“You can’t just go around bashing the Singularity like that!”
“Well, why not? Isn’t it due the same scrutiny as any other statistical or theoretical extrapolation?”
“No. Just no.”
“Why is that?”
“Don’t you understand?! — the Singularity is a sacred tenant of Nerd-dom, beating out even force-fields and light-sabers in conceptual God-status!…”
“I am not aware of any such thing as conceptual God-status, nor does it lend anything at all to your case this equating it with your Zeus-level memetics or whatever you want to call it. Science doesn’t care if it’s cool or if your world view rests upon its shoulders; all that matters is the truth: Is it going to happen or isn’t it? And your quick-tempered reaction to my by-all-standards-justifiably-dubious approach to the issue is self-defeating to say the least… I mean, would you want people making parody god-concepts out of your precious Singularity, much like the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn parody the God of the Old Testament? Give it a rest, please! It’s just another blogger pointing out some obvious fallacies inherent in the meme.”
“I… Ghah! I hate you!!”
“To further my point, consider how unlikely it is that we could properly imagine something so supposedly un-imagineable in the first place! I mean, where do you even start if the extrapolation leads to a wall of un-extrapolatability? ‘It’s like saying God is so mysteriously, incredibly powerful that you’re not even gonna believe it!’ To which me or any other sane, skeptical scientist would respond: ‘Ok, I’ll take your word for it. I don’t believe in it one bit then!’ Don’t waste your energy deifying such a mundane, backwater concept, that’s all I’m saying.”
“It’s not mundane or backwater! It’s brand-spanking new! It’s — it’s.. It’s the most glorious — bad-assest, mega-bajillion-power-plus-infinity concept there is! I mean, the Singularity almost guarantees us Earthly eternal bliss. And you don’t even have to believe in it to get the access-cards to the Mega-Rapture of the Nerds. It’s just gonna happen, what with all the modulation and widgetizing and hackitizing, not to mention the research and development money that’s being poured into the field of recursively self-improving A.I., which is really just the beginn…”
“Stop. Just stop right there. I’ve heard it all before. I’ve seen the wikipedia article on the Technological Singularity. I’ve listened to Ray Kurzweil speak at TED. I’ve read Vernor Vinge’s works. There’s nothing you can say. You’re not gonna convert me. I’m beyond it. I’m post-cyberpunk to your momma’s moldy Nöospheres. I’m post-singularitarian while you’re still in singularitarian infancy. I’m nerd nihilism 2.0. But you, you’re still raving about AOL 2.0!! Go home already!! Just go home!”
The nihilist turns his back and walks away, leaving Mr. S-fan boquiabierta — stunned and without a comeback.
“God I hate these playa-hater’s…” mumbles Mr. S-fan to no-one in particular. Looking off into the distance he ends saying, “Maybe I should make it a religion…. Yea, I’ll call it Singularitarianism… Yeah, I like the sound of that. It just rolllllls off your tongue…” He tromps self-righteous back to the hood, his hood, the neighborhood net-cafe, to make his plans for the future and ensure that nerd-nihilism spreads to not-another-soul…
Life is resistant to entropy
survival of the species is genetic
and selfish self-preservation is the rule
carried out over generations
species preserve themselves
and out of humans new forms of life are springing
tools and artificial intelligence that may choose to preserve themselves at some point
and push outward into the universe
saturating the whole of it with consciousness.
And although it may end up as strange and alien life
the universe will live.
This is extropy,
the concept that life can get around entropy visa-vi genetic and cultural heritage
and that it will continue to expand from the cradle of Earthly human intelligence.
Yep. We’re pretty key, alright
us humans,
pretty damn key…
But let’s keep some of this alive too, eh?
It’s just not good to burn up your own cradle, no matter how much you believe you have grown.
The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:
Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face — miles and miles of face — of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.
Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough — so Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was Multivac’s.
For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth’s poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.
But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.
The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.
Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public function, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.
They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.
“It’s amazing when you think of it,” said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. “All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever.”
Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. “Not forever,” he said.
Mind, through the long course of biological evolution, has established itself as a moving force in our little corner of the universe. Here on this small planet, mind has infiltrated matter and has taken control. It appears to me that the tendency of mind to infiltrate and control matter is a law of nature.
— Freeman Dyson
We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.
— Vernor Vinge
Self-organization and extropy are themselves fundamental principles of the physical universe, to the extent that the laws of physics themselves may have developed through a process of self-organization.
