just a kilowatt more. teensy bitty bit more.
2010 is a tad audacious ...
if it wasn't it wouldn't be any fun.
this stuff, in contrast, is soberly conservative:
http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/link.htm
Gloriously gone:
http://www.grailcode.net/
... something pulpily intriguing about the way The Omen and cult mythos gets built into this paranoid megastructure (solar spirals, Atlanteans, Masons, Nazis and Princess Di ...)
Given even the most rigorously techno-mathematical Singularity, the excitational effect upon all the pre-existing Apocalyptic expectations needs to be factored in. And of course, it doesn't remotely stop there. At a certain point, leaving Temple Mount out of the scenario just ceases to be even tenuously realistic.
2012 winter solstice will occur at 11:11 UT
btw, 2012 presidential election is 06-Nov-2012, the winner (45th US President) inaugurated 20-Jan-2013, which means the 44th US President is still in office during the 2012 winter solstice.
excitational effects & other scenarios
CNN transcript of alleged arson case from 1991 (Willingham, the father, was executed in 2004 for the deaths of his 3 daughters). CNN interviewed some of the fire investigators, John Lentini & Douglas Carpenter:
Lentini says for too long investigators have relied on folklore, not fact, untested myths instead of science. LENTINI: "They haven't had any science training at all since high school. And they go back to their fire department, and they teach the myths to the next guy coming up." Lentini, with the help of fire investigator Doug Carpenter, also debunked one of the greatest arson myths about temperature. The fire on the right is burning with gasoline, a common accelerant. The other is just burning wood. Take a look at temperatures. Nearly identical. CARPENTER: "It's a common myth that higher temperatures are produced by gasoline than other types of common materials, and that just is not true." Willingham was convicted after Fogg and the others noticed what they believed were pour pattern on the floor, irregular burn marks that show where an accelerant was poured. But Lentini says science proves these pour patterns were really caused by a recently accepted phenomenon called flashover, the point, when a fire in a room becomes a room on fire.
all i'm (more or less) saying is, impossibilities can become possible and the absolutely implausible increasingly convincing. not because of scientific regression, but scientific rigor.
A good question is at what point does the singularity become self aware. An AI becomes a singularity when it learns (or at least this is the theory) at the rate of infinity. Looked at from that perspective, would it be possible that it happens somewhat by accident?
why have i never seen zeno's paradox brought up in this discussion of the escalating approach towards singularity
carrie - no good reason. It's totally relevant.
Azazel - because becoming self-aware is a quasi-punctual phase-transition it's very attractive as a synonym or proxy for Singularity (in the Terminator mythos for e.g.) - seems unlikely the relation can be kept comfortably external - more on this later
for carrie, from Yudkowsky article cited:
"Two years after Artificial Intelligences reach human equivalence, their speed doubles. One year later, their speed doubles again. / Six months - three months - 1.5 months ... Singularity."
Lot's more on this coming.
Binary time-compression is key to all truly hard-core (punctual-hyperbolic or limitropic) Singularity forecasting.
See also this (again):
http://www.accelerationwatch.com...com/
spiral.html
[apologies for gratuitous "lot's" apostrophe]
More Yudkowsky:
http://yudkowsky.net/sing/
princi...principles.html
Singularity reefs SF (excellent essay):
http://reconstruction.eserver.or...rg/033/
bell.htm
A tangent but a great resource:
http://markhumphrys.com/index.html
"... capitalism is just the way the world works. It is what humans do when they are free ..."
So far, so true.
Yudkowky's (6.)5 minute Singularity intro:
http://www.singinst.org/blog/200...gularity-intro/
GON 0 = 17TH CENTURY = FUTURE TENSE = TOUCHSTONE = TRACE ITS ROOTS = TRANSHUMANISTS.
more.
