ImprobabilityDrive
Loftwing
The following passages are taken from Ray Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity is Near.
“What then, is the Singularity? It’s a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, it’s impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed. Although neither utopian nor dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts that we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself. Understanding the Singularity will alter our perspective on the significance of our past and the ramifications for our future. To truly understand it inherently changes one’s view of life in general and one’s own particular life. I regard someone who understands the Singularity and who has reflected on its implications for his or her own life as a “singularitarian.” ”
“The key idea underlying the impending Singularity is that the pace of change of our human-created technology is accelerating and its powers are expanding at an exponential rate. Exponential growth is deceptive. It starts out almost imperceptibly and then explodes with unexpected fury – unexpected that is, if one does not take care to follow its trajectory.”
“This book will argue, however, that within several decades information based technologies will encompass all human knowledge and proficiency, ultimately including the pattern-recognition powers, problem-solving skills, and emotional and moral intelligence of the human brain itself.”
“The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains. We will gain power over our fates. Our mortality will be in our own hands. We will be able to live as long as we want (a subtly different statement from saying we will live forever). We will fully understand human thinking and will vastly extend and expand its reach/ By the end of this century, the nonbiological portion of intelligence will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence.”
In simpler terms, the technological singularity is an approaching event time that we can predict from Moore’s law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_Law) and the Law of Accelerating Returns. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_accelerating_returns). At this point, advances in computer technology will lead to the creation of sentient machines with intelligence surpassing that of human beings. These intelligences will be able to create intelligences greater than themselves and so on, leading to a rapid explosion of intelligence, with the end result being entities with intelligence far, far greater than our own. The abilities of these intelligences will lead to unimaginable scientific and technological progress. These advances will give us the ability to essentially reinvent our species, and one possible outcome of the presence of computers this powerful could be humans gaining the ability to upload their consciousnesses into computers, achieving intelligence and lifespan far beyond what would be available in our biological bodies.
If you want to learn more about the subject, you can read up on more of the basics on Wikipedia, on the page for the Singularity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity). For more advanced reading, I would very much recommend reading The Singularity is Near.
I have spent a good deal of time reading and learning about the concept, so if anyone has any questions on the subject they would like to ask, I’ll do my best to answer.
My question now, is, after reading all this information, following the links, and possibly doing research of your own, how many of you consider yourselves singularitarians?
“What then, is the Singularity? It’s a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, it’s impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed. Although neither utopian nor dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts that we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself. Understanding the Singularity will alter our perspective on the significance of our past and the ramifications for our future. To truly understand it inherently changes one’s view of life in general and one’s own particular life. I regard someone who understands the Singularity and who has reflected on its implications for his or her own life as a “singularitarian.” ”
“The key idea underlying the impending Singularity is that the pace of change of our human-created technology is accelerating and its powers are expanding at an exponential rate. Exponential growth is deceptive. It starts out almost imperceptibly and then explodes with unexpected fury – unexpected that is, if one does not take care to follow its trajectory.”
“This book will argue, however, that within several decades information based technologies will encompass all human knowledge and proficiency, ultimately including the pattern-recognition powers, problem-solving skills, and emotional and moral intelligence of the human brain itself.”
“The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains. We will gain power over our fates. Our mortality will be in our own hands. We will be able to live as long as we want (a subtly different statement from saying we will live forever). We will fully understand human thinking and will vastly extend and expand its reach/ By the end of this century, the nonbiological portion of intelligence will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence.”
In simpler terms, the technological singularity is an approaching event time that we can predict from Moore’s law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_Law) and the Law of Accelerating Returns. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_accelerating_returns). At this point, advances in computer technology will lead to the creation of sentient machines with intelligence surpassing that of human beings. These intelligences will be able to create intelligences greater than themselves and so on, leading to a rapid explosion of intelligence, with the end result being entities with intelligence far, far greater than our own. The abilities of these intelligences will lead to unimaginable scientific and technological progress. These advances will give us the ability to essentially reinvent our species, and one possible outcome of the presence of computers this powerful could be humans gaining the ability to upload their consciousnesses into computers, achieving intelligence and lifespan far beyond what would be available in our biological bodies.
If you want to learn more about the subject, you can read up on more of the basics on Wikipedia, on the page for the Singularity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity). For more advanced reading, I would very much recommend reading The Singularity is Near.
I have spent a good deal of time reading and learning about the concept, so if anyone has any questions on the subject they would like to ask, I’ll do my best to answer.
My question now, is, after reading all this information, following the links, and possibly doing research of your own, how many of you consider yourselves singularitarians?
