Merely Human? So Yesterday

[Octafish]

Humanity is heading toward something the super-connected super-smart set call "The Singularity." What that means, I don't think anybody can really know yet.

From The New York Times:

Merely Human? So Yesterday

By ASHLEE VANCE
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.

ON a Tuesday evening this spring, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, became part man and part machine. About 40 people, all gathered here at a NASA campus for a nine-day, $15,000 course at Singularity University, saw it happen.

While the flesh-and-blood version of Mr. Brin sat miles away at a computer capable of remotely steering a robot, the gizmo rolling around here consisted of a printer-size base with wheels attached to a boxy, head-height screen glowing with an image of Mr. Brin’s face. The BrinBot obeyed its human commander and sputtered around from group to group, talking to attendees about Google and other topics via a videoconferencing system.

The BrinBot was hardly something out of “Star Trek.” It had a rudimentary, no-frills design and was a hodgepodge of loosely integrated technologies. Yet it also smacked of a future that the Singularity University founders hold dear and often discuss with a techno-utopian bravado: the arrival of the Singularity — a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state.

At that point, the Singularity holds, human beings and machines will so effortlessly and elegantly merge that poor health, the ravages of old age and even death itself will all be things of the past.

Some of Silicon Valley’s smartest and wealthiest people have embraced the Singularity. They believe that technology may be the only way to solve the world’s ills, while also allowing people to seize control of the evolutionary process. For those who haven’t noticed, the Valley’s most-celebrated company — Google — works daily on building a giant brain that harnesses the thinking power of humans in order to surpass the thinking power of humans.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13sing.html?src=busln

"Singularity" sounds so...exclusive.



Perhaps, down the pike, the super-advanced billionaires will save a place at this (their!) banquet table filled with the bounty of high technology and inside dealing for the little people. You know, the Haves and Have-Mores sharing with the Have-Lesses and Have-Nots. That would be nice, for a change.

[Speck Tater]

1. And then there's the counter-theory...

--quote--

The Olduvai theory states that industrial civilization (as defined by per capita energy production) will have a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years (1930-2030). The theory provides a quantitative basis of the transient-pulse theory of modern civilization. The name is a reference to the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

The Olduvai theory was first introduced by Richard C. Duncan, Ph.D. in 1989 as the "transient-pulse theory of Industrial Civilization". The theory was backed up with data in the 1993 paper "The life-expectancy of industrial civilization: The decline to global equilibrium".

In June, 1996, Duncan introduced a paper titled "The Olduvai Theory: Sliding Towards a Post-Industrial Stone Age" where the term "Olduvai Theory" replaced "transient-pulse theory" used in previous papers. Duncan further updated his theory in "The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge", at the Summit 2000 Pardee Keynote Symposia of the Geological Society of America, on November 13, 2000. In 2005, Duncan extended his data set to include up to 2003 in "The Olduvai Theory Energy, Population, and Industrial Civilization".

-- end quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory

I sure wish the moonbeams and lollipops future was likely, but it's not. The ONLY way that the standard of living of the entire earth can be equalized in the future is for all of us wealthy westerners to take a giant step toward the living standards of the rest of the world. So we can keep on attempting to grab a bigger and bigger share of the world's resources and to hell with everyone else, or we must start living like they live in the villages of Africa, Southeast Asia and Central America. Another few decades and we will not have that choice any more. It's back to Olduvai Gorge for us.

See also: http://www.thesocialcontract.com/pdf/nineteen-four/tsc_19_4_duncan.pdf (Towards Re-Equalizing the World Standard of Living - PDF file)

[WinkyDink]

2. The future of humans per se is gearing towards, as Christina's CD has it, bionics.

Robotics as part of a human being.

[Octafish]

4. Remember the Texas professor who voiced the hope that 90-percent of the planet die off?

We may yet come to believe the Olduvai Gorge theory to be a pleasant scenario.

Meeting Doctor Doom

Forrest M. Mims III
Copyright 2006 by Forrest M. Mims III.

EXCERPT...

But there was a gravely disturbing side to that otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.

This curious incident came to mind a few minutes later when Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining that the general public is not yet ready to hear what he was about to tell us. Because of many years of experience as a writer and editor, Pianka's strange introduction and the TV camera incident raised a red flag in my mind. Suddenly I forgot that I was a member of the Texas Academy of Science and chairman of its Environmental Science Section. Instead, I grabbed a notepad so I could take on the role of science reporter.

One of Pianka's earliest points was a condemnation of anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies a privileged position in the Universe. He told a story about how a neighbor asked him what good the lizards are that he studies. He answered, “What good are you?”

Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, “We're no better than bacteria!”

Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of the industrial age is devastating the planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it's too late.

Saving the Earth with Ebola

Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.

CONTINUED...

There's something to be said for logic, certainly, as long as we remember morality.

[Odin2005]

7. LOL, what small-minded nonsense.

[Speck Tater]

13. one must do more than ridicule what one disagrees with.