GON 0 = AMARYNTHUS = BURN PATTERNS = CRAZY 8'S = EXCLUSION ZONE = G8 ROSTOCK CITY RIOTS = IRON = LITTLE POMPEY = MARKET TOWN = MILITARY OPTION = ORTHOSTATIC HYPOTENSION = PROTOPLANETARY = PURE VISUAL FORM = RÉGION RÉUNION = TEMPLE MOUNT = TESUJI = THE STRONGEST PLAYER KNOWS THE WAY TO THE RESTAURANT = THIS WOMAN, THIS WARRIOR = TI BURN = TWO SHEETS TO THE WIND = WEAPON X = WORK-AROUND.
AQ 2990 = TWO YEARS AFTER ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES REACH HUMAN EQUIVALENCE, THEIR SPEED DOUBLES. ONE YEAR LATER, THEIR SPEED DOUBLES AGAIN. / SIX MONTHS - THREE MONTHS - 1.5 MONTHS ... SINGULARITY.
AQ 225 = 2990 TRIMBERGER (Main-belt Asteroid) = 11 THAI HEXAGRAM = 30-YEAR DETOUR = ANGEL FINGERS (Flashover indicator) = AVOID IPPOJI = CARBONACEOUS = LORD OF LIGHT = MAGNANIMITY = MONKEY PANIC = RACHEL CARSON = SFONDAMENTO (Benjamin Friedlander) = TECHNOTOPIA = THE HUMAN RACE.
AQ 377 = STEPHEN M. TRIMBERGER (also see: Ellen Kay Trimberger's Revolution From Above, University of Chicago) = CONSIDERABLE EMPHASIS = HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL = TERMINATOR MYTHOS.
AQ 701 = FIELD-PROGRAMMABLE GATE ARRAY TECHNOLOGY = TEETERING ON THE EDGE OF THE SINGULARITY.
AQ 487 = FIELD-PROGRAMMABLE GATE ARRAY (semiconductor device containing programmable logic components and programmable interconnects. The programmable logic components can be programmed to duplicate the functionality of basic logic gates such as AND, OR, XOR, NOT or more complex combinational functions such as decoders or simple mathematical functions. In most FPGAs, these programmable logic components (or logic blocks, in FPGA parlance) also include memory elements, which may be simple flip-flops or more complete blocks of memories; AQ-66 FPGA) = YOU'RE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD.
AQ 109 = APRIL '26 = APRIL 2006 (contrat première embauche) = CHICAGO = SSTO.
AQ 119 = APRIL 1926 = 334 CHICAGO (Outer Main-belt Asteroid, Discovered 1892-Aug-23 by Wolf, M. at Heidelberg) = CARTER = COUGAR (Wikipedia Featured Article for 11-Jun-2007).
AQ 104 = COINED = CHALICE = DULCIA = I CHING = TYC 5812-01083-1 (on 19-June, asteroid Chicago occults 11.5 mag star in Aquarius constellation).
AQ 281 = "SCIENTIFICTION" = BATTLE OF THE AGES = AMARANTH FLOWER = ARAGO MEDALLIONS = BLUE OMEGA POINT = MERE SWITCHISM = MIDSUMMER'S DAY = O, DRACONIAN DEVIL = THE ALEPH MOMENT = ZUSAMMENBRUCH.
AQ 379 = 334 CHICAGO OCCULTS TYC 5812-01083-1 = EXPONENTIAL GROWTH = HUMANITY'S HORIZON = SINGLE-STAGE-TO-ORBIT = ST. GAUDENS DOUBLE EAGLE = SYZYGIAL AMPLEXUS = TECHNOLOGICAL SAVIOR.
AQ 546 = (334) CHICAGO / TYC 5812-01083-1 EVENT ON 2007 JUN 19, 13:38 UT = A BALLET IN ONE ACT WITH PROLOGUE = ALLEGED DANGERS OF BIOTECHNOLOGY = FUTURE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE = IMMANENT KAABA OF LIBER AL VEL LEGIS = INTERVENTION UPON THE EVENT = LOOKING FOR THAT WONDERFUL KU = NOBODY SEEMS TO HAVE CONSIDERED = PATRICK WATSON - THE GREAT ESCAPE = SIMPLEMINDED EXTRAPOLATIONS = SIX PATHS OF ANY MUNDANE WORLD = SPACE OF ANONYMOUS PROCESSE = THE ANGELS IN OUR COUNTRYSIDE = THE BIG RESET BUTTON IN THE SKY = THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE SERPENT = THE CALCULUS OF THE INDIVIDUALS = TRANSVALUATION OF THE VALUES = WHICH IS VITAL, FOR I AM NONE INDEED = WORLD'S SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY.
sb,
SPACE OF ANONYMOUS PROCESSES
GON 0 = IN OTHER WORDS.
Seth Lloyd, in "Computational Capacity of the Universe," Physical Review Letters, June 2002, estimates the upper limit of how much computing power the entire universe has expressed since the beginning of time. His proposed number, 10^120 logical operations, is quite large, but necessarily bounded, or finite. Lloyd cleverly compares this number with the estimated total computation that has been accomplished by all human-made computers that have ever run (e.g., our local pre-AI network and its databases), yielding 10^31 operations to date. It is quite impressive that half of this latter total was produced within the last two years, using his estimate of a fixed Moore's law doubling time of two years. In other words, the marginal velocity of local computation is quite rapid.
...
Just how far down do observed trends in MEST compression and MEST efficiency of computation scale? Is there a natural limit? Rolf Landauer of IBM did important work in this area (e.g., C. H. Bennett and R. Landauer, "The Fundamental Physical Limits of Computation", Scientific American, 48-56, July, 1985). Bennett, Landauer, and others have found no minimum energy requirements, and researchers in this area have proposed reversible computing paradigms which would be able to communicate with "arbitrarily small" energy levels within known physical law ("How Much Energy Does it Take to Send a Bit? Perhaps None.", IBM, June 28, 1996). This suggests a universe that supports accelerating efficiencies and compressions of computation as far down as we can see.
i.e., behavior as in a continuum is effected computationally even within a discrete array of time - superimposition of discrete and continuous scales
AQ 385 = DISCRETE ARRAY OF TIME = 2012 WINTER SOLSTICE @ 11:11UT.
AQ 474 = SUCH PHENOMENAL LIGHTNESS = INTERNATIONAL TIME BUREAU = NETS ARE BETTER THAN LADDERS (GO Proverb) = ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL.
AQ 711 = COMPUTATIONAL CAPACITY OF THE UNIVERSE = CUT-RATE SURREALISTS AND FAKE MARXISTS (That's when the battle began. The visceral realists questioned Álamo's critical system and he responded by calling them cut-rate surrealists and fake Marxists. Five members of the workshop backed him up; in other words, everyone but me and a skinny kid who always carried around a book by Lewis Carroll and never spoke. —The Savage Detectives) = THE CARTERIAN CENTURY & THE WOUNDED HEALER.
North, what about 'TIMEWAVE 0' or 'TIMEWAVE 1'? McKenna fan? I live by Dennis, err Dr. McKenna. Also got the Timewave software. Tried that yet? Thanx 4 the link, btw.
Nick. What I believe 2 b rel linx, mayb new 2 u.
http://www.human-evolution.org/n....org/
newsai.php
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg.../
Licklider.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/
rele...60106132630.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/
rele...61025184939.htm
Humans + A.I. = Artilect? Change those memory implants into network interfaces instead. Talk about broadband! A neural net of neural nets. A flower of sorts.
carrie, big numbers. Those figures don't include the forbidden realm of 'before creation'. The non-existence paradox is hardly ever considered in such calculations. Interesting nfo, thanx.
