiles.
Build shelter, debatable.
Massive energy densities, given.
Heat and cool our environment. Bees and termites do this in very sophisticated ways.
Simulation. Not even close, nature has us beat. Oh, what, you think that's actually reality you are witnessing inside your own head?
No, it's the most sophisticated simulation ever built. Or rather, two simulations, an expressive one and a predictive one. The first is built up out of raw sense data, the second creates the same type of output stream, but based on predictions not sense data. The two streams are compared up to sixty times per second, and when they don't match, the experienced is raised up to conscious awareness.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton