don't give power to skynet.


also tl;dw - summary plz

why do i have so many things in common with a yerman loser like you?

lmao@me

:D

my WLAN is called 'SkyNet'. :(((

well so is mine

wtf, that was painful, sounds like a form of scientific totalitarianism.

predictions that are ridiculously presumptuous along with contradictions in the form of 'it's already happening'.

embodied cognition(seems to be the 'in' thing at the moment) rips this to shreds. - i think anyway, it's one giant mess so it's kind of difficult to tell.

you cant argue that a certain technological curve doesnt exist, singularity is mainly about it being exponential and hitting its limit to infinity, the rest is a buffet of consequences

actually you can. i guess that's my point, it depends on if our environment changes, i'll clarify.

technology is there to solve problems, as long as a problem designed for a given technology exists, the technology is needed. simple things like language and money are technologies, there to solve problems i.e. communicate and share resources. i think we can agree, language in some form, is not going to die out. something in our environment may or may not change so we can't possibly know if the technology will die out.

now lets take his argument, will we die out or survive using technology to overcome our problems? how can anyone answer that? we have no idea if we can solve future problems and second, he makes the assumption the human race is one big collective, in it together. there's a good TED talk on the possibility of a species evolving to better the human race, does the new species count as 'us' surviving?

What? Besides the fact that technology is NOT there to solve *problems*, unless *everything* is a problem, nothing you're saying has anything to do with 'technological curve', which is a measure of technological progress. You can't argue that technological progress, or curve, does not exist, the only argument is whether it is exponential.

of course it is. you crash land in the desert, would you rather have a canister to keep water in/radio/distress signal or a portable dvd player?

we likely don't have the resources to create such a machine to surpass human intelligence and even if we did, what use is a higher intellect if it's - i'll just say 'body' - can't survive without help? probably an arguable argument, but i think it's relevant.

along with the limited resources, computer development has been slower than the industrial age and has been slowing, AND singularities can be found everywhere, in all sorts of data.

i mean, he's assuming that we have the resources, we have the intellect and that it's actually possible, that's a lot of assumptions.

plus measuring intelligence is kind of difficult and relative.

"of course it is. you crash land in the desert, would you rather have a canister to keep water in/radio/distress signal or a portable dvd player?"

Ugh. Just because we have problems, doesn't mean that we exist to solve them. Technology is extension of the universe. It exists because complex systems exist.

"we likely don't have the resources to create such a machine to surpass human intelligence and even if we did, what use is a higher intellect if it's - i'll just say 'body' - can't survive without help? probably an arguable argument, but i think it's relevant."

Why is this relevant? Why does any consequence of exponential technological development relevant to the exponential technological development? We don't even know what exactly intelligence is and there is no reason "it" has to be comprehensible within the confined of our animal minds.

"along with the limited resources, computer development has been slower than the industrial age and has been slowing, AND singularities can be found everywhere, in all sorts of data."

Computer development isn't necessarily technological development. Scientific development is the base for growth in applicative technologies. The whole of progress is measured in paradigm shifts, not transistor size.

"i mean, he's assuming that we have the resources, we have the intellect and that it's actually possible, that's a lot of assumptions."

Regardless of the video, we do not have to assume anything. We do have the resources, we do have intellect. We don't have to assume that we have 'enough', we just have to assume that everything is possible with progressively growing supply of those and time. Than the question when, it's not likely it's going to be 'us'. Which leads to....

"plus measuring intelligence is kind of difficult and relative."

Exactly, but 'intelligence' isn't the point. Progression to a point beyond our comprehension is just that, incomprehensible. We can't know what the consequences of the singularity are. We can only talk about whether it is going to happen or not.

fucked up my explanation.

whatever, you're probably trolling. loads of respected philosophers and others have criticized singularity and Ray Kurzweil, so i'll let them do the arguing for you.

You can argue that exponential improvement isn't guaranteed. For example the rate of improvement in engineering exploded during the industrial revolution and could now be argued to be slowing down. Moore's Law might come to a halt long before we have enough processing power for any kind of singularity.

Singularity doesn't have anything to do with 'intelligence'. Moors law, transistor density, 'engineering', etc, in turn have nothing to do with overall technological progress and paradigm shifts.

Yea, the main problem with Kurzweil is that he seems to be cherry-picking "technological breakthrough" that are arbitrarily close to one another to support the idea of an exponential growth, without bothering to define precisely what constitutes such a breakthrough. It looks something like : first there was the wheel, then there were computers, then there was google, then there was facebook, then there was twitter... BOOM SINGULARITY!!!!!!

wp

also this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfbOyw3CT6A

Quite honestly, once you seriously think through all the consequences of Singularity, the possibility of humankind as we know it (including your puny little ego with all its primate instincts) becoming extinct no longer frightens you. What if we are here to build a species just as intelligent and imaginative as us, made out of more durable materials than our squishy C-H-O-N compounds and capable of reproduction and further self-improvement? So be it. Yes, uploading yourself and being able to run your mind (software) on a more durable synthetic brain (hardware) sounds intriguing, but on the galactic/universal scale, this is still just a tiny step compared to what can be accomplished.

We aren't "here" to do anything.

We aren't "here".

It's an illusion

We are here to do whatever we believe we are here to do. The outcome may not be what we expected, but not even trying is nihilism.

And do not get me wrong, I am not forcing anyone to do or believe in anything, I just value people who do much more.

We aren't here to do anything, it's got nothing to do with nihilism. One should simply do as one pleases, do whatever makes them happy or whatever they need to do to survive.

Agreed, "Its just a ride".

Nihilism does not mean "not trying" nor fatalism, it's just a useful mental trick which shows you that there aren't any inherent values, and in this case gazing to the abyss brings a wonderful clarity with it.

From the shadows a light shall spring!

Am I the only one who abhors these techno-philosophers / "He spoke at TED" "visionaries" seems so redundant :D

techno-philosophy

a sophisticated form of wanking

yeah, agreed to a point.. it's not like i couldn't think about some of this stuff on my own, but it's more satisfying to hear this from more "authorized" people

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090528/od_afp/s...0528124335

That's a dangerous notion TBH. Granted its usually true, but when talking about the big picture, there are plenty of "unauthorised" people who are worth listening too.

Some people are just wired differently and can do things naturally that others need to spend a lifetime studying.

Dalarnas Tidningar has now posted a clarification, basically stating that Mohammed has independently discovered a previously known formula.

Fucking immigrants

But isn't this particular form of philosophy just another facet of the discipline itself?

I agree with you, I don't really like techno-philosophy but being a student of philosophy I respect the ideas they come up with. I mean, I'm sure in Descartes time he would of had contemporaries who told him he was a fucking idiot for watching a candle melt in front of a fire, look at his ideas now.

Karl Marx was an angry disgruntled cunt but his ideas influenced an entire nation to revolution. Calling people visionaries in their own lifetime, especially when all they really produce is speculative ideas is a bit much, but who knows what the next century might hold.

Techno-philosophers seem to me, to be a group focusing their efforts upon ideas, that at the moment, are beyond any reasonable form of comparability, because they are quite 'new' and abstract.

Doesn't bother me, I'm more into subjectivity anyway :p

he sounds like Edgar from 24...

is he not dead?

I could've sworn I'd already commented on this one..

anyway.. "Can entropy be reversed?"

the ultimate question.. great novel :)