1) Are you looking forward to the singularity, or fearing it?
2) Will we destroy ourselves before it happens?
3) Will you choose immortality if its possible?
4) What year do you think it will it happen? 2029 as currently predicted? Sooner, later.. or never?
5) Are you in favor of becoming cyborg-ish?
6) If immortality is someday possible, do you feel reviving the dead is a possiblility?
If it is realistically possible, then we should certainly embrace something such as this. However, it seems as though a technological civilization will destroy itself before it comes to realize this because surely we are not the most technologically advanced civilization in the universe and assuming that we are not, why has another civilization not realized this feat of "waking up the universe" yet?
I believe most people will choose immortality (myself included) and only a minority of severely religious people will object to it. A lot of people claim to believe in the "afterlife", but I believe they do so because it is a very nice thought and that if the possibility of an eternal existence in this life were possible most would abandon the idea of an afterlife altogether because it wouldn't be necessary anymore.
As for reviving the dead...that seems pretty far-fetched to me, because you would have to reconstruct all the memories and the exact personality of that deceased individual which seems highly unlikely.
One last thing to add. I feel that most people born and raised in this technological era will be inclined to become cyborg-ish because we grew up with sophisticated technology surrounding us and are used to it, so why not embrace it and let it better our own bodies.
Good Post!
1) Both. Technology is most certainly a two-edged sword, and the truly kafka-esque nightmares that could spring into existence somewhere between now and then are mindboggling. Just the other day I got to contemplating identity theft. It's bad enough today, and as the world becomes more digitized, it's only going to get worse. Kurtzweil talks of augmented reality, one of the applications of which could be people changing their virtual appearance, or changing their subjective virtual perception of others. Just imagine if someone could steal not just your bank account information and social security number, but your appearance, your voice, your everything? They could probably make you look like someone else while they're at it.
2) No. I have guarded optimism that humanity will not succumb to an existential catastrophe in the next 50 to 100 years. This may possibly be the result of space colonization preserving a fragment of humanity after a terrestrial disaster, but I really don't think that will happen either.
3) No one can choose to be immortal. We may be able to choose longevity, living much longer than a human lifespan. However, it will not surprise me if a great many people tire of "life" and choose to end it of their own will. I also presume busses will still exist in the future, which means we still run the risk of getting run over by them. I will probably choose longevity, assuming it is possible and is in a physiological state of youth. I certainly wouldn't want to be elderly for ever.
4) I don't know where you get 2029, but Kurtzweil predicts 2045. I think it may take longer, but not much (before 2100).
5) Yes. Many people already are cyborgs; anybody with a pacemaker or on dialysis qualifies, in my book. I would prefer to wait until nanotechnology makes cyborgism non-surgical and relatively non-invasive, but I have no qualms with the concept.
6) No; the previous replier has already stated why this is extremely unlikely. We may be able to create close facsimiles of the recently deceased, but anything more than that is doubtful, save through time-travel.
And you?
SMIILE -Timothy Learyshare
Hi Pete.
About your #3.
I know what you mean about not actually calling it immortality. Aubrey De Grey says it wont be that easy. He claims the treatments will extend life, but that the improvements of those treatments will be available before the effects of the first treatment wear off, keeping us ahead of the game. But there is still a million ways to die, including a crazy bus driver like you said or a piano falling on your head haha.
If it works however, we wont be old forever. The nanobots theyre creating restore cells that cause aging back to a prime state, which in most people is their early 20s. So people will look and feel younger as well. This of course is their current thinking and since they dont have these treatments yet, its guesswork but it does make sense. Aubrey claims that if you give a man these treatments when hes 60, the next year he will be 61 but feel 59, the next year hes 62 but feels 58, etc until your cells, genes, whatever are back to prime condition. Here is a speech by him. A bit long but interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iYpxRXlboQ
In response to #4.
Ive heard that the date of the singularity has been dropped considerably from its initial predictions. The first was the 2050s and then it slowly came down from there due to the fact that we're doubling our tech faster than moores law. Moores law states every 2 years but its down to every 8 months now. Kurzweil recently stated the year 2029 on CNN. You can hear him say it in this link. If you dont want to watch it all you can zoom ahead to 5:45 to hear him mention it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1o5yB2oLyo
And you can get your 2029 T-shirt here lol. Just kidding.
http://www.zazzle.com/2029_singularity_t_shirt-235577652110630436
I believe his latest book "The Singularity is Near" also states 2029.