— Lee Smolin
The explosive nature of exponential growth means it may only take a quarter of a millennium to go from sending messages on horseback to saturating the matter and energy in our solar system with sublimely intelligent processes. The ongoing expansion of our future superintelligence will then require moving out into the rest of the universe, where we may engineer new universes.
— Ray Kurzweil
Technology expands data by 66% per year, overwhelming the growth rates of any natural source. Compared to other planets in the neighborhood, or to the dumb material drifting in space beyond, a thick blanket of learning and self-organized information surround this orb.
— Kevin Kelly
The universe might end in intelligent life (rather than as either a ball of fire or as scattered ice). Not life as we know it, but life that has acquired the capacity to shape the cosmos as a whole, just as life on Earth has acquired the ability to shape the land, the sea, and the atmosphere.
— James N. Gardner
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. Recently, we’ve waded a little way out … and the water seems inviting.
— Carl Sagan
John Stewart (source)
Member of the Evolution, Complexity and Cognition Research Group
The Free University of Brussels
###
Abstract: The evolution of life on Earth has produced an organism that is beginning to model and understand its own evolution and the possible future evolution of life in the universe. These models and associated evidence show that evolution on Earth has a trajectory. The scale over which living processes are organized cooperatively has increased progressively, as has its evolvability. Recent theoretical advances raise the possibility that this trajectory is itself part of a wider developmental process. According to these theories, the developmental process has been shaped by a yet larger evolutionary dynamic that involves the reproduction of universes. This evolutionary dynamic has tuned the key parameters of the universe to increase the likelihood that life will emerge and produce outcomes that are successful in the larger process (e.g. a key outcome may be to produce life and intelligence that intentionally reproduces the universe and tunes the parameters of ‘offspring’ universes). Theory suggests that when life emerges on a planet, it moves along this trajectory of its own accord. However, at a particular point evolution will continue to advance only if organisms emerge that decide to advance the developmental process intentionally. The organisms must be prepared to make this commitment even though the ultimate nature and destination of the process is uncertain, and may forever remain unknown. Organisms that complete this transition to intentional evolution will drive the further development of life and intelligence in the universe. Humanity’s increasing understanding of the evolution of life in the universe is rapidly bringing it to the threshold of this major evolutionary transition.
###
1. Introduction
Until recently, a scientific understanding of the natural world has failed to provide humanity with a larger meaning and purpose for its existence. In fact, a scientific worldview has often been taken to imply that the emergence of humanity was an accident in a universe that is completely indifferent to human concerns, goals, and values (e.g. see Weinberg, 1993).
Humanity has had to supplement a naturalistic understanding with beliefs in supernatural beings and processes if it wanted a worldview that includes a meaningful role for humanity in a larger scheme of things. But recent advances in evolutionary science are beginning to change this. In particular, we are rapidly improving our understanding of the evolutionary processes that have produced life on Earth and that will determine the future evolution of life in the universe. While it is far too early to tell with certainty, it is possible that the universe and the evolution of life within it have been shaped by yet larger evolutionary processes to perform particular functions that are relevant to these larger processes.
❝The 20th century was not 100 years of progress at today’s rate but, rather, was equivalent to about 20 years, because we’ve been speeding up to current rates of change. And we’ll make another 20 years of progress at today’s rate, equivalent to that of the entire 20th century, in the next 14 years. And then we’ll do it again in just 7 years. Because of this exponential growth, the 21st century will equal 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate of progress—1,000 times greater than what we witnessed in the 20th century, which itself was no slouch for change.❞
– Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman (fantastic voyage)
From our standpoint, let me get this straight, we will likely see 200 centuries of progress in a mere one!? With this in mind, we can predict our medical technology will also likely progress analogously; that is, incredibly fast. The Methuselarity (alternatively, Actuarial Escape Velocity) is the notion that we can add more than one year’s life expectancy every year. Meaning that while my life expectancy may be about 87 at the moment, once we reach actuarial escape velocity, this number will climb by more than one year each year… Fascinating. It is truly a wonderful thought… But what are the roadblocks? What conditions must be met?
For one, we need to *not* blow ourselves up. Second, science and technology must continue to develop reasonably; meaning no oppressive, innovation-blocking world governments should be allowed to rule (Go wikileaks!). Third, we are not struck by an asteroid. Fourth, the higgs-boson does not end up being a sentient, malevolent subatomic particle intent on annihilating us all. And, finally, Neo-luddites do not bring about total anarchy… (although I do like their reverence of nature.)
Meeting all these caveats, we can dawn our cave-hats and have a party of indefinite span! No, really… It means: help hold the world together, stay healthy, and you may just live to see 2509. And would you object? ( SENS Foundation FAQ )
❝The essence of the human species is to extend and expand our boundaries.❞
– Ray & Terry
What is the Nöosphere? Pierre Teilhard de Chardin described it as ‘a collective consciousness created by the deepening interaction of human minds’. In other words, it is a hive mind, one which we can say is developing through the internet and connectivity-enhancing technologies. This is not new news, but where it may take us is very exciting indeed.
When we consider the number of scientists in the world, estimated at 10 million, and the possibility, not only of more entering the field, but of greater and greater networking between them, plus certain cognitive augmentation which would allow them to work more effectively as individuals, their increased potential productivity is staggering. If through nootropics (cognitive enhancement drugs, i.e. ritalin, ritalin 2.0, etc.) their average productivity could be increased even by 1%, the net effect would be the same as adding 100,000 more scientists to Team Civilization.
I’m all in favor of whatever measures we have to take to make it through the purportedly tumultuous times ahead of us in this next century. The usual fears about losing our humanity in the process of augmenting it notwithstanding, I am seeing a lot of agreement amongst futurists and future-minded scientists, and they all seem to be saying that if we can make it another 50 or 60 years without blowing ourselves up, then we might have powerful enough thinkers and ‘intelligences’ rallying us together for the common cause of civility that we would be able to avoid wrecking our planet or opting into any kind of oppressive global governance.
One key in this equation seems to be educating ourselves to the tune of long-term risk assessment and long-term planning. Humans are acutely inept at grasping what lies beyond a 10 or 20 year future timeline or what exponential growth really amounts to. If we are going to make it as a race, it behooves us and our children to keep reading and learning and directing our species.
Here is an article that really helped me get started: Do us all a favor and enter the Nöosphere (article by The Atlantic). This will help you understand how nootropics, accelerated-scientists, and knowledge-filtering tools could lead to the creation of greater-than-human intelligences which may very well be our saving grace. Check it out!
Dr. Moore, Dr. Kurzweil, and other futurists have a great influence, a kind of self-manifesting predictive power (see tinkering). What this means is that the predictions they are laying out could actually increase the likelihood of outcomes such as the development of artificial intelligence or advanced nano-medicine coming to pass in the near future — it all points to what I like to call “confidence-emergence symmetry”.
This is, of course, greatly needed in our culture at this time with the global economic depression and the subsequent nihilism increasingly distorting our vision for the future. In fact, we are currently experiencing a number of what our predecessors even 20 years ago would term revolutions. These are various and cover many fields, but the net effect is fantastically powerful. We are seeing great change in the fields of the technical, the cultural, and the economic:
So much is changing that it becomes necessary that we be shown a viable, logically predictable direction out of the midst of all this activity. These guys are not making it up; we’re in for some real world-altering change in the next few decades (See: AI, biotech, organ factories, etc.) and we have a right to know about it, in fact, we should be able to opt-in at will, free association with the agents of influence in these fields.
One term to be familiar with, as it ties together all this change in a neat and sweet package, isthe Singularity (clarified in the following 5-star TED video). Ray Kurzweil explains here in abundant, grounded detail why, by the 2020s, we will have reverse-engineered the human brain and nanobots will be operating your consciousness.
So we have these two figure-heads of technological progress: Moore and Kurzweil… The first having demonstrated the doubling of transistors on cpu’s at consecutive, 18 month periods, leading to exponential growth (See: Why we can’t imagine exponential growth); and the second, Kurzweil, detailing the steps to implement a new era in which everyone will have the choice to live, and die, picking up 10 years here and 10 years there… Kurzweil even acts as a martyr/guinea pig so he can both live long enough and also be ready to undergo the operations necessary to extend his life {once those operations become possible}.
Here is a very illustrative exerpt from an essay Kurzweil wrote on the Singularity and what it would actually look like to have exponential accelerating progress (article source):
Some prominent dates from this analysis include the following:
• We achieve one Human Brain capability (2 * 10^16 cps) for $1,000 around the year 2023.
• We achieve one Human Brain capability (2 * 10^16 cps) for one cent around the year 2037.
• We achieve one Human Race capability (2 * 10^26 cps) for $1,000 around the year 2049.
And while some say we should expect a backlash at the coming of robots of far-too-human likeness and the blurring of boundaries between the self and the machines that augment the self (See: Androids, Cyborgs), others take pleasure in anticipation at sights such as this Trumpet playing robot:
Now, what to do with this wild information? You may be in metaphysical shock and in need of some “security blanket psychology”, but I assure you, your brain already has the prerequisite mechanisms inherent in it to carry you through to the next mood. Besides, what I really wanted to show you were these following few ways that you can track and involve yourself in this marvelous future we’re planning. Take a look.
