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Technological Singularity a bad thing?; Rapture of the nerds indeed
Topic Started: Apr 21 2006, 07:23 PM (1,898 Views)
Tech Junkie
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Styx Ferryman
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Thought: Is the potential arrival of a technological singularity a bad thing? After all, it's only a point where our ability to predict conditions breaks down. I submit that such has happened in the past. I mean, hit France in the 1000's and ask them what they believe the year 2006 will be like. They would have no clue.

The further away a point in the future is, the harder it is to predict conditions in it. Heck, if you listen to the right sources from the 50s, we should have moon colonies and rocket packs by now (with no PCs, of course). Go past a certain point, and any prediction is a wild guess at best.

The only difference here is that we're about to have the potential to radically alter ourselves (see our potential evolution into another lifeform by tech or generics, and the dark side of that, the Borg problem), which presents a slew of new concerns. Thoughts?
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Corpus Dei
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it does make sense...i mean ask me what im doing tomorrow...im going to prom and out to eat and all that jazz...but ask me what im doing next saturday...i couldnt tell you...its all in theory the same...and logical...i have no idea what life will be like in 10, 20, 30 years...it will be relatively the same...but everything around me would be different...live streaming phones in my house...a whole wall a plasma screen...my entire house a giant solar panel to create its own power...me and scietists alike have on hypotheses on whats to come
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NeoAegis
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Science fiction is quickly becoming science fact as we discover new possibilities that are within the laws of physics.
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Sarpedon
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My brain is that of a simple one. So I really cant understand the concept of a tech singularity. Is it simply that our technology advances to fast? If so how can such a thing end the world.
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Tech Junkie
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Styx Ferryman
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TECHnically, a technological singularity couldn't end the world all by its lonesome. It's simply a point at wich technology becomes too advanced for our modern prediction methods to fathom what the world (or tech beyond it) would be like.

However, it does open up several possibilities, just based on forseeable tech leading up to it (or as part of it):

Rampant AI somehow screws us over
Insane Upload does the same
The "Grey Goo" scenereo
Participant evolution into something decidedly not human (i.e. Homo Excelcior)
Some form of Nuclear disaster
The Borg problem
Some bizarre GM organism accident

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singularity
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Crazy Doctor's Apprentice
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I detect a fundamental misunderstanding of what the tech singularity actually entails. It goes to the very definition of the word 'singularity,' the mathematical point at which any method of understanding ceases to make sense. You can call it infinity, or god, or whatever you wish. It's not a matter of predicting what technologies will develop later. After the function of technological development hits the curve to infinity, no one will give a damn if Intel has released the 8.93 GHz Pentium Omega that the global government is going to use as the CPU for the world fart suppressor.
Imagine a black hole, for instance, a gravitational singularity--- once an observer crosses the threshhold of the event horizon and actually witnesses the unknown singularity inside, he/she is consumed by it, with no hope of return. Simply, there is no turning back from the singularity. Same with the technological variant. Once man approaches the singularity, there is no turning back. Right now we could nuke ourselves back into the stone age, or back the the year 1000, or some inventive terrorist could crash the entire internet and all computers wired to it and set us all back just twenty years. But post-singularity there won't be an internet. No industry. Mankind and his way of life are gone. He will have become, or will have been surplanted by, something else. For lack of understanding, that something else would be god to us mere mortals.
Consider the strange things we see that are beyond rational explanation. Evidence of ancient technologies or understandings in South America and Egypt, spirits and the mothman. What if all this is simply the remnants of some ancient civilization that went singularity ten thousand years ago just before homo sapiens showed up on the timeline? No one knows what's up with the mothman but he's been seen the world over. An entity we fail to understand, in motive, means, or even existence. Sounds like a god to me.
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Blackheart
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well every ancient civilization has there own invisionment of a dragon, and despite there are some scientific evidences of dragonlike creatures, (forget the komodo) im not about to believe they exsisted when humans have a way of twisting what they see

the world over they have witnessed mothman...or just a shadow and they all by coincidence made vaugely similar stories

we look back in time to the aztecs, where the jaguar ate all the humans, well doesnt that sound dumb? mothman will in a few thousand years also, a few things like scientology dont take a few thousand years lol
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Tech Junkie
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Styx Ferryman
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Um, there are differences between mathematical and physics singularities. A mathematical singularity is a regress into infinity. This is not what the tech singularity is.

