Curtains lifting, worlds simulating, heaven descending

[Brian Atkins]

Russell Turpin wrote:
> 
> Brian wrote:
> >.. You are also thinking linearly ("not in our lifetimes..."). ..
> 
> If I were thinking linearly, I would have said "never."

Oh come on try real hard, I'm sure you can be realistic. Even at the
relatively slow pace of most of the 20th century, the limits of lifespan
increased significantly.

> You seem to think that technology advances in a smooth
> fashion, either "linear" or "exponential." I think that
> is nonsense. It comes in spurts, cliffs, gradual rises,
> giant steps forward, occassional steps backward,
> exponential increases, plateaus, and thirty-one other
> shapes.

In the short term, yes. In the long term for many tech areas you can
see exponential curves. Have you had your kurzweilai.net today? He
made a more detailed presentation at Extro 5 in June which should be
streaming from their site soon. It showed how even large events like
WW2 and the great depression were little more than small blips on
the long term curves. Humanity is boostrapping its intelligence, and
it is coming to a head in the next 30 years. Deal.

> 
> >Frankly, even based on our current rate you are far too
> >pessimistic/unrealistic. You don't have to look far to spot many companies
> >working right now on anti-aging biotech. ..
> 
> And that is news? In what century?

Actually it is news. A lot of news lately, and growing more every year.
We are very close to figuring out exactly what causes aging, and our
abilities to figure such things out and fix them are also rapidly
improving. For instance, did you read recently about the new nanopore
DNA sequencing technique under development. It will be able to sequence
your whole DNA in about 2 hours. There is progress like this going on
in many many scientific fields right now, and one of the main causes
is computing power increases. Computing power has been increasing the
effective intelligence of our species ever since we first had abacai
(or whatever). Nowadays HP has software that will design custom chip
hardware specially suited for your custom software needs in a completely
human-unassisted manner. Computers are near the point where they will
be designing their own hardware, which will steepen Moore's Law even
farther, further driving changes in other scientific fields, and
bringing us in the very near term to hardware on the level of the human
mind. In fact by some estimates we are already there with the 10 tflop
machines we have now. Blue Gene in 2004 or 5 puts us squarely in the
range of human brain power estimates.

So, uhh, sorry to ramble, but yes I think you are waay to pessimistic
and I hold to my claim you are thinking linearly.

> 
> >You can never be sure, but you can assign probabilities. Right now the
> >probabilities are pointing more towards a Singularity-esque run-up of
> >technology.
> 
> Appropriate to its label, people speak only in the vaguest
> terms about what the world is like after the Singularity.

Actually SIAI's main researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky has spoken before in
quite detailed fashion about his view of post-Singularity life. He calls
it the Sysop Scenario, and it was discussed on FoRK last August for
instance. We wouldn't be trying to accelerate the Singularity if we
didn't have some good reasons.

> To then say that the "probabilities are pointing more
> towards a Singularity-esque run-up of technology" is to
> say nothing more than "there are some technologies on the
> horizon whose long-term effects we can't predict."  To
> which the appropriate response is: "well, duh." Of course,
> that doesn't prevent the prophets from prophesying.

I disagree, as I described above we already know what to expect up until
at least 2005, and it is still maintaining the Singularity run-up that
has been in effect since at least the end of the 19th century in terms
of computing power. Actually Intel and other conservative companies are
already predicting the run-up will continue until at least 2012, so I
feel pretty confident about my assertion. You can go look at the graphs
on kurzweilai.net if you want to see other technologies in similar
run-ups. Actually if there are going to be surprises in the next 10
years they will be positive ones IMO. Cure for aging (or at least a
good treatment), AIDS/cancer cures, quantum computing, molectronics,
spintronics, etc. there are plenty of candidates.

> 
> One of the interesting aspects of technological change is
> that there are things that the new technology surprisingly
> doesn't change. Surprisingly, because people who early
> speculated on the effects of the new technology thought
> that it would. You can see this with all past, revolutionary
> technologies. (This would be a fascinating subject for a
> book!) My suspicion is that it will remain true for
> the coming technology revolutions, also. Prognosticators

Ahh, so perhaps this is what is driving your extreme pessimism. It
certainly has been a rough 15 months for those of us who were caught
up in the Net "revolution". However again I think you should look more
closely or else you will again be guilty of stereotyping. Just because
no previous technology changes have caused a Singularity doesn't mean
that having hardware with greater than human processing power won't.
And even though the previous tech hasn't caused one, you can look at
it as at least adding to/bringing us to this point now.

> wave their hands rapidly, and predict that immortality,
> the end of poverty, and world simulation will follow AI
> and nano-technology as certainly as the night follows day.
> I think a lot of this is wild speculation, much less
> concrete than the new business models of the Internet
> revolution. Yes, I believe in strong AI and in nanotech.
> And I believe these will appear in our lifetimes. And I
> believe they will produce many marvels. I also believe many
> modern prophets will prove as wrong as old prophets about
> how these will change the world, and just as importantly,
> about which things won't change.

Well that's a new one on me. I'd like to hear your viewpoint (since it
is somewhat unique) describing your vision of a future where we have
strong AI and nanotech and yet nothing fundamentally changes in the
way humans live.

> 
> >From a post by Eliezer S. Yudkowsky:
> >.. religious apocalypses can be distinguished from nuclear/nanotech/biotech
> >apocalypse, or the Singularity, from the tendency of religious people to
> >talk about God!
> 
> That's a good way to tell Shiva from Allah. Every group
> of believers has their own vocabulary. It's pretty
> superficial to say that religious modes of thought can be
> identified by the labels that are used. Not all gods sit
> on a throne, nor carry the label "God."
> 

Nitpicking. There was a footnote at the bottom of what I copied there
that you cut off explaining that even Buddhists or other religions
have similar ideas. Anyway, if anyone wants to continue seriously making
the case that transhumanism or singularitarians are a religion, then
fire away... I'm game.
-- 
Brian Atkins
Director, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/