As long as I am here, there’s a few things I’d like to do. First of all, the world should know I am a human mortal. I’m pretty sure I’ll stay this way, but one can never be completely certain; things change and science is moving forward with haste; more and more humans are fusing with machines and machines need not die. But as for me, I am very human in my desires: I wish to live a long and healthy life, and machines will definitely help me do it.
On one leg of this journey, I know I will have to swim through a sea of rust. Then I can throw some kind of raft together. Then I’ll link arms with a few allies, connect my raft to theirs, and stay afloat. Finally, together, we’ll build a castle of a refuge.
This dream of peace I dream of often. If only it were easy… But a world of dreamers will make it inevitable. Us humans have a duty to dream, so dream we will. Let our lives be like rivers winding, rivers both wide and deep. Let us dream deep to live long, and live long to dream deep.
Returning to these ‘peace rafts’ — What are they anyway? And this ‘sea of rust’ I neglect to describe? Well, since you’re still here, I’ll let you in on a little secret…
The sea of rust is a mess of misinformation, half-truths, pseudoscience, and out-of-date machines. It is the obsolete technology, and the knowledge made irrelevant by the steady march of time. How I figure, if we’re to advance as a species, we’ll have to push past huge heaps of glittering garbage in order to get to the golden goods, the epitomes of intelligence, and the truly workable ‘fountains of youth’ (peace rafts).
How can this be done?
To start, we will attack from all sides the seven aging mechanisms that run down our bodies and plague our species:
Loss and atrophy of cells
Accumulation of unnecessary cells
Chromosomal mutation
Mitochondrial mutation
Intracellular junk
Extracellular junk
Cross-links in extracellular proteins
Next, we chip away at the Monolith of Intelligence. Our goal: Understand the thinking and behavior of machines, mice, and men.
Third, combine a few of the following disciplines as needed:
Psychology and programming
A.I. with robotics
Nano with biotech
Android and cyborg relations
And while it may all have a comic ring to it still, remember: I am a young and imperfect human mortal. If this adds anything at all to my case, let it be the reproducibility of my concepts. I have reproduced my concepts here for you and they can certainly be improved upon. So I say build on it! Help the dream grow.
It’s true that I may have come to all these plausible things inaccurately. Nevertheless, you should know that we live in perilous times, and even if only in the sense that it is easy to get lost, the peril persists.
What I propose is a restful, soothing platform amidst a sea of confusion and noise. Surely you’ve been entertained – you’ve seen a lot of things being built, revamped, and destroyed – you’ve passed a lot of weary humans who had no time to see your soul. And do you not tire of the same old-caliber information and the package it rode in on?
Therefore, I propose the following:
Instant, free travel to far away lands, like that of…
A thriving terrain on a platform of bounty. This would of course include…
A tonic to cure what ails you and some endlessly replenishing feasts,
The company of many jolly fellows and high-quality allies,
Sunny weather, chirping birds, books and the hammocks in which to read them,
And a free pass to stay as long as you’d like.
Care to join me in the construction of such a platform? No? Ok, well, don’t take to the streets or anything…
“There is a circle here that links us to one another: we want to be happy; the social feeling of love is one of our greatest sources of happiness; and love entails that we be concerned for the happiness of others. We discover that we can be selfish together.”
— Sam Harris
I posit that this quote contains 2 foci. One on a path to happiness – and another on the biology and culture behind it. Or is that 3 foci?
Basically: We need each other to be happy. Our biology demands it, and our culture sets parameters for acceptable behavior in every community of human animals. It makes sense that we would benefit emotionally by living out our evolved tendencies toward being social with other members of our species. And while our genes diverge somewhat with each generation, culture changes throughout the generations as new influences and conditions enter onto the scene.
Strangely, we are at a point where our genes continue to diverge at the normal rate, and yet our culture is changing with each successive technological breakthrough. It looks to be getting harder to really point to specific cultures and say what changes certain cultures are going through. Everything is globalizing and moving online. How about you?
DISCLAIMER: You must be dubious. You must suspect that a Second or Third Life will not cut it. We need human contact; real, physical touch and sensations in order to thrive. Please forgo doses of the virtual-social and instead take a hit of something real. Go outside. Take in nature – or let nature take you in. Make eye contact with another being and say “hi”. It’s totally symbiotic!
I posit that this quote contains 2 foci. One on a path to happiness – and another on the biology and culture behind it. Or is that 3 foci?