BTW, hyper-reactionary capitalism has put me in the unfortunate position of catching up w/ all these linx. Lots o readin 2 do. Thanx all..
exactly azazel, the 'singularity' is nothing more than a conspiracy perpetrated by jehovah (I-AM, the reptilian brain of capitalism) to remove the 'non-existence' from existence entirely. this removes conscious experience + time which are nothing more or less than interstices.
carrie, u single? I like the way u think. Very stimulating idea forms. Sry, couldn't hlp myself.. ;)
-Jump Back One
"Bennett, Landauer, and others have found no minimum energy requirements, and researchers in this area have proposed reversible computing paradigms which would be able to communicate with "arbitrarily small" energy levels within known physical law"
-De Umbris Idearum
-Seed Flower Fruit
-Cornerstone of Everything
"the 'singularity' is nothing more than a conspiracy perpetrated by jehovah"
Plz, elaborate. Be gentle, I'm a bit on the shizzy side and I am prone to neural implosions. Thanx..
Wish I had the data bleed thing down like Nick. Oh well, I'll give it a try. 'Your Majesty is a stream of bat's piss!' LOL
& we still love north's numbo gumbo..lol
Question for carrie:
Wouldn't any civilization - even without a despotic monkey god - be angled into Singularity, given only technological run-away?
nick, there is no 'only' technological runaway. real or not, jehovah is emergent from the environs that allow such a phenomenon. 'his dark materials' are expropriated. more later, azazel
carrie -
not sure how much of this I disagree with.
Are you saying that any intelligenic take-off necessarily produces an emergent pseudo-transcendent overmind (profiled to the genocoded hierarchical presuppositions of the species concerned)?
(If so, doesn't that just need to be dealt with? (Which would look intriguingly like the war we're getting right now))
http://www.abelard.org/category/...ry/
category.htm
I dunno..
hm.
AQ 342 = ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC = SLAVERY TO WORDS.
AQ 309 = GENERAL SEMANTICS = SCIENCE AND SANITY = ABSENT OBLIGATION = AL SUHAIL AL MUHLIF = BLUE STAR KATCHINA = BUTTERFLY EFFECT = ELECTRIC CURRENT = EQUITY PREMIUM = GALAXY OF GEMATRIA = GRAVITY ANOMALY = HIGH VALUE FOR WIJ = HIGHER ECLECTICISM = LICENSE PLATE ANZ 912 = LION-ASLAN-CHRIST = NAVAL COMMUNITY = RANDOM VARIATION = RESOUND ONCE AGAIN = RIGHT ON THE CUSP = ROSCOE LEE BROWNE = SEPHER YETZIRAH = SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA = STEPHEN SONDHEIM = THE EIGHT NUMBERS = THE FLAMING SWORD = THE GATE OF THE SUN = THE PRICE IS RIGHT = WAXING HEXAGRAMS.
found the abelard site obscurely organized and rather off-putting -- if anyone is prepared to make a firm recommendation (confidently alleging that there's more there than anti-formalist fluff) then I'll give it some arduous attention
hi nick!
hi northanger
I'm not ignoring you btw, it just seems like that because I'm studying your remarks with such blitzed-mute reverance and devotion
nick, hi nicky!
Singularity not before 2060, according to Newton:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/sci...s.ap/
index.html
(via The Corner)
North, extremely interesting Gematria results. Bizarre!
Been a fan of Abelard for quite some time. Ran in to it when I studied Statistical Probability.
Amusing story, somewhat on topic..
"One day, Korzybski was giving a lecture to a group of students, and he suddenly interrupted the lesson in order to retrieve a packet of biscuits, wrapped in white paper, from his briefcase. He muttered that he just had to eat something, and he asked the students on the seats in the front row, if they would also like a biscuit. A few students took a biscuit. "Nice biscuit, don't you think", said Korzybski, while he took a second one. The students were chewing vigorously. Then he tore the white paper from the biscuits, in order to reveal the original packaging. On it was a big picture of a dog's head and the words "Dog Cookies". The students looked at the package, and were shocked. Two of them wanted to throw up, put their hands in front of their mouths, and ran out of the lecture hall to the toilet. "You see, ladies and gentlemen", Korzybski remarked, "I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter." Apparently his prank aimed to illustrate how some human suffering originates from the confusion or conflation of linguistic representations of reality and reality itself."
