I’m just a visitor in these parts so I’m sure this is common but this is the first I’ve personally seen of some weasling out of/redifing The Singularity.
The Singularity isn’t supposed to be something like the invention of farming or of the internet. It’s supposed to be something AT LEAST as game changing as the Cambrian explosion of vast biodiversity out of single-celled organisms. At least that’s the impression that non-Singularitarians get from happening upon the outskirts of your discussions on the subject.
I suppose as the community has grown and incorporated responsible people into it it’s gotten more boring to the point where it appears likely to soon become a community of linguists warring over the semantics of the thing: “Did The Singularity begin with the invention of the airplane or the internet?”
This is somewhat disappointing and I hope that I’ll be corrected in the comments with mind-blowing (attempted) descriptions of the ineffable.
How is the comparison of the Singularity to the Industrial Revolution weasling out of/redefining the Singularity.
It was defined to me, as a series of events that will eventually lead to the end of life as we currently know it. The Industrial Revolution ended life as people know it prior to the Ind. Rev. It could be said that this was the start of the Technological Singularity.
The Industrial Revolution, introduced, in a very short time, technologies that were so mind-blowing to the people of the time as to provoke the creation of Saboteurs, or Luddites. The primary mode of transportation went from foot/horseback to the automobile and the airplane within the span of a person’s life.
And, just as the Industrial Revolution ended a way of life, so too will the Singularity as the Intelligence Explosion created will destroy many of the current institutions we either hold dear, or just cling to out of fear of not knowing any other way.
In what way does it weaken the model by more fully explaining the connections?
Dude, I got no problem with your Historian’s Perspective. There have been lots and lots of changes throughout history and if you feel like coining some particular set of them “THE SINGULARITY”, then feel free to do so. But this aint your big brother’s Singularity, it’s just some boring ole “and things were never the same again...” yadda yadda yadda—which can be said for about three dozen events since the invention of (man-made) fire.
The Singularity of which sci-fi kids have raved for the past fifteen years used to be something that had nothing in common with any of those Big Ole events. It wasn’t a Game Changer like the election of the first black president or the new season of Lost, it was something so ineffable that the mind boggled at attempting to describe its ineffability.
You want to redefine THE SINGULARITY into something smaller and more human scale that’s fine and if your parlance catches on then we’ll all probably agree that yeah, the singularity will happen (or is happening or maybe even has happened) but you’ll be engaging in the same sort of linguistic trickery that every “serious” theologian has since Boruch Spinoza became Benedict and started demanding that “of course God exists, can’t you see the beauty of nature? (or of genius? or of love? or of the Higgs Boson particle?) THAT’S God”
Maybe. But it aint Moses’ or Mohammed’s God. And your singularity aint the one of ten years back but rather the manifestation of some fealty to the word Singularity and thus deciding that something must be it… why not the evolution that occurs within a hundred years of globalization? or the state of human beings having living with the internet as a window in their glasses? or designer babies? The historian of 2100 will have so many Singularities to choose from!
And things were never the same again has a pretty broad range, from a barely noticeable daily event to an event in which all life ends (and not just as we know it)
I am expecting the changes that have already begun to culminate, to do so in or around 2030 to 2050, and do so in a way that not only would a person of today not recognize life at that time, but that he would not even recognize what will be LIFE (as in, he will not know what is alive or not). Yet, this still falls under the umbra of And things were never the same again
My point was meant to illustrate that the changes which human life have been going through have been becoming more and more profound, leading up to a change which is really beyond the ability of anyone to describe.
My point was meant to illustrate that the changes which human life have been going through have been becoming more and more profound
I don’t feel my life changing profoundly. In fact the only major change in my lifetime was computers/cellphones/Internet. We’re mostly over the hump of that change now (quick, name some revolutionary advances in the last 5 years), and anyway it’s tiny compared to electricity or cars. Roughly comparable to telephones and TV, at most. (It would be crazy to claim that a mobile phone is further from a regular phone than a regular phone is from no phone at all, ditto for Internet versus TV.) Do you have this feeling of accelerating change? What are the reasons for it?
I think smartphones are a pretty profound change. There are not really any revolutionary new technologies involved but combining existing technologies like a web browser, GPS, decent amounts of storage and computing power into a completely portable device that you always have with you makes for a fairly significant development. My iPhone has probably had more impact on my day to day activities than any other technological development of the last 10 years.
Indeed, it’s rather hard to give an objective definition of what constitutes a ‘revolutionary’ advance. I’d take issue with this as well:
It would be crazy to claim that a mobile phone is further from a regular phone than a regular phone is from no phone at all, ditto for Internet versus TV.
But it’s not like there’s some obvious objective metric of ‘distance’ between technologies in this context. As one example of how you could argue mobile phones are more revolutionary than land lines, in much of the developing world the infrastructure for widespread usage of land lines was never built due to problems with governments and social structure but many developing countries are seeing extremely rapid adoption of mobile phones which have simpler infrastructure requirements. In these countries mobile phones are proving more revolutionary than land lines ever were.
I’d also very much dispute the claim that the advance from no TV to TV is more revolutionary than the advance from TV to the Internet. I don’t think it makes much sense to even make the comparison.
