6 ms·

Ok, I'll bite. Why do you care?

by bhousel 14y ago

thwest 14y ago
It reifies the teleology and savior complex that make monotheistic religions troublesome. It ignores morality and aesthetics in favor of an unknowable, uncontrollable machine logic.
- megrimlock 14y ago
  It kinda has a similar problem to the Hegelian dialectic that Marx built his stuff on. The Singularity argument observes some trends and presumes they will continue along the same profile, carrying our society towards a specific phase-change that we've never seen before. Extrapolating trends is one thing; arguing that some novel configuration is inevitable is another.
  - thwest 14y ago
    That's interesting, can you elaborate? The dialectic is troublesome, especially from the perspective of Deleuze's multitide, but I don't immediately see how it is tied to a claim of novel configuration. In my experience with Marx, the dialectic mostly let Marx approach Smith and Ricardo's works in a way that allowed for the inclusion of a wider conception of the conditions and consequences of capital. Whereas a WSJ oped might say "capital has benefits! the downsides are simply worth it", Marx takes a benefit and a downside, considers them 'an internal contradiction of capital', then uses a dialectical mode to reveal some hidden 3rd variable. Are you referencing Das Kapital's inevitability of the rate of profit to decline? Or something in one of the more explicitly political texts about the inevitability of communism? I can only really discuss Das Kapital, which I feel is more of a historical reflection on political economy than the explicit party politics you might find in the Manifesto.
ksmiley 14y ago
Here's a criticism of the Singularity I've seen a couple times that originates from the web comic, Pictures For Sad Children. "There's a special kind of nerd though who thinks computers will overtake mankind in thirty years, changing humanity in ways incomprehensible to us now. Ignoring the third of the world without electricity. So the singularity is the nerd way of saying, "in the future, being rich and white will be even more awesome". It's flying car bullshit: surely the world will conform to our speculative fiction. Surely we're the ones who will get to live in the future. It gives spiritual significance to technology developed primarily for entertainment or warfare, and gives nerds something to obsess over that isn't the crushing vacuousness of their lives." Although in my mind that's more of a criticism of the adulation of the Singularity by its adherents than of the actual Singularity itself.
- Uhhrrr 14y ago
  The nerd adulation comes from the idea that having understanding of computers will be more awesome, not being rich and white. The fact that they make that substitution shows a certain mired pathos. EDIT: FWIW, I think the Kurzweil view is ridiculously optimistic.
  - mej10 14y ago
    It has always struck me as odd that people dismiss the singularity as a nerd fantasy. They latch on to one view of it and make up their minds about the idea itself. The people I know that take it seriously are much more afraid of it than anything. They think that it will be an extinction event rather than the nerd rapture.
- salgernon 14y ago
  This is exactly the mindset among evangelical christians that believe the rapture is right around the corner - and every generation of evangelical back to the 1800s has believed that the rapture is imminent and of course, that they as individuals will be saved.
- dbaupp 14y ago
  > Ignoring the third of the world without electricity ... "in the future, being rich and white will be even more awesome" There is a portion of the "Singularitarians" pushing for the Singularity because such a large segment of the world is so disadvantaged, they want humanity to move forward. Their line is more "in the future, being human will be even more awesome". (For the most part, this group has a fairly low opinion of Kurzweil and his accelerating curves or whatever he calls them.)
polyfractal 14y ago
Oof, Comcast died as soon as I made this post. I have two major contentions. First, I'm a neuroscientist by training, so hearing anything related to "upload my brain" just makes me weep. The only realistic way to "upload your brain" is to pump your body full of fixatives (paraformaldehyde), section it on a cryostat and then perform electron microscopy across every single slice. Then put it all back together (fixing skewing artifacts, etc) on a computer. THEN make a simulation out of it, where every atom of your body is replicated with pristine accuracy. Otherwise you are not yourself anymore. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying it's so far from likely that being near-immortal due to bio-enhancements is almost certainly more practical. Or you can develop some "scanning ray gun" which does the same thing without killing you first, I suppose. Second, the whole notion of "exponentially increasing intelligence" I find silly. Are we more intelligent than homo sapiens 3000 years ago? Perhaps more scholarly, more literate, more capable of engineering complex systems. But our inherent, base intelligence is not any different. Just applied to different problems and starting at different bases of knowledge. Edit: Musing on this, I find a "Matrix"-style hostile takeover of highly intelligent AI much more likely than humans "transcending" into some super-computing cloud of blissful hyperintelligence. That's seems much more likely than humans ever fully shucking our meat bag bodies.
- chc 14y ago
  It sounds like you know what they mean by "intelligence," but you're instead choosing to use your preferred definition and call them wrong based on semantics. Being more scholarly, more literate and capable of solving much bigger problems sounds like something that could reasonably be summarized as "more intelligent."
  - polyfractal 14y ago
    Fair enough. I mused on this in one of the responses up above. I still don't think that makes a person more innately intelligent. More capable, perhaps, but not more intelligent. But, humans are pretty fond of defending our position in the cosmos and our idea of "human intelligence", so maybe this is just speciesism at work =)
- 14y ago

Ok, I'll bite. Why do you care?

by bhousel 14y ago

Ok, I'll bite. Why do you care?