Singularity blog..Hypersition is by far the Alpha blog of blogs though..IMHO
http://www.thepriceofrice.com/
Azazel - OK, you've persuaded me to do some work on Abelard.
Found his dismissal of Goedel off-putting though, especially since his (abelard's) claim that numeracy is a sub-species of language -- precisely the kind of logocratic assertion G. takes rigorously to pieces
dismissal of Goedel off-putting
ditto.
Cool:
http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_n...o1/44510-
1.html
(robot armies on the way)
Behe beautifully blasted:
http://www.powells.com/review/2007_06_14
Peters on a roll:
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/
awcg...k_the_earth.pdf
(for tim)
Peters' proposals (at the end) are especially exquisite
Think this has been linked before, but it's a classic.
I Nanobot:
http://www.salon.com/tech/featur.../09/nanobiobot/
Nick - cheers for the Peters link!
I Nanobot..very interesting, thanx...
Glad u found Abelard interesting. Abe Lard if I remember correctly is a character from the middle ages. Don't remember much else, it was quite a while ago. Synapses don't fire like they used to.
Peter Abelard, also known as Abe lard.
http://www.themiddleages.net/peo...le/
abelard.html
Peters on a roll
a holy roller?
I Nanobiobot -
Told my Dad (astrophysics prof) about this (i.e. alien life). He was dubious that anything other than carbon could be used for nanotech because only carbon bonds are strong enough.
How Britons became slaves:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol...icle1969012.ece
PS, tim - have to read Goldstein again now, but is he actually suggesting the new life needs to be based on something other than carbon? Most nanomechanics seems to assume some diamondoid matrix, so that seems to be neo-carbon rather than post-carbon life (but i agree the "carbon barrier" rhetoric suggests something different)
Haven't read the piece recently and am going off recollection, but as I recall Goldstein was proposing that the carobon barrier will be broken by non-carbon based nanobiobots, thus spawning alien life. Should read it again because I did think it was pretty damn brilliant.
Just read the Yudkowsky article. Fascinating and exciting stuff. Favourite bit:
"Right now, every human being on this planet has one concern: How do we get to the Singularity as fast as possible? What happens afterward is not our problem and I deplore those gosh-wow, unimaginative, so-cloying-they-make-you-throw-up, and just plain boring and unimaginative pictures of a future with unlimited resources and completely unaltered mortals. Leave the problems of transhumanity to the transhumans. Our chances of getting anything right are the same as a fish designing a working airplane out of algae and pebbles."
tim - we're definitely on the same page viz Yudkowsky, just to underline (redundantly) one more time:
"Leave the problems of transhumanity to the transhumans."
If people got that it would move the quality of debate forwards considerably. It's not as if legacy monkey brains provide so much spare cognitive capacity that it makes sense to waste it on spurious metaphysical speculation.
Let's not forget Hydrogen!
Benzene. Check it out. The flower of life. I'm quite sure other lifeforms would have this trait as well.
What is above,
as is below.
Anyone read this? Kilcullen's response to the "Peters argument" (if you will). "Religion and Insurgency", at the excellent Small Wars Journal blog:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog...and-insurgency/
War=Argumentum Ad Baculum
Religion=Argumentum Ad Populum
Nick?
Excellent the article tim. Thanx...
Errr..
Excellent article tim..the
http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/f....html?id%
3D6953
Kurzweil and Obama break bread together--ON THEIR KNEES!
Argumentum Ad Absurdum...
Pesky troll...where's my troll swatter when I need it!
Oh come on!
Azazel - not intending to encourage trolling, but you've got to admit, Kurzweil/Obama on their knees together before the ineffable Overmind story is kind of weird - some kind of Tridentitarian Church of Jesus the Robot?
"many paths to the truth" -
just happens ours is Techno-Satanic Cthulhoid Blasphemy (but hey, there's room for that in the Episcopalian broad church)
Yes it's weird! Blue ribbon winner there!! Democratic Universal Scientific Church of the Singularity!?