I’m just a visitor in these parts so I’m sure this is common but this is the first I’ve personally seen of some weasling out of/redifing The Singularity.
The Singularity isn’t supposed to be something like the invention of farming or of the internet. It’s supposed to be something AT LEAST as game changing as the Cambrian explosion of vast biodiversity out of single-celled organisms. At least that’s the impression that non-Singularitarians get from happening upon the outskirts of your discussions on the subject.
I suppose as the community has grown and incorporated responsible people into it it’s gotten more boring to the point where it appears likely to soon become a community of linguists warring over the semantics of the thing: “Did The Singularity begin with the invention of the airplane or the internet?”
This is somewhat disappointing and I hope that I’ll be corrected in the comments with mind-blowing (attempted) descriptions of the ineffable.
mnuez
How is the comparison of the Singularity to the Industrial Revolution weasling out of/redefining the Singularity.
It was defined to me, as a series of events that will eventually lead to the end of life as we currently know it. The Industrial Revolution ended life as people know it prior to the Ind. Rev. It could be said that this was the start of the Technological Singularity.
The Industrial Revolution, introduced, in a very short time, technologies that were so mind-blowing to the people of the time as to provoke the creation of Saboteurs, or Luddites. The primary mode of transportation went from foot/horseback to the automobile and the airplane within the span of a person’s life.
And, just as the Industrial Revolution ended a way of life, so too will the Singularity as the Intelligence Explosion created will destroy many of the current institutions we either hold dear, or just cling to out of fear of not knowing any other way.
In what way does it weaken the model by more fully explaining the connections?
Dude, I got no problem with your Historian’s Perspective. There have been lots and lots of changes throughout history and if you feel like coining some particular set of them “THE SINGULARITY”, then feel free to do so. But this aint your big brother’s Singularity, it’s just some boring ole “and things were never the same again...” yadda yadda yadda—which can be said for about three dozen events since the invention of (man-made) fire.
The Singularity of which sci-fi kids have raved for the past fifteen years used to be something that had nothing in common with any of those Big Ole events. It wasn’t a Game Changer like the election of the first black president or the new season of Lost, it was something so ineffable that the mind boggled at attempting to describe its ineffability.
You want to redefine THE SINGULARITY into something smaller and more human scale that’s fine and if your parlance catches on then we’ll all probably agree that yeah, the singularity will happen (or is happening or maybe even has happened) but you’ll be engaging in the same sort of linguistic trickery that every “serious” theologian has since Boruch Spinoza became Benedict and started demanding that “of course God exists, can’t you see the beauty of nature? (or of genius? or of love? or of the Higgs Boson particle?) THAT’S God”
Maybe. But it aint Moses’ or Mohammed’s God. And your singularity aint the one of ten years back but rather the manifestation of some fealty to the word Singularity and thus deciding that something must be it… why not the evolution that occurs within a hundred years of globalization? or the state of human beings having living with the internet as a window in their glasses? or designer babies? The historian of 2100 will have so many Singularities to choose from!
mnuez
I think you miss my point.
And things were never the same again has a pretty broad range, from a barely noticeable daily event to an event in which all life ends (and not just as we know it)
I am expecting the changes that have already begun to culminate, to do so in or around 2030 to 2050, and do so in a way that not only would a person of today not recognize life at that time, but that he would not even recognize what will be LIFE (as in, he will not know what is alive or not). Yet, this still falls under the umbra of And things were never the same again
My point was meant to illustrate that the changes which human life have been going through have been becoming more and more profound, leading up to a change which is really beyond the ability of anyone to describe.
I don’t feel my life changing profoundly. In fact the only major change in my lifetime was computers/cellphones/Internet. We’re mostly over the hump of that change now (quick, name some revolutionary advances in the last 5 years), and anyway it’s tiny compared to electricity or cars. Roughly comparable to telephones and TV, at most. (It would be crazy to claim that a mobile phone is further from a regular phone than a regular phone is from no phone at all, ditto for Internet versus TV.) Do you have this feeling of accelerating change? What are the reasons for it?
I think smartphones are a pretty profound change. There are not really any revolutionary new technologies involved but combining existing technologies like a web browser, GPS, decent amounts of storage and computing power into a completely portable device that you always have with you makes for a fairly significant development. My iPhone has probably had more impact on my day to day activities than any other technological development of the last 10 years.
I was going to say the same thing, though it’s hard to quantify ‘revolutionary’.
Indeed, it’s rather hard to give an objective definition of what constitutes a ‘revolutionary’ advance. I’d take issue with this as well:
But it’s not like there’s some obvious objective metric of ‘distance’ between technologies in this context. As one example of how you could argue mobile phones are more revolutionary than land lines, in much of the developing world the infrastructure for widespread usage of land lines was never built due to problems with governments and social structure but many developing countries are seeing extremely rapid adoption of mobile phones which have simpler infrastructure requirements. In these countries mobile phones are proving more revolutionary than land lines ever were.
I’d also very much dispute the claim that the advance from no TV to TV is more revolutionary than the advance from TV to the Internet. I don’t think it makes much sense to even make the comparison.
I didn’t mean any one life (such as your life), but human life as in the trajectory of the sum total of human experience.