Re: >H Arguments against singularity

["Waldemar Ingdahl" <wingdahl@hotmail.com>]

Transhuman Mailing List


>___Waldemar Ingdahl___
> > There is no single future there are many futures. Like Bard said
> > "a beginning of history". The term "singularity" has unfortunately
> > been used to describe a kind of nanotopia or AI land  where history
> > is so advanced that it stops. I don't get why?
>
>Well, the way I see it, the idea of an 'end' has been suggested and
>is being maintained because in all it's bizarre grotesqueness it may
>be more edible than the alternative, which is growth for all eternity.

Rather because of the modernist thought of "the completition of history", a 
kind of "year zero" were history stops and never starts again to show the 
totality of the ideology.

>If only one could imagine a linear growth curve. Then even eternal
>growth would not seem such a big thing. In a thousand years
>(instead of ten) computers could be a thousand times faster. In a
>billion years (instead of thirty) they would be a billion times faster.
>What harmonic and beautiful proportions!
>
>Likewise, humans could create AI which was twice as powerful as
>ourselves. 10 years later, with the assistance of this AI, we could
>produce new AI which was three times as powerful, 10 years after
>that four times, then five times etc.
>
>But this development just doesn't seem very natural to me. Or what
>do you think?

Barred the possibility that AI might not be possible at all, it is not a 
question about technology at all. Progress might not be about technology, 
but other areas. As for development, remember that it is cumulative and 
accelerating as areas interact in ways previously not thought possible.

> > what I am not agreeing on is just this point of
> > mysticism that is singularity. History changes: it ask us VERY
>different questions,
> > but it still asks us questions.
>
>But what if there where no more questions left one day?
>And why is a limited universe more mysterious than an unlimited
>one?

Ever thought that history might start again in the year zero? It is 
unlimited because human (post-human or whatever) might do it so. In essence, 
the thought about singularity has been used for cover to some really sloppy 
thinking and has been used to explain the "historically necessary" victory 
of transhumanism, it is lazy because some transhumanism think that it will 
come even if they don't work for it.

And an unlimited universe contains so  many more fantastic possibilites...

Sincerely

Waldemar Ingdahl

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