'Techno-Satanic Cthuliod Blasphemy'..good one! How do you do it? Got a rather good chuckle out of that one. ROTFLOL!!
What happened to carrie?
The singularity w/ Cthulu like attributes would be interesting..gotta kill 'em all!
Still on Peters:
Best thing I've ever read on the sociology of terrorism is Sageman's "Understanding Terror Networks"; basically he runs social science type analysis on biographical infomation taken from a diverse, large(ish) cohort of Islamic terrorists (al Qaeda command, core arabs, maghreb arabs, south east asian, etc). It's a really good, concise work, with very sensible (empirical!) findings. There is a good post on the book, along with links to some of the tables, at GNXP:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/07...i-
jihadists.php
From GNXP:
"Sageman's thesis is pretty simple, in the later chapters he sketches out the importance of networks effects, friendships, bonding, clique formation, etc. He tends to reject excessive focus on ideology as the driving factor, though it is clearly a necessary factor to crystalize the path of the lives of these men. The author simply reminds readers that there is a wide ranging literature which suggests that individuals who join radical groups tend to overemphasize the ideological reasons for their joining, and underemphasize the personal life context and in particular the influence of peer groups and family. In other words, Salafist radicals did not have a lurking disease-of-the-mind which religious fundamentalism could coopt, rather, they were a self-selected group of individuals who must be understood in the context of their social universe, and in many ways they were rather banal personalities."
More quality from Peters (via Tom Barnett):
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2...s-civil-
wa.html
This looks funny:
http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Ch...arginalrevol-
20
What rough beast... IBM announces world's most powerful PC:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/e...lease/
21791.wss
OK, so maybe it's not really a PC at all (apologies for unreconstructed luddism). Still, it sounds impressive.
Too Much Video Gaming Not Addiction, Yet
By LINDSEY TANNER
AP Medical Writer
CHICAGO - The American Medical Association on Wednesday backed off calling excessive video-game playing a formal psychiatric addiction, saying instead that more research is needed.
A report prepared for the AMA's annual policy meeting had sought to strongly encourage that video-game addiction be included in a widely used diagnostic manual of psychiatric illnesses.
AMA delegates instead adopted a watered-down measure declaring that while overuse of video games and online games can be a problem for children and adults, calling it a formal addiction would be premature.
"While more study is needed on the addictive potential of video games, the AMA remains concerned about the behavioral, health and societal effects of video game and Internet overuse," said Dr. Ronald Davis, AMA's president. "We urge parents to closely monitor children's use of video games and the Internet."
Despite a lack of scientific proof, Jacob Schulist, 14, of Hales Corners, Wis., says he's certain he was addicted to video games - and that the AMA's vote was misguided.
Until about two months ago, when he discovered a support group called On-Line Gamers Anonymous, Jacob said he played online fantasy video games for 10 hours straight some days.
He said his habit got so severe that he quit spending time with family and friends.
"My grades were horrible, I failed the entire first semester" this past school year because of excessive video-game playing, he said. "It's like they're your life."
Delegates voted to have the AMA encourage more research on the issue, including seeking studies on what amount of video-game playing and other "screen time" is appropriate for children.
Under the new policy, the AMA also will send the revised video-game measure to the American Psychiatric Association, asking it to consider the full report in its diagnostic manual; the next edition is to be completed in 2012.
Dr. Louis Kraus, a psychiatric association spokesman, said the report will be a helpful resource.
The AMA's report says up to 90 percent of American youngsters play video games and that up to 15 percent of them - more than 5 million kids - might be addicted.
The report, prepared by the AMA's Council on Science and Public Health, also says "dependence-like behaviors are more likely in children who start playing video games at younger ages."
Internet role-playing games involving multiple players, which can suck kids into an online fantasy world, are the most problematic, the report says. That's the kind of game Schulist says hooked him.
Kraus, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Chicago's Rush Medical Center, said behavior that looks like addiction in video-game players may be a symptom of social anxiety, depression or another psychiatric problem.
