Hypatia

I was at a convention this weekend where Rudy Rucker was giving a talk. During it he mentioned that he'd read a quote by William Gibson where Gibson states that the Singularity is the Rapture for geeks. (I've since found that Gibson isn't the only one to have made this observation).

I found this to be very insightful, since for me at least it is a very accurate description of how I feel about the singularity (the event suggested/anticipated by transhumanist, not the core of a black hole). Now I'm doing a bit of troubled internal analysis to determine if I've simply swapped the silliness of religion, with it's comforting fantasies for the comforting fantasies of technology.

Any thoughts? Have any of you found yourselves in a similar position?

pz

Since I've always thought the Singularity was singularly silly...no.

Godless Dave

A vague and highly unlikely prediction about the future based on questionable interpretations of data? Sounds just like the Rapture to me!

Rusting Car Bumper

What is "The Singularity"? (apart from the obvious physics reference)

DC

Hypatia

I believe the idea originated with Vernor Vinge, a math professor and SF author. Here's a start at a his definition, as found at http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix...nge-sing.html:

"The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. "


Here's another definition of the singularity from http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Singularity/:


"The Singularity is a common matter of discussion in transhumanist circles. There is no clear definition, but usually the Singularity is meant as a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity. Another definition is used in the Extropians FAQ, where it denotes the singular time when technological development will be at its fastest. Of course, there are some who think the whole idea is just technocalyptic dreaming."


The Vinge paper is a good starting point if you want to know more.

Mad Lion

Sounds like religion to me.

contracycle

Hmm, I wouldn't be that dismissive. We are doing Weird Stuff. The planet clearly aint big enough for all of us. We might have immortality in a few decades. Seesm to me that it would be more perverse to expect things to be unchanged by these developments than changed.

Hypatia

It could certainly be argued that the concept of the singularity is nothing more than wishful thinking or an interesting concept for a SF novel, but I don't see how it sounds like religion. It is simply a (some would say far-fetched) prediction resulting from considering where AI (and AIs developing even better AIs) might take us over the next couple hundred years.

Arken

If you moved the entire human population of the earth into standard single family suburban homes, the area they would take up would be about the size of New England. I'd say there's plenty of room.

Thanatoast

Arken stated:But the problems of such a densely populated world would include finding adequate land for agriculture, heavy industry, mining resources, and the infrastructure to distrubute all those goods to the people who need them. Of course, strong nanotech might solve a lot of those difficulties...

And that segues nicely into the discussion of the "Singularity". Strong nanotechnology (that is, the ability to manipulate matter on the molecular/atomic scale so that practically anything could be manufactured given the right amounts of chemical elements) and strong artificial intelligence (that is, computers, or computer programs, developed to possess cognitive abilities equal to and surpassing that of individual humans) are the two prime technologies which Vernor Vinge and others have theorized will lead to a point in time after which nothing could be predicted with any accuracy.

In oher words, the possibility of super-smart machines, which may or may not include "uploaded" human minds, with the potential to make for themselves practically anything they so desire (and those desires could be radically different from our own), presents a barrier by which all speculation is useless.

How this can be seen as a "geek rapture" comes primarily from the mind-uploading technologies: that which allow a human brain to be somehow scanned, and the personality, thoughts, and memories contained within that brain be translated into a computer program. Assuming the computer "substrates" upon which these programs run are far more robust than the PC I'm writing this on, the person that originated in the organic brain could then live on indefinitely. The uploaded person might choose to continue living in the "real world", by being installed in some form of body that is able to sense and interact with the external environment, or live on in virtual environments (perhaps far more rich and enticing than anything we could imagine).

It would be a form of immortality, or at least hyper-longevity. That is, only for those of us who dismiss the idea of the existence of a non-corporeal "soul" or "spirit".

That said, I would say that skepticism is in order for both the Singularity in general and mind-uploading in particular. But, in my opinion, perhaps moreso with regard to the former than the latter.

I'll end this post now, since it's rather long and I'd like to get some feedback from others.