It reifies the teleology and savior complex that make monotheistic religions troublesome. It ignores morality and aesthetics in favor of an unknowable, uncontrollable machine logic.

megrimlock 14y ago
It kinda has a similar problem to the Hegelian dialectic that Marx built his stuff on. The Singularity argument observes some trends and presumes they will continue along the same profile, carrying our society towards a specific phase-change that we've never seen before. Extrapolating trends is one thing; arguing that some novel configuration is inevitable is another.
- thwest 14y ago
  That's interesting, can you elaborate? The dialectic is troublesome, especially from the perspective of Deleuze's multitide, but I don't immediately see how it is tied to a claim of novel configuration. In my experience with Marx, the dialectic mostly let Marx approach Smith and Ricardo's works in a way that allowed for the inclusion of a wider conception of the conditions and consequences of capital. Whereas a WSJ oped might say "capital has benefits! the downsides are simply worth it", Marx takes a benefit and a downside, considers them 'an internal contradiction of capital', then uses a dialectical mode to reveal some hidden 3rd variable. Are you referencing Das Kapital's inevitability of the rate of profit to decline? Or something in one of the more explicitly political texts about the inevitability of communism? I can only really discuss Das Kapital, which I feel is more of a historical reflection on political economy than the explicit party politics you might find in the Manifesto.

ksmiley 14y ago

Here's a criticism of the Singularity I've seen a couple times that originates from the web comic, Pictures For Sad Children. "There's a special kind of nerd though who thinks computers will overtake mankind in thirty years, changing humanity in ways incomprehensible to us now. Ignoring the third of the world without electricity. So the singularity is the nerd way of saying, "in the future, being rich and white will be even more awesome". It's flying car bullshit: surely the world will conform to our speculative fiction. Surely we're the ones who will get to live in the future. It gives spiritual significance to technology developed primarily for entertainment or warfare, and gives nerds something to obsess over that isn't the crushing vacuousness of their lives." Although in my mind that's more of a criticism of the adulation of the Singularity by its adherents than of the actual Singularity itself.

Uhhrrr 14y ago
The nerd adulation comes from the idea that having understanding of computers will be more awesome, not being rich and white. The fact that they make that substitution shows a certain mired pathos. EDIT: FWIW, I think the Kurzweil view is ridiculously optimistic.
- mej10 14y ago
  It has always struck me as odd that people dismiss the singularity as a nerd fantasy. They latch on to one view of it and make up their minds about the idea itself. The people I know that take it seriously are much more afraid of it than anything. They think that it will be an extinction event rather than the nerd rapture.
salgernon 14y ago
This is exactly the mindset among evangelical christians that believe the rapture is right around the corner - and every generation of evangelical back to the 1800s has believed that the rapture is imminent and of course, that they as individuals will be saved.
dbaupp 14y ago
> Ignoring the third of the world without electricity ... "in the future, being rich and white will be even more awesome" There is a portion of the "Singularitarians" pushing for the Singularity because such a large segment of the world is so disadvantaged, they want humanity to move forward. Their line is more "in the future, being human will be even more awesome". (For the most part, this group has a fairly low opinion of Kurzweil and his accelerating curves or whatever he calls them.)

polyfractal 14y ago

Oof, Comcast died as soon as I made this post. I have two major contentions. First, I'm a neuroscientist by training, so hearing anything related to "upload my brain" just makes me weep. The only realistic way to "upload your brain" is to pump your body full of fixatives (paraformaldehyde), section it on a cryostat and then perform electron microscopy across every single slice. Then put it all back together (fixing skewing artifacts, etc) on a computer. THEN make a simulation out of it, where every atom of your body is replicated with pristine accuracy. Otherwise you are not yourself anymore. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying it's so far from likely that being near-immortal due to bio-enhancements is almost certainly more practical. Or you can develop some "scanning ray gun" which does the same thing without killing you first, I suppose. Second, the whole notion of "exponentially increasing intelligence" I find silly. Are we more intelligent than homo sapiens 3000 years ago? Perhaps more scholarly, more literate, more capable of engineering complex systems. But our inherent, base intelligence is not any different. Just applied to different problems and starting at different bases of knowledge. Edit: Musing on this, I find a "Matrix"-style hostile takeover of highly intelligent AI much more likely than humans "transcending" into some super-computing cloud of blissful hyperintelligence. That's seems much more likely than humans ever fully shucking our meat bag bodies.

chc 14y ago
It sounds like you know what they mean by "intelligence," but you're instead choosing to use your preferred definition and call them wrong based on semantics. Being more scholarly, more literate and capable of solving much bigger problems sounds like something that could reasonably be summarized as "more intelligent."
- polyfractal 14y ago
  Fair enough. I mused on this in one of the responses up above. I still don't think that makes a person more innately intelligent. More capable, perhaps, but not more intelligent. But, humans are pretty fond of defending our position in the cosmos and our idea of "human intelligence", so maybe this is just speciesism at work =)
14y ago