He praised the AMA report for recommending more research.
"They're trying
"They're trying very hard not to make a premature diagnosis," Kraus said.
Ideal pilots for Predator drones..
I thought trolls impersonated users, not the other way around? :)
tim..IBM recently replaced Los Alamo's Beowolf 'Loki'. I'm not sure what (to tired to look it up) they replaced it with. Better brush up on ur Fortran 90...
Brink Lindsey excellent on the split in the American liberal postwar consensus:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/...how/
120265.html
Hey speaking of blasphemy..
creatio singularim ex nihilo
That concept applied to the Singularity makes it rather interesting..
Virtual economics:
http://www.marginalrevolution.co...al-
economy.html
Isn't Capitalism the instance of Shoggothic insurgent intelligence already, i.e. continuous reaxiomatisation of objective discontinuity? So couldn't the Singularity be a myth which is simply perpetuated by a disinterested Capitalism which allows it's drones to have one last grain of hope - oh, well, at least if I can download my brain then part of 'me' will still remain and perhaps I can have simulated sex with a robotic Scarlett Johansson etc. etc.
?what?
Whats On 2nd.
Have you lot seen this yet? It's a new Paul Berman essay, a massive philosophical/familial geneology of Tariq Ramadan that seemingly touches on everything currernt but especially the Old European intellectual reaction to Islamism (Buruma, Garton Ash, etc). It's just absolutely and completely yeah:
http://docs.google.com/View?
doci...dq9qq_315dwk7qn
Thanks for the intelligent response.
I do want to spell this out a bit more as I think it is potentially important..
- Essentially, given that AI does not depend upon a specific silicon instance, and is prevalent in fact across the ethology of intelligence - can't we speak of capital as an AI? Surely this is exactly what Gibson, etc.. are saying. And, can't we say that the Human OS is artificially produced to the extent that it is a transparent 'screen' which we fail to notice?
Ok, if you allow this context, then the question is, what if the Singularity is simply a myth perpetuated by an indifferent capitalism? Hasn't the singularity already happened?
"The Singularity is the secular counterpart of the Christian rapture, and its true believers foresee it as happening within
the lifetime of many who are alive today, as the earliest Christians, not to mention those
of subsequent ages, believed in the imminence of Judgment Day. Whether heaven or hell awaits us, the critical aspect of the Singularity is that it provides a diversion for those among the technological elite who are ever on the lookout for twinkling baubles to replace the ones with which they have grown bored." (Ligotti)
the latter is probably the best comment/quote I have read on this increasingly irrelevant blog
Don't see how pomological skepticism viz Singularity (attribution to nefarious idological agendas without addressing its substsntive plausibility) can be expected to persuade anyone who's attentive to the incontrovertible evidence of accelerating change. Is Moore's law just a mystificatory fabulation for capitalist drones? If not, how can the broader issue be adequately dealt with in this mode? This seems no more than the desperate denialism of a burnt out deliberately know-nothing leftism that sees the conspiratorial gesticulation as a pertinent line of analysis.
As D&G realized, capitalism has an immanent limit - and Singularity is it.
Ok, capitalism & the singularity. Are we talking about swarm inteligence? I don't see how capitalism would reach artilect status faster then an experimental AI spawned somewhere like a MIT lab. Nash just recently wrote a piece about economics and AI money, however I can't find the article now. Is that what you're refering to? I guess I got lost on my way to Carcosa..
This isn't pomological skepticism about the Singularity!! The point is that Capitalism as AI already instances the singularity retroactively unbinds the temporal coding of human illusion. What Ligotti is saying is that the Singularity acts as a humanist intervention in progressive time. This is surely a point for critique - Kurzweil's book with his quasi-info-buddhism is a fantastic example of this - on the one hand we have the insurgence of cold hypertechnology which unbinds human phenomenality, and on the other we have a mystic info-eternity something like the end of Blood Music.
intel - do you have a recommended link to this Ligotti dude, because frankly the quote you cite is fairly lame (and nowhere near as interesting as your meta-commentary, although I would appreciate some more detailed unpacking of the latter)?
