4 ms·

Visions of our far future

7 points by troystribling 18y ago

sh1mmer 18y ago
Requires a Nature login.
- troystribling 18y ago
  I almost did not post it because of that but you can read most of the article without a login.
mixmax 18y ago
Man usually has a tendency to overestimate technological advance in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. I think tha speculation about what will happen in a million is, at best, an interesting intellectual exercise.
- geuis 18y ago
  Sorry I downvoted by accident. I wanted to say I agree completely. It's good to see someone else who reads Kurzweil.
  - mixmax 18y ago
    No worries - that's what happens :-) And yes, blatantly stolen from Kurzweil, I should have given credit where credit is due.
Herring 18y ago
It has to have happened already. The universe is too big; we need bigger telescopes.
time_management 18y ago
The Victorians' discovery of deep geological time was unsettling. To them. Eastern religions already had, and used, words to describe billion- and trillion-year time spans. For example, time spent in even the worst of Buddhism's narakas (hells) is not eternal, but is posited to stretch beyond 10^19 years. Somehow, 10^19 years of agony sounds more frightening than "eternal hell". Only one author, Dougal Dixon, thinks it probable that humans will be extinct within a million years. Unless humanity evolves dramatically, as a collective, the odds do not favor a million-year lifespan for the species. I don't envision a war or environmental disaster rendering the whole species extinct, but I could see one leading to a genetic bottleneck that opens the species up to disease. Also, fully modern humans are rather like the (now extinct) passenger pigeon in terms of being requiring a huge flock to survive. Personally, I think there will be dramatic improvements in artificial intelligence, and I expect technological progress to continue throughout my entire lifetime, but I tend to doubt that we'll ever reach the Singularity. I think the greatest discovery-- disappointing from a Singularitarian's point of view-- of the 22nd century will be a strong evidential argument, as close as humanly possible to proof, that consciousness is, in part, nonphysical, ruling out the possibility of a full-on Singularity.

7 points by troystribling 18y ago

sh1mmer 18y ago

Requires a Nature login.

troystribling 18y ago
I almost did not post it because of that but you can read most of the article without a login.

mixmax 18y ago

Man usually has a tendency to overestimate technological advance in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. I think tha speculation about what will happen in a million is, at best, an interesting intellectual exercise.

geuis 18y ago
Sorry I downvoted by accident. I wanted to say I agree completely. It's good to see someone else who reads Kurzweil.
- mixmax 18y ago
  No worries - that's what happens :-) And yes, blatantly stolen from Kurzweil, I should have given credit where credit is due.

Herring 18y ago

It has to have happened already. The universe is too big; we need bigger telescopes.

time_management 18y ago

The Victorians' discovery of deep geological time was unsettling. To them. Eastern religions already had, and used, words to describe billion- and trillion-year time spans. For example, time spent in even the worst of Buddhism's narakas (hells) is not eternal, but is posited to stretch beyond 10^19 years. Somehow, 10^19 years of agony sounds more frightening than "eternal hell". Only one author, Dougal Dixon, thinks it probable that humans will be extinct within a million years. Unless humanity evolves dramatically, as a collective, the odds do not favor a million-year lifespan for the species. I don't envision a war or environmental disaster rendering the whole species extinct, but I could see one leading to a genetic bottleneck that opens the species up to disease. Also, fully modern humans are rather like the (now extinct) passenger pigeon in terms of being requiring a huge flock to survive. Personally, I think there will be dramatic improvements in artificial intelligence, and I expect technological progress to continue throughout my entire lifetime, but I tend to doubt that we'll ever reach the Singularity. I think the greatest discovery-- disappointing from a Singularitarian's point of view-- of the 22nd century will be a strong evidential argument, as close as humanly possible to proof, that consciousness is, in part, nonphysical, ruling out the possibility of a full-on Singularity.