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I read The Age of Spiritual Machines in ‘98 with high hopes but quickly found Kurzweil difficult to take seriously. The singularity fandom has always baffled me

I read The Age of Spiritual Machines in ‘98 with high hopes but quickly found Kurzweil difficult to take seriously. The singularity fandom has always baffled me.

J5892 6y ago
It's a religion based on the idea that technology will advance fast enough to make its followers immortal before they die.
- mads_ravn 6y ago
  I remember reading “The Age of Spiritual Machines” and the “events vs time” plot (criticized below) https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-singularity/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-singularity/ was the calling bullshit moment for me [1]. It is a nice thought though - if we just wait then technology solves all of our problems. [1] https://www.callingbullshit.org/ https://www.callingbullshit.org/
- will_pseudonym 6y ago
  or fear of Roko's Basilisk [0] [0] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk
Barrin92 6y ago
>The singularity fandom has always baffled me. It basically comes in two flavours. The "it's dangerous" crowd is as Ted Chiang put it imagining the singularity as no-holds-barred capitalism, because when they imagine superintelligence the only thing they can come up with is the companies they work for.The paperclip AI is just a VC funded startup, the only difference is it's even better at disruption than their employers. The Kurzweil one is basically just recycled Christian eschatology, where the final judgement comes around, we'll resurrect the dead, defeat death and so on. So it's basically two American timeless cultural classics, the funny part is that people in that crowd don't seem to notice it
lz400 6y ago
> The singularity fandom has always baffled me. I like it. Try to take as hard sci-fi. It's plausible enough to let your imagination run with it. Don't take it seriously enough to turn it into a religion and it's all good fun escapism. I've accepted that we all need a way to think away the fear of dying. I like this one.

I read The Age of Spiritual Machines in ‘98 with high hopes but quickly found Kurzweil difficult to take seriously. The singularity fandom has always baffled me.

J5892 6y ago

It's a religion based on the idea that technology will advance fast enough to make its followers immortal before they die.

mads_ravn 6y ago
I remember reading “The Age of Spiritual Machines” and the “events vs time” plot (criticized below) https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-singularity/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-singularity/ was the calling bullshit moment for me [1]. It is a nice thought though - if we just wait then technology solves all of our problems. [1] https://www.callingbullshit.org/ https://www.callingbullshit.org/
will_pseudonym 6y ago
or fear of Roko's Basilisk [0] [0] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk

Barrin92 6y ago

>The singularity fandom has always baffled me. It basically comes in two flavours. The "it's dangerous" crowd is as Ted Chiang put it imagining the singularity as no-holds-barred capitalism, because when they imagine superintelligence the only thing they can come up with is the companies they work for.The paperclip AI is just a VC funded startup, the only difference is it's even better at disruption than their employers. The Kurzweil one is basically just recycled Christian eschatology, where the final judgement comes around, we'll resurrect the dead, defeat death and so on. So it's basically two American timeless cultural classics, the funny part is that people in that crowd don't seem to notice it

lz400 6y ago

> The singularity fandom has always baffled me. I like it. Try to take as hard sci-fi. It's plausible enough to let your imagination run with it. Don't take it seriously enough to turn it into a religion and it's all good fun escapism. I've accepted that we all need a way to think away the fear of dying. I like this one.