The Singularity?

[Kristopher]

The concept of "the singularity" has gained popularity both with science fiction authors, and with futurists. There's a movement out there of people who call themselves "Singulatarians", some of whom have earned the singularity the nickname "rapture for nerds" -- for them, it's not just speculation, it's a fervent belief.

 

However, for your setting -- gaming or fiction-writing -- there's no reason to view such a future as inevitable.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_Singularity#Criticism

 

In addition to general criticisms of the singularity concept, several critics have raised issues with Kurzweil's iconic chart. One line of criticism is that a log-log chart of this nature is inherently biased toward a straight-line result. Others identify selection bias in the points that Kurzweil chooses to use. For example, biologist PZ Myers points out that many of the early evolutionary "events" were picked arbitrarily.[24]

 

The Economist mocked the concept with a graph extrapolating that the number of blades on a razor, which has increased over the years from one to as many as five, will increase ever-faster to infinity.[25]

[Nyrath]

Re: The Singularity?

 

SF author Charles Stross rakes the Singularity over the coals in his "Tough Guide to the Rapture of the Nerds"

http://web.archive.org/web/20080622142427/http://www.antipope.org/charlie/toughguide.html

(this is a tiddly-wiki, you have to explore it)

[austenandrews]

Re: The Singularity?

 

I was never clear on the purpose of the concept. Does it boil down to a bundle of tropes?

[L. Marcus]

Re: The Singularity?

 

It's about the accelerating development of technology -- thanks to AI and other advances, tech will advance in an enormous leap.

[austenandrews]

Re: The Singularity?

 

Right, but that's been accepted by SF for decades. Is the gist simply that, due to graphs, it's going to happen this century instead of some future century? Or is the point that people actually believe it as opposed to accepting the possibility?

[Kristopher]

Re: The Singularity?

 

It's not just accelerating technology -- it's the accelerating acceleration of technology, so that there's a point beyond which we cannot image the future.

 

I'm not at all convinced by it.

[Nyrath]

Re: The Singularity?

 

Right' date=' but that's been accepted by SF for decades. Is the gist simply that, due to graphs, it's going to happen this century instead of some future century? Or is the point that people actually believe it as opposed to accepting the possibility?[/quote']

No, it is that according to the graph, the rate of technological advance is increasing. Increasing to the point where the rate of advance will be Infinity real soon now.

 

Half the people who look at that say it is proof of a Singularity coming, the other half say it is proof that there is something wrong with the graph.

[RexMundi]

Re: The Singularity?

 

I say Graph. Honestly I haven't seen much of an Advance in technology. Things are Smaller, but they are still the same things that do the same stuff and I can think of more then a few things we could do 40 Years ago that we can't now.

 

~Rex

[austenandrews]

Re: The Singularity?

 

Yeah, it's a pretty naive notion. We'll certainly get big jumps in technology as we go, but "infinitely accelerating" would appear to make presumptions on engineering, logistics, politics, et al. that are unlikely to all make big leaps simultaneously.

[Nyrath]

Re: The Singularity?

 

You can read the gory details here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

http://hanson.gmu.edu/vi.html

[RexMundi]

Re: The Singularity?

 

Someone call in Don Gibb to handle this Nerd War, heh. Ogre will fix this Singularity thing.

 

~Rex

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: The Singularity?

 

Kris' snark speaks for me.

[Zeropoint]

Re: The Singularity?

 

I don't know; I can kind of see the point. How long has human civilization been around? Ten, fifteen thousand years? A mere two hundred years ago, we didn't know about the principle of electromagnetism, nor a way to produce any kind of electricity other than static electricity. ALL of our electronic technology has been developed recently, historically speaking. We dreamed of flight for thousands of years and then went from the Wright Flier to the F-22 Raptor in a single human lifetime. 500 years ago, a person had no reason to expect technological change in his or her lifetime; today, we have become used to seeing technologies appear, become popular and change the world, then become obsolete.

 

Knowledge feeds on knowledge; the more we know, the easier it is to find new knowledge. Better knowledge gives us better tools, which allow us to explore faster, and one of the things we discover is how to make even better tools.

 

And finally, if you define the singularity as the point in the future that you can't imagine past . . . who's to say we haven't already had one? Could anyone from Chaucer's time have imagined a world with automobiles, airliners, cell phones, and the internet?

[RexMundi]

Re: The Singularity?

 

Yeah we went from Balsa Wood and cloth, to an f-22 in no time. But 38 years ago, we were on the Moon, and now, we have to struggle to get into low Orbit. I'm not impressed with the last two generations what so ever. But hey my cell phone is smaller now. Sometimes, it even gets reception.

 

~Rex

[Zeropoint]

Re: The Singularity?

 

And that cell phone that you got for free with your plan, that fits in your pocket, has WAY more processing power than the entire Apollo program.

 

Okay, it DOES seem like we went backwards on our space travel, but you should keep in mind that the Apollo program used more of our GNP than we could really afford to keep spending. I'm QUITE sure that if we were suddenly that motivated to get to the moon again, we could do it with less time and money this time around. We just don't have a driving reason to go back at the moment.

 

But yeah, I'm also disappointed in our space travel capacity.

[Kristopher]

Re: The Singularity?

 

Yeah we went from Balsa Wood and cloth' date=' to an f-22 in no time. But 38 years ago, we were on the Moon, and now, we have to struggle to get into low Orbit. I'm not impressed with the last two generations what so ever. But hey my cell phone is smaller now. Sometimes, it even gets reception.[/quote']

 

If we tried to go to the Moon today, we could, and it would be faster, better, and safer than the Apollo program. I think people don't realized just how hard that endeavor pushed against the edge of what was actually possible at the time.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: The Singularity?

