Anyone's into Singularity?

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Using a tool....

A rock, then a stick , then a hammer then a nail gun -then a ? ---should it be a kinetic spatial object? ie something that fuses material together(which has already been invented just too expensive for a chippie - then again the welder!)

-By integrating - and overloading our minds with information - even basic information like chatting too each other on the net.... doesn't help me to evolve to the piont where I can manipulate the keybaord with my mind. If we go down the path of integration with our technology - our technology may not saves us...

Another Star Gate Example: The grey alien people that help out earth with the technology in several epiosodes/plots ,, we have an afinity with these people because A. Alien sightings describe the big eyed frail alien B. we want to believe that we will keep our technology seperate from our own evolutionary path... in the case of the Star Gate plot these guys couldn't fend off the silicon based carbon eating spiders. The piont is that the carbon eating spider was actually a higher life form - more intelligent, yet becuase the steroType alien people had relied too much on thier technology to do thier thinking they couldn't defend thier existence. The knoX people hippies on the other hand could have just simply 'hidden themselves' from the spiders existence. -the Knox got to a higher plane of existence than even the spiders (arguablly a transitional state to a CPU entity singularity which is later eviednced by the mother spider which falls inlove with carter) yet the knox didn't look like frail aliens, they held onto their traditional form as hippies, as for a matter of fact they didn't look like spiders (which on an evolutionary kinetic/spatial based stand piont is the best form to take - but the better form is just any form you like, like the Knox)

-You see , making our daily lives easier with our technology, may not help OUR minds to evolve.... it may require less computational power over time to reach a certain higher evolutionary state.... and by taking the risk to gain the computational power to finally find that out may result in an equation that states that you will never reach any higher order eveolutionary state because you have too much computational power (eg. back to the dolphin, it may not be able to evolve any further, given even infinite time frame and X computational power because it has reach the upper echolon of its physical boundaries - it's why I gave the matrix PC as the example - the PC was bound and stuck to the planet because it couldn't see outside the planet - the matric PC's only solution was to learn more by spawning neo - ther maybe a case where autonomus computation ie inteilegence , won't have the intellligence to do that.... and just continue in it's current state, stuck... just like the dolphin)

PS I remmeber what the hiipie were called - The Knox

Okey-dokey Erlyrisa...

The spiders are the Replicators and the greys... it'll come to me in a moment... Thor is the first one they meet (in the episode Thor's Hammer, IIRC).... Nope... I'll have to cheat... stupid me, the Asgard. My do I feel silly.

What I'm saying is that all of this is good TV story material. All quite imaginative (the Ascended ones, and now the dastardly Ori), but ultimately it's stuck in what's known or imagined today. (Well, maybe not the Ascended bunch!).

Yes, the dolphin dropped off into the sea - an easy life, not much call for brains, even though they've still got them. There's no reason says we have to stagnate, but you are quite right to point out that the way we're built at present, we probably cannot become much smarter/faster/etc.

I think (hope!) we'll solve all the problems, but where exactly we go from here... I don't know.

We already have the knowledge to develop far beyond where we are now. I fully hope we'll do that.

To all those who want to step out of the car now, that's fine by me.

I'm staying in the car, just driving down the road here, to get on this train, which takes me to the spaceport, where there's a shuttle to orbit, and I transfer to the sundiver, which takes me to the fringes of the solar corona, which is just the place (this season) where everyone like to ascend, so they can do the loop trip through the universe next door, that nice pink one, when they haven't done a universe loop for a few lifetimes.

Does that paragraph come across the way I intended? The first half making some sense and the later half becoming seriously weird? That's a hint at where we're off to. I'm sure we'll like it, because we'll make it just the way we do like it.

then your agreeing with what I pertain to as existing as we are ... not allowing our technology to outdoo us...

We will always use Tools , as individuals. But we won't let the Machine(the competing entity which is our creation) amalgamate with us ... we may create a 'main server' which we may lovingly call the singularity or Dave for short.... but only 'use' him , just as dave was used as a spaceship (until it all went awry)

-went it did go awry what happened?---- do you remeber the movie

the lights the highspeed the 'singular' feeling the awe of a diverse and ever changing variety of globules of mass (planets)..... and then what - stuck in what would be percieved as 'the place to be' as you decay and realise your redundancy. Time, space thought, a jimble jamble with the comforts of your Traditional roots (a room with a bed and some curtains with modern french provincial design) -- it's where you always wanted to be, but now don't know the reason for your being.
The reason for your being was under your nose all along - it was being with the people of your planet,,, to procreate more and more individual and distinctly complex entities .... untill you can fit no more into the univers as you percieve it.... untill you and all of your freinds (who by now all know each other) decide to form a 'clubhouse', a place where you could go for retreats, to escape the universe that you have completely occupied and are in effect defined by .... you build your clubhouse, and visit it, and decide that maybe it's time for some more kids. You call the clubhouse Universe B.
You can see the evident typicall natural progress that what is human nature is doing now - our clubhouse was th moon, but we realised it was no-good, so now we will go to Mars.

Actually I mixed up Hal with dave back there ... whoops (typical Aspie!)

uhh .. I think the movie tries to higlight the obvious flaws with 'evolution as an entity' and evolution as an individual amongst a society with the society , and off shoot branching evolution etc ie Darwinism.

The intelligent entity that comes to 'hover' near our home.....

