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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."
I for one welcome our apathetic first posting overlords, and remind them that as a trusted slashdot personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground overlord welcoming centers.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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?
Lets imagine you can upload your mind into a machine.
It will not be you. It will be a copy. You will still be the one that dies afterwards.
It would be you if a progressive upgrade path could be found from biochemical to mechanical/electrical system.
The copy however will believe that he is is you as he will have no memory of his existence after the "transfer" unlike poor flesh you in the xerox machine.
Who has legal rights until/after fleshy death?
Even then the copy will be subject to mechanical breakdowns, loss of sensation, and other issues interacting with the real world.
Would they want to interact with normal world? Would they prefer a virtual world?
As a society I feel that we are nowhere near ready for such questions, and in any case I strongly suspect individual sanity would not survive transfer.
For a good fictional account of this (there are many) I still hold the Gateway books by Frederick Pohl - and the death of Robinette Broadhead and the society of electronic people stored after death.
In the book, to interact with us really slow and boring humans he creates an electronic avatar and animates it whilst having a fun time in virtual fantasy world, checking on it every while to see if anything interesting has been said and instructing it on what to say next.
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.
People who consider the singularity something to be worried about missed the point and/or watch too many movies. A technological singularity is not a world-ending scenario. It's the first step on the road to divinity.
Although new developments are happening faster and faster, the energy to generate them (money) is getting greater and greater. So to get to a point where developments happen concurrently or very very close together will require vase amouts of money. Probably more than is currently available.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
I read a paper a few years back (somewhere webby, but i can't remember where) that came to the conclusion ... "If it is at all possible to build a virtual system with enough detail to describe our universe, then it is probable we are in one already."
... giving rise to 1st, 2nd, 3rd,... and n-th tier simulations. ... which inevitably gave rise to the old post, "You're very clever, young man, very clever, but it's turtles all the way down!"
As I remember, the conversation threads then devolved into whether or not it would be possible for one of those virtual systems to, within the simulation, build a virtual simulation with the same resolution
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte
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.
Gee, someone who believes some completely un-provable being exists finds what other people believe is 'humorous'.
That's the height of irony.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on