 

Well, I'm looking forward to that infinite-bladed razor. That'll be one smooth shave.

[Nyrath]

Re: The Singularity?

 

500 years ago' date=' a person had no reason to expect technological change in his or her lifetime; today, we have become used to seeing technologies appear, become popular and change the world, then become obsolete.[/quote']

This. My mother in law is quite irate that now that all of the VHS video tapes have been replaced by DVDs, we are now expected to replace the DVDs with Blu-Ray.

[RexMundi]

Re: The Singularity?

 

Bah, we waste more money on "Give Aways" to other countries , Stimulus, and other bogus BS Big Guv'ment Bridges to no Where then what we did on the Space Program. Ah well, it will be a moot point anyway once the Chinese and the Indians get up there and Pitch up claim markers all over the place.

 

~Rex

[austenandrews]

Re: The Singularity?

 

And finally' date=' if you define the singularity as the point in the future that you can't imagine past . . . who's to say we haven't already had one? Could anyone from Chaucer's time have imagined a world with automobiles, airliners, cell phones, and the internet?[/quote']

This was kind of my point. It's an ongoing process and always has been (more or less). It sort of goes without saying that, barring catastrophe, there will be a technological point in the future that we can't imagine now. The Singularity idea seems to be just a more specific way to look at it, with the added spice of "maybe in my lifetime!"

[Kristopher]

Re: The Singularity?

 

Bah' date=' we waste more money on "Give Aways" to other countries , Stimulus, and other bogus BS Big Guv'ment Bridges to no Where then what we did on the Space Program. Ah well, it will be a moot point anyway once the Chinese and the Indians get up there and Pitch up claim markers all over the place.[/quote']

 

Than we did in raw terms, sure. Adjust those Apollo costs for inflation, or as a percentage of GDP, and what do they look like?

[Sociotard]

Re: The Singularity?

 

There is an acceleration in the rate of technological progress. There is also a rate in the effect of diminishing returns on that progress.

 

The world of 2010 looks less different from 1960 than 1960 looks from 1910, even though they're just as far apart chronologically.

[Markdoc]

Re: The Singularity?

 

As I understand it, the singularity is not just the point where you can no longer predict the future any real distance ahead - that's been the case through most ofthe last 1,000 years - but the point where technological change becomes so raoid that it is no longer comprehensible to humans at all. That's to say, the point where changes in technology and society that are happening right now are so many and so rapid, that they become unpredictable and difficult to understand even at the time - no one person can get a realistic picture of what's actually going on. It's like you buy your new phone and it has an app for "Phleboggling" and you have no idea of what it's for. So you go to look up "Phleboggle" on Google and it tells you that if your Muntz is configured for local phleboggling - which is apparently different in different parts of the world - then you can log into Tachynet and then proxy to your local provider via your squilletting account, so that you can call even if you don't have a local cell signal ... you might be able to work it out eventually, but by then the knowledge will probably be obsolete.

 

A lot of people feel like this has already happened, so the idea of the Singularity has a certain resonance.

 

Practically, however, I feel like we are seeing a slowdown in many aspects of technology, in that we are refining and enhancing many technologies, that were groundbreaking a few decades ago, but relatively few new technologies have been developed recently - the web being one that does spring to mind. What the singularity folks seem to ignore is that knowledge has rarely, if ever progressed in the kind of curve they extrapolate from, but in a series of fits and starts often with highly productive periods where one new dscovery kickstatts new developments in many fields followed by a wait (of determinate length) for the next conceptual breakthrough.

 

cheers, Mark

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: The Singularity?

 

Go, Markdoc. And Kris.

The singularity? By these definitions, it was, say, 1850--1940:

i) Transportation goes from horsetrot to "going like 60" sounding vaguely old-fashioned.

ii) Communication goes from "there is a light on Edoras" to direct-dialled long distance in a few markets. (I think. Don't hold me to this, but London-Manchester might have been at that point.)

iii) Whee, we can fly!

iv) Electric lights, central heat and air, refrigeration.

v) General anaesthesia

vi) Reinforced concrete. You think that's not a big deal at a whole 'nother level than a few skyscrapers, go walk some of the flood plains in your city.

vii) Nylon, rubber, ready-to-wear, elastic straps, zippers, waterproofing.....

viii) And I could go on. And on. And on.

[austenandrews]

Re: The Singularity?

 

As I understand it' date=' the singularity is not just the point where you can no longer predict the future any real distance ahead - that's been the case through most ofthe last 1,000 years - but the point where technological change becomes so raoid that it is no longer comprehensible to humans [b']at all[/b]. That's to say, the point where changes in technology and society that are happening right now are so many and so rapid, that they become unpredictable and difficult to understand even at the time - no one person can get a realistic picture of what's actually going on.

Or rather, as I read it, only those with enhanced superhuman intelligence will be able to comprehend the world. I don't buy it though, because widespread tech change takes investment and money doesn't work that way.

 

It's like you buy your new phone and it has an app for "Phleboggling" and you have no idea of what it's for. So you go to look up "Phleboggle" on Google and it tells you that if your Muntz is configured for local phleboggling - which is apparently different in different parts of the world - then you can log into Tachynet and then proxy to your local provider via your squilletting account, so that you can call even if you don't have a local cell signal ... you might be able to work it out eventually, but by then the knowledge will probably be obsolete.

 

A lot of people feel like this has already happened, so the idea of the Singularity has a certain resonance.

You just described my general experience with modern social tech. I've never sent a text message. I can't fathom that video games involve talking. What some people call the Singularity is my daily existence.