Azazel - 'Capitalism' = technological positive feedback as instantiable among a final-phase biological species (MIT labs etc. are spin-off capitalist side-phenomena)
Ligotti is a short story horror writer, you would probably like his stuff. He's interesting in his lineage to Lovecraft as a writer of cosmic horror, but there is no sign of purpose or intent in Ligotti, we are puppets without even nature to provide the puppet strings, only a dark and indifferent cosmos. To my mind, he strikes me as almost working out the epistemic horror of a metaphysics grounded on Godel/Cantor.
The quote might seem lame, but what he's getting at is an underlying observance of continuity in progressive technology, which for the humanist singularity proponents still entails categories that amount to - life, hope, redemption, etc.
What seems interesting is the possibility that the Singularity is already retroactively unbinding phenomenality; "the human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion."
'What seems interesting is the possibility that the Singularity is already retroactively unbinding phenomenality'
Yes, this thought has been popping into my head after over a year of having resisted The Singularity due to the terrible book by Kurzweil. I think it's something simpler for me, though, more like 'les glissements progressifs au plaisir' (film title better than the Robbe-Grillet film) in a somewhat American Mood. It's so attractive the more you can become an energetic robot, suffused with Baudelarian pleasures while keeping up with the latest developments from Josh Marshall's exquisite takes on William Kristol's hilarious editorial in the WaPo this weekend, to the blocks-of-wood types at Harry's Place who are so stupid they almost make Lenin's Tomb seem like a bastion of sanity. And here I thought Harry's Place was supposed to be merely sensible about Islamic fanatics. No such thing--they are also stupid beyond belief in their inability to understand 'facts on the ground', as they say. In any case, thoughts of the Singularity are giving me increasing highs due to no drug supplements whatever. I now can make a living in dark, but legal ways...
Upon further reflection, I find that this attraction to the Singularity's effects proves a weakness of character on my part, most likely. I've now gone so far as to think I've passed by the temptation to sell my soul, which I have rationalized by saying that those are old sorts of things by Goethe, et alia. For some reason, I have not deserted people important to me in the name of indulging in sin, however. This is like the dive into the abyss, though, which may mean I was willing to give up all morals for the pleasure if necessary--but they just didn't happen to go away even when dealt with recklessly. My fate remains unsealed. Of course, if I develop some sort of medico-financial condition, I'll change my mind about all this sin-pleasure, remarkably available if you concentrate on it instead of using drugs; which also means that you can re-manufacture one's idea of 'soul' once one has agreed to 'sell it.' You then 'buy it back', and it's more convincing than you would have thought. For example, when I thought my cousin might have leukemia last week, I actually didn't want her to get it despite her objectionable qualities, partly because it would have interrupted my reveries.
What also surprises me is that, in my moments of quiet repose, I often have quite sentimental memories of the past, and cherish them far more than when I was full of resentment at not getting all the superficial enjoyments the retroactive Singularity has bequeathed me...so that all of this is just drunk with the perfume of summer. I think this total physical surrender back to the proscribed Biblical uncircumcision of mind has proved to be exactly a form of Deleuzian immanence demonstrable on the street as well as at home. This phenomenon seemed to intersect somewhat with not worrying quite so much about the speed of extinction of endangered species--I hope they're not, but life's too short even with the Singularity threatening death to keep worrying about rare birds. A related, but slightly opposed, sensation aided and abetted the new plaisirs when I found out that e-commerce was such a small percentage of the economy, and that online retail sales constituted just a little more than 5% of total sales--and that people were, like, you know, really into brick-and-mortar stores again, even if they'd been spending too much time on MySpace (I do not like MySpace, though.)
Robotic warfare moving forwards:
http://
corner.nationalreview.com...zc1ZWY0ODc0NWE=
Transhumanist Buzzword Bingo:
http://www.acceleratingfuture.co...om/steven/?
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