I would think the key line of attack in trying to describe why a singularity prediction is reasonable is in making clear what you are predicting and what you are not predicting.
Guys like Horgan hear a few sentences about the “singularity” and think humanoid robots, flying cars, phasers and force fields, that we’ll be living in the star-trek universe.
Of course, as anyone with the Bayes-skilz of Eliezer knows, start making detailed predictions like that and you’re sure to be wrong about most of it, even if the basic idea of a radically altered social structure and technology beyond our current imagination is highly probable. And that’s the key: “beyond our current imagination”. The specifics of what will happen aren’t very predictable today. If they were, we’d already be in the singularity. The things that happen will seem strange and almost incomprehensible by today’s standards, in the way that our world is strange and incomprehensible by the standards of the 19th century.
The last 200 years already are much like a singularity from the perspective of someone looking forward from 15th century europe and getting a vision of what happened between 1800 and 2000, even though the basic groundwork for that future was already being laid.
I would think the key line of attack in trying to describe why a singularity prediction is reasonable is in making clear what you are predicting and what you are not predicting.
Guys like Horgan hear a few sentences about the “singularity” and think humanoid robots, flying cars, phasers and force fields, that we’ll be living in the star-trek universe.
Of course, as anyone with the Bayes-skilz of Eliezer knows, start making detailed predictions like that and you’re sure to be wrong about most of it, even if the basic idea of a radically altered social structure and technology beyond our current imagination is highly probable. And that’s the key: “beyond our current imagination”. The specifics of what will happen aren’t very predictable today. If they were, we’d already be in the singularity. The things that happen will seem strange and almost incomprehensible by today’s standards, in the way that our world is strange and incomprehensible by the standards of the 19th century.
The last 200 years already are much like a singularity from the perspective of someone looking forward from 15th century europe and getting a vision of what happened between 1800 and 2000, even though the basic groundwork for that future was already being laid.