Paul Crowley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ciphergoth) wrote2012-02-21 01:26 pm
ciphergoth) wrote2012-02-21 01:26 pm
Rant I wrote in IM
I never post, so here's a rant written in IM I want to preserve. Edited somewhat.
here's how it seems to me
there's an argument for the singularity that goes like this
"A, B, C, D, and E all seem likely"
"E says that A + B + C + D = Singularity"
and then people say "No, the singularity is rubbish"
and we say "do you disagree with A, B, C, D, or E?"
and they say "You're all a bunch of wild-eyed dreamers"
and we say "Err, so is that C you disagree with?"
and they say "It's religion for geeks, man!"
and we say "Err, but..."
and ... they just DON'T FUCKING ENGAGE AT ALL.
That's why I keep pointing at http://ciphergoth.dreamwidth.org/357313.html
it takes the contrapositive, and says "If not singularity, then either ¬A or ¬B or ¬C or ¬D or ¬E"
No-one said "oh wait, you forgot F"
but none of ¬A or ¬B or ¬C or ¬D or ¬E got a lot of support.
I am willing to accept that this misrepresents singularity critics horribly - you certainly don't all call us names for example! But I hope the broad form of my frustration is clear and if I'm confused I hope it makes it easier for you to clear up my confusion :-)
here's how it seems to me
there's an argument for the singularity that goes like this
"A, B, C, D, and E all seem likely"
"E says that A + B + C + D = Singularity"
and then people say "No, the singularity is rubbish"
and we say "do you disagree with A, B, C, D, or E?"
and they say "You're all a bunch of wild-eyed dreamers"
and we say "Err, so is that C you disagree with?"
and they say "It's religion for geeks, man!"
and we say "Err, but..."
and ... they just DON'T FUCKING ENGAGE AT ALL.
That's why I keep pointing at http://ciphergoth.dreamwidth.org/357313.html
it takes the contrapositive, and says "If not singularity, then either ¬A or ¬B or ¬C or ¬D or ¬E"
No-one said "oh wait, you forgot F"
but none of ¬A or ¬B or ¬C or ¬D or ¬E got a lot of support.
I am willing to accept that this misrepresents singularity critics horribly - you certainly don't all call us names for example! But I hope the broad form of my frustration is clear and if I'm confused I hope it makes it easier for you to clear up my confusion :-)
no subject
Is it to be uploads or AI? If the former, capturing brain states that will run in a satisfactory fashion might be very hard (or impossible). If the latter, AI might be very hard; evidence so far suggests it is. Designing an AI meaningfulyl cleverer than yourself might be very hard or impossible, in a way that is not tractable to thinking about it for longer.
Climate change and the energy crisis may well put human society in a state where - at the very least - computers stop getting faster.
"Your superior intelligence is no match for our puny weapons"; when it gets started, the real world might recognise what's going on and take extremely drastic steps.
no subject
Climate change and such could kill us all, which would definitely put the kibosh on the whole thing. If it doesn't kill us all, it could delay it a great deal; it's not impossible that we could survive but never get back to making progress again, but I don't think that's likely.
"Meaningfully" cleverer than us isn't a strict requirement - if it is "merely" a million times faster than us it can compress the time from Socrates to today into less than a day, and if it's "merely" the equivalent of a billion human-level intelligences each working at this 1E6 accelerated rate, it will have a significant intellectual advantage.
Any given AGI might successfully be stopped by violence; this broadly comes under the heading of humanity deciding not to build one. However, we may eventually - wisely or otherwise, deliberately or otherwise - allow one to run for long enough that it makes a big difference to our future.