Our inquisitive nature, makes us want to know what it is....
As we get closer to 'IT' ,, our technology is highlighted to 'fail' , having to have to 'disconnect' from our creation.
When we are finally their (How ever we got thier - with the aid of our tools or on our own evolutionary circumstance - but not as HAL) ..
we end up being the 'entity that can't distinguish' experience of want to experience of enironment.
We can also interprete that the 'superior being' took Dave and showed Dave what it's existance is like ... remember the black thing didn't seek out the humans it was just floating, and our curiosity is what had us bump into it.... upon amalgamation Dave experiences the machine (aka higher order entiy)

From here the scene of the planet (which is what I presume is what is rewritten for the movie) - is the final conundrum - what's better, the individual, or the community of entities.

--by overly becoming a slave to our invention,,, we end up losing sight of what it is we are evolving for in the first place..... a machine on the other hand cannot be taught, or even realise this... nor can we trust in our own ability to continue to spwan new ideas, especially when we place our trust in our invention.

-it's like science - you do the experiment twice, then thrirce untill someone else does it again with a different opinion ... by trusting in only one type of hammer ,what do you do when it breaks --Msoft Comes to mind.

Sometimes there are multiple theories.....

That's what I saying... Humans .. a community .. a diverse communtiy.. and even offshoot organisms.. have a different 'Religion' ... it's this diversity and differenc of opinion which keeps our planet sane... evolution itself decided to have 'Offshoot organisms' , out of the primordial slime 'it' this singularity in it's very simplest definition of being intelligent.. it's second decision was to 'divide'... and do it again and again creating diversity.... a computer with 'infinte'computational power may decide that this primordial slime 'is the higher order' state.

I'm going to address the AI concept.

Technological singularity popularized in the 80's, occurring during a time when much advancement was being made in the field of "weak" AI. Additionally with advancements such as backpropagation neural nets, funding from DARPA, AI was in it's "golden-age". The idea of walking, talking, thinking, machines seemed only a few steps away.

It's been 2 decades since, and no major advancements have been made in the area of "strong" AI. There are several reasons for this. One, the fundamental difference between computational science and the brain. The brain is essentially a plastic memory-storage device, whereas a computer is mainly for, well, computations. We have a long way to go in understanding how to computationally implement a "brain". Neuroscience is still a developing area, the precise function of many neurotransmitters and cortical regions is still unknown.

So I would be hesitant to believe that AI will reach a point where it will start to replace humans as dominate thinking-force, at least in my lifetime. More realistically, I would imagine a so-called computer singularity would approach something more like Google. Built for functionality, not for original thought.

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There are several problems with science. First, theories DO get disproved all the time. Second, science is limited to what is observable. Thirdly, science is limited to what can be modeled through human brains or devices. The universe is uncomputable, and as science is only a model of the world, there will be no such thing as The Perfect Theory That Explains Everything. Perhaps science is moving at an exponential pace, perhaps not, this is largely subjective. Either way, there will always be something left to explain, and as such there can be no "singularity" clearly demarcating the conclusion and end-of-all scientific discovery.

I have to say, not exactly that I disagree with you, consilience, but that I would rather not agree with you.

You make partially valid points, but I feel that most of them rely on the argument "I cannot see exactly how xyz can happen, therefore it will not".

My approach is more like "I cannot see exactly how xyz will happen, but I can expect that, based on history, it will happen, and will probably surprise me."

I don't think AI will necessarily model the human brain. Indeed, I think that is rather unlikely.

In "Google" terms, I think my extelligence is doing quite nicely.

Etc.

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There are no problems with science. "Scientia" is just knowledge, versus superstition, in my book.

Firstly, theories do not get disproved. They get adapted/extended/refined/rethought to become more and more precise descriptions of the universe.

Secondly, science extends the range of what is classified observable all the time, where we have to recognise that very little of it is directly observable, these days, whatever it means to say that anyway (philosophy poked its head in the door there. ).

Thirdly, science can be as unlimited as our imagination, and mine has no bounds.

The universe may or may not be uncomputable - the jury is out on that one, but our minds are such that we can grasp the concept of "uncomputable", which I find rather interesting, as that certainly implies the the concept of uncomputability is embedded in the universe. Does that make the universe itself uncomputable? I think not (necessarily).

The perfect ToE? Maybe, maybe not.

By most measures I can think of, science is moving at an exponential rate. Pick anything. Speed, Distance traveled. Problems solved. Words written. Computations done. Cosmology extrapolated. Affluence. Height. Longevity. (OK, maybe I'm going overboard with a couple of those!). All of this is objective.

Can there be a singularity? I can see no reason why not. I don't know what its precise form will be. If I could, we would have already passed(?) it. Will it mark anything in particular? I again don't know. Certain things will change, I guess, but again, I don't feel I can say what will change, and what will stay much the same.

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In my specialist mind, I have encountered a series of, what I could say were, minor singularities. For instance, when I first saw how fast Fourier transforms worked. More recently, when I grasped how hashlife worked. Another thing that has more progressively "bloomed" in my mind has been object oriented code. One day, lambda calculus might take proper root in my head.

My motto is certainly NOT "Stop the world, I want to get off."

READ Carefully!

You are allowed to be NEO -> but as NEO, when you discover antiGravity do you tell the world about it or go take a couple of spins in your spaeship at night? for being NEO, takes responsibility -> and it is better to wait for MORPHEUS to instanciate your knowledge upon the workings of ZION.

the new Wathchowski Brothers bible.

Morpheology is a religion.

Some might say I'm more PALEO than NEO, although I can't be postpaleo, 'cos he's not me.

Maybe I'll settle for MESO.

OTOH, someone has to be first, and if the job's going spare, I'll happily be NEO. Where do I sign?

So you would follow the white rabbit?

I know I would If I could burrow into that hole (coitus)

It's been nice, I love the opinions!! -if only I could find real live talking people that could speak aswell as you and everyone here... on such diverse topics.

...and I think the point has been made