The only person ive seen to disagree with this is Michio Kaku but that guy seems a little "out there" to me haha. But maybe hes right. The only way to find out is to keep building them stronger and stronger.
This week AMD announced 16 core processors for the first quarter of 2011. I just bought a new PC with a new dual core a year and 5 months ago. Im sure no ones buying a new processor every 8 months. They are zipping along faster than we can keep up.
But what i wonder is, do we really need a singularity for great things to happen? I mean look how powerful PCs are now and they are estimated to be only 0.10% as smart as humans even though they solve problems faster, and can beat any human in chess or any other strategic game, and they (supposedly) arent even 1% as intelligent as us. You have to wonder what will be possible when they are 25% as smart as us, or even 10%.
Heres my thoughts on the questions i asked.
1) Are you looking forward to the singularity, or fearing it?
Looking forward to it and find it exciting.
2) Will we destroy ourselves before it happens?
I sure hope not. Countries who possess nukes i dont worry about. If they are intelligent enough to develop such a thing then theyre smart enough to know the consequences if they use it.
Terrorists, however, are a different matter. I definitely worry about them gaining access to nukes or chemical weapons. IMO they are NOT smart enough to know wrong from right, or to think ahead of the consequences. I mean anyone who straps a bomb to their back because they think they will be given 70 virgins, cant be very intelligent haha. Just my opinion.
All in all i fear religious extremists across the globe. They will be the major obstacle in the way of progress.
3) Will you choose immortality if its possible?
I will choose the treatments of prolonged life, and as improvements come along afterwards, "may" lead to immortality. All i know is i dont look forward to old age and death. Im not bored with life. If someday i do become bored, ill rethink it.
4) What year do you think it will it happen? 2029 as currently predicted? Sooner, later.. or never?
Im tending to lean towards that date of 2029. If anything i would guess later, not sooner because when Moores Law runs out of steam we will be stuck looking for the next stage of progress. I hear this has been worked out and ideas are flying, but I havent heard anything specific yet.
5) Are you in favor of becoming cyborg-ish?
I am but ill admit it sounds creepy in the present time.
6) If immortality is someday possible, do you feel reviving the dead is a possibility?
Im not sure on this one either. Maybe for those who recently died, and i stress "maybe", but for those who are decayed many years how can this be possible? Even if its some really far fetched thing like the movie Starman, where the alien finds 1 strand of hair then clones the whole body from it, how can the memories be restored? I dont see this as ever being possible BUT... in this movie Ray says in the trailer that he plans to bring back his father. That part had me scratching my head and thats why i put it down as a question, to see what everyone else thinks.
Zoom ahead to 1:55 to hear him mention it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntY01qoIdus
I have read "The Singularity is Near" cover to cover, and he states 2045 for his predicted date of the singularity. He has convincing arguments, but he has also predicted some things to spring into existence earlier than actually came to pass. He was still right, they were invented, but not as soon as he had believed.
As for 2029, that is not the date he predicts the singularity will occur, that is the latest date by which he believes a computer will pass the Turing Test, which is not the same thing. Very important, without a doubt, but not the singularity by far. That is the point at which computer emotional intelligence will be comparable to human emotional intelligence. This is what he states in TSIN, in the CNN interview, and in fact he has placed a public bet on it with some other genius computer programmer.
Holy cow, am I predicting interesting dialogue?
SMIILE! -Timothy Learyshare
Ah yes you are right. I was connecting them. That when a machine passes the Turing test, the singularity has hit. But i suppose it makes sense that we will need time to adapt or even try and figure out what the thing is talking about.
From wiki:
"The technological singularity is a theoretical future point that takes place during a period of accelerating change sometime after the creation of a superintelligence."
Thanks for the correction.
1: Looking forward. However: there is some confusion because there are three types of Singularity in usage, the Vinge-style, the Kurzweil-style and the Yudkowsky-style. I think the Yudkowsky-style is the most appropriate; it denotes the Singularity as the creation of recursively self-improving artificial intelligence which rapidly shoots up to superintelligent levels.