... the foregoing curves can be ascribed quite definitely, directly or indirectly, to the tapping of the large supplies of energy stored up in the fossil fuels. The release of this energy is a unidirectional and irreversible process. It can only happen once, and the historical events associated with this release are necessarily without precedent, and are intrinsically incapable of repetition.

It is clear, therefore, that our present position on the nearly vertical front slopes of these curves is a precarious one, and that the events which we are witnessing and experiencing, far from being “normal,” are among the most abnormal and anomalous in the history of the World. Yet we cannot turn back; neither can we consolidate our gains and remain where we are. In fact, we have no choice but to proceed into a future, which we may be assured will differ markedly from anything we have experienced thus far.

—M. King Hubbert,
Science, 1949, pp. 103-109

The physics of the situation are irrefutable. The planet can only sustainably support a small fraction of our present population. You can't fake out the laws of nature.

[William Z. Foster]

17. illogical

If it is true that the number of human beings has exceeded the earth's carrying capacity, then of course the population in excess of that capacity will die - or rather will not be replaced, since we are all going to die. But no one advocates for that, cheers it on, gloats that "the physics of the situation are irrefutable" unless they hope to position themselves to be among those who survive. These overpopulation lectures, strangely enough, are most popular in the US and western Europe among the most fortunate people on the planet who benefit from a long history of seeing the rest of the people of the world as superfluous and inferior. Coincidence?

[azul]

3. Pretty scary.

Now that the genetic code is cracking and we have enormous future biological potential, why would we want to create some mechanical master? Oh yea, because we are so smart that we endowed corporations with human and superhuman rights and powers, and we trust their decisions to guide our future more that those that come from real people.

[Octafish]

8. Rock on, Brothers and Sisters.

Stanislaw Lem envisioned a future where cyborgs would debate the question whether they had evolved from protoplasm, disgusted at the thought they could be related to humans.

http://english.lem.pl/works/novels/the-cyberiad

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1387

[Truth2Tell]

5. The geek rapture. nt

[Octafish]

11. Produced by Dr. Motion

Manny's got the Memory Loops.

[Odin2005]

6. The misconception is that our technology will replace us. No, we will merge with it.

The next Culture Wars will be between us Transhumanists who embrace the Singularity and the Bio-Reactionaries who think it's the end of humanity, either because of superstitious belief in "souls" or general Ludditism.

[demwing]

9. "Transhumanists who embrace the Singularity " lol

so Star Trekian.

[Odin2005]

10. LOL, Borg comparisons = LOGOC FAIL.

[demwing]

14. Wow, touchy much? I just thought it was kinda funny

A word of advice though, eliminating your sense of humor is only the first step. You've nailed that, so kudos to you. Now you must work on your overly sensitive pettiness. That's just not the kind of personality trait WE want in OUR singularity. Jeez!

[Odin2005]

18. DOH, I though you were being serous. My bad!

:blush:

why I discuss Transhumanism it seems like EVERYONE wants to bring up the Borg, so i guess I am a little touchy about it, LOL! :rofl:

[GreenPartyVoter]

15. Perhaps more Bynar than Borg? (One might hope, at any rate.)

[Octafish]

12. Machines are nice...

...but no matter how smart they make me, I like people.

Remember Dr. Faustus? The guy sold his soul for "Universal Knowledge."

[Odin2005]

19. Sapient AIs would be people, too.

And What does Goethe's Faust character have to do with AI? (and funny you mention him, I just brought up Faust in another thread)

[Octafish]

21. Dr. Faustus and Dr. Faust wanted to know all there was to know.

Unlimited storage, so to speak. To the story tellers of old, the idea that a human mind can contain all there is to know was almost blasphemous, demonstrating the hero's desire to understand the mind of God, or, in the case of the fallen angel Lucifer, trying to usurp the power of God.

[The2ndWheel]

22. Sounds like you want that fight

You could just say "I will merge with it", instead of we. When you say we will, as in without question, now you're forcing people to do what you want. You're forcing people to fight against you. You're creating the dominator/dominated situation. As we've seen throughout history, those with the technological advantage have been on the winning side. It just sounds like you crave that. "Us Transhumanists", and all the lower forms of life that can't grasp what's best for them.

But if people weren't into forcing people to live like them, and the fight which has always resulted from that, what kind of history would we have? So it really sounds like you've transcended something.

[amborin]

16. Prof Arnold, who hypothesized singularities, passed away last week

[Octafish]

20. I am sorry to read about the passing of Prof. V.I. Arnold . His work is fascinating.

While I've studied read about singularity in cosmology, singularities in mathematics and cybernetics are unexplored ground for me. Even uninitiates like me can see that their applications to our political world must be very, very important.

Thank you for the heads-up on the professor's work, my Friend. If you get a moment, please steer me toward a place where I can learn more -- from the ground up, meaning the basics and the basics of the basics.