A physics singularity is a point at which all known laws break down and prediction of anything about what goes on within is impossible. This is the proper comparison. The singularity in question will be a point where through our tech, we develop beyond what we can concieve of as human.

Go back 1500 years. Hit England. Ask about what old age is. Then mention how people live into theiar 80s or further where you come from. Further, mention that they rarely get ill, or that they can travel anywhere in the world within hours. Throw in that doctors can cure many of the petty ailments they posess and that people live in climate-controlled edifices that, even among commoners, would humble the king himself.

To them, we would seem godlike and beyond their ability to understand. Flash foreward another 1-200 years from now. Imagine how inconcievable our simplistic lives will seem. They simply won't be able to grasp how we lived, just as we can't really grasp how those in the dark ages lived, and just how dark agers couldn't grasp our way of life, we can't grasp our decendant's ways.

Humanity as a whole will be something so different from what we're accustomed to right now as to be alien. That is the other side of the singularity, and the only semi-sure thing we can predict: Everything will change.
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singularity
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Simply, no.
The article on EM itself argues quite contrarily. Also see this article which describes the theory in a bit more depth. Reading to the table of contents should even be enough.
People in medieval Europe could conceive flight, fast travel, etc. With all due respect, you're missing the point. Science fiction becoming reality is not even the issue. Science fiction predicts warp speed, wormholes, and using a black hole to get our asses all the way to Proxima Centauri in under a day. Post-singularity, these things won't matter. We'll laugh at them, even if they were achieved. That is, if we're still laughing, which we probably won't. The past itself will have become irrelevant, like asking ourselves right now what happened before the big bang. If we don't reach this point, then we haven't gone singularity. Anything else is just normal technological development along an algebraic curve.
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Tech Junkie
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Styx Ferryman
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Darn. Outfoxed.

But, come to think about it, doesn't the fact that science fiction is always ahead of science (well, as long as there's been sci-fi) preclude such a singularity simply because each advance opens up possibilities for more, which sci-fi writers happily exploit?

*goes to reread the wiki article for the third time*
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singularity
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You make an interesting point here, demonstrating that human ingenuity is limited of course (and only) by the brainchildren of its visionaries. And if human visionaries as science fiction writers can only come up with new ideas at an algebraic rate, then the singularity is thus precluded entirely. Remember, of course, this theory is, indeed, still only a theory and thus does not fall into any sort of set physical laws. But recall that if we hit singularity these laws will probably not matter to us, and we may not, and very well probably won't, even see it coming (by nature of the event horizon of the singularity itself).
The primary drive of the technological singularity is man's drive to increase his own intelligence and awareness, or simply the overall powers of his mind. We could say that man's ingenuity and creativity are directly proportional to these powers of intellect, so the smarter mankind (or, for that matter, any other intelligence he creates for his own purposes) becomes, the faster the pace at which he is able to come up with new ideas and turn them into reality. Advances in artificially induced intellectual development are a pretty new breed of science, stemming from genetic engineering all the way to AI, and in between to the idea that mankind might seamlessly merge himself with a machine itself. These sorts of advancements have been increasing at an exponential rate for years now, and were all unheard of before the twentieth century. We'll just have to wait and see how far up the curve will take us.
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Clu
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hmm ya, if i understood correctly, like theyre makin technology right noe that already work, its a computer for paralyzed peopel that lets them walk, but if i remember correctly they need to have it hooked up into their leg etc., and they haveto have a huge desk with them, but it controls their legs and they can walk, it works :huh:
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GoNaDs
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singularity
Apr 25 2006, 09:19 PM
We could say that man's ingenuity and creativity are directly proportional to these powers of intellect, so the smarter mankind (or, for that matter, any other intelligence he creates for his own purposes) becomes, the faster the pace at which he is able to come up with new ideas and turn them into reality.

Then why does it seem that with new technology we may be simply "dumbing down the masses?" Is it possible that technology is also directly proportional to laziness?
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Kalkin
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Actually the rate at which new inventions are being made has been going down for almost a century. I read an article some decade ago that said that currently the invention rate per capita is close the dark ages and still going down. We have only been having new technologies recently, because the population growth has compensated the drop until now. It just is that most of the easy inventions have been invented and further discoveries require more education and funds to get started - those much celebrated AIs doing creating for us are not that advanced after all.
Edited by Kalkin, Sep 1 2010, 03:31 PM.
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