2: May or may not; the possibility is certainly there. The next three great risks will be probably artificial viruses/bacteria, nanowarfare and unfriendly Strong AI. The best countermeasure against these risks would be a Friendly AI.
3: At the moment I say definitely yes, though true immortality may not be permitted by the laws of the universe.
4: My 90 percent confidence interval shall be 2025-2100, given there is no total destruction. It's broad, because I'm uncertain, and uncertainity means that it could happen early OR late.
5:Yes. There is basically no upper limit of my desired cyborgness, so uploads are okay and Jupiter brains are okay, but I'm sure that I'd prefer a very gradual enhancement. I don't wanna wake up one day as a superintelligence, I want to enjoy the intermediate states as well.
6: I say rather strongly no. AFAIK Kurzweil wants to create something as similar to his father as possible, but I wouldn't call that revival. Not that I believe in any kind of crappy dualism, it's just that creating an almost exact copy of a deceased person, only beginning from the DNA and minor bits of other information can be very, very hard, even for a superintelligence. IF it's possible then it would take a brutally strong AI/posthuman, one that can do things like quantum archeology.
http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues
1)Looking forward to it but fear I might not make it till then.
2)I think that is a real risk, but not from the major world powers. The mindset, intolerance, and blind faith of hardcore Muslims will be a real threat to our existence, which I fear will take some hard choices to eliminate.
3)The thought of death really scares me, and although I accept that it will happen someday, the peace of mind that radically extended life span would bring would be great. Short answer = Yes
4)I'm not sure about this one but I would say a little later than that.
5)I would be happy with that as long as I looked and felt like myself.
6)Perhaps with cryo-preserved people, but after brain cell death has occurred I just don't see how that is possible without time travel.
I don't believe in Kurzweil's vision of the singularity. I think computers will never think exactly like humans---but they will be programed to do every task better than us and eliminate the need for most jobs. I think this will cause horrible social problems.
Sometime in the next 100 years technology will eliminate jobs rather than create them for the first time in human history and we will suffer increasing unemployment rates. It is already starting to happen on a small scale. It is going to get worse.
Jobs will be eliminated like pilots, truck drivers, factory workers (that has pretty much happened anyway), warehouse workers, waiters, etc. etc.
Only an elite few will be earning income---are you going to be one of them?
Kurzweil will never make it to any real change in life extension. I don't think they will be able to extend life past 100 to 120 and that won't happen until later in the century.
I think the benefits of a singularity or whatever you want to call it will be for a few and the rest of us will just watch from the sidelines.
The only way the signularity, and automatisation of the industrial and service jobs can happen, is in a society which has disbanded money. If this is not done, it will only be the wealthy who control future society. Unless you want to be left out, just because you believe in "capitalism = freedom" then it's your choice, not mine.
shareYou nailed my thoughts perfectly. The socioeconomic circumstances that will be in play. Who will get this technology? How will they use it to stay ahead. As much as we try to deny it, it's human nature to have class systems, and most people will always be repressed by someone else to some degree. In the civilized world, as bad as it might seem, most people enjoy a quality of life unsurpassed in human history. Will we have to fight to regain a few thousand years of social evolution on a whole new level?
I don't believe capitalism has anything to do with it. There will always be "the haves" and the "have nots", People with power and people with none. Soviet Russia was a perfect example. Even if there's no money, there will always be a ruling class. If anything capitalism will fuel the progress.
But in the end I think we'll be annihilated before any singularity happens. or at least cripple our ability for technological progress.
"Life's tough. It's even tougher if you're stupid." John Wayne
The 'GNR' revolution described in the film is a little bit incomplete as a full description of the future world. It at the very least needs an "E" component for economics (and consequently politics/society). I would argue that your focus on employment and income is not entirely correct (although it is conditions of employment and income that preoccupy the systems of capitalism and communism). If there would be no need for pilots, for instance, there would be greater opportunity for people to launch their own airlines... In other words it is access to capital that becomes much more important, with income merely a consequence.
As the world stands today, one's initial access to economic capital depends almost exclusively (in both direct and indirect ways) on the access to economic capital of one's parents. Clearly, this is about as rational as having one's initial access to political power depending exclusively on the access to political power of one's parents (as under feudal political systems). It will have to change