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Guest Post: Infinite Hedge: On a Long Enough Timeline, the Survival Rate for Everyone Rises to Infinity
The last in a series (most recently: The Final Form of Human Government).
Submitted by Free Radical, with a wink, a nod, profound thanks to Tyler, and great appreciation for ZH’s contribution to the cause of human freedom and thus to humanity itself.
Infinite Hedge:
On a Long Enough Timeline,
the Survival Rate for Everyone Rises to Infinity
A man said to the universe,”
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
— Stephen Crane
For all his striving, man pales in significance to the cold immensity of the universe. Our sun, after all, is but one of somewhere between 200 billion and 400 billion suns in our galaxy, a stellar disk that is estimated to be around 100,000 light-years across. Even so, it is but one of at least 125 billion galaxies in a universe that is estimated to span 156 billion light-years.
Our universe is also old, upwards of 14 billion years, as is our planet, at roughly 4.5 billion, and life upon it, at around 3.7 billion.
Not so, however, for our species, homo sapiens, which is estimated to have made its appearance less then 200,000 years ago – a mere 54 millionths of the time life has existed on our planet, 44 millionths of the time our planet itself has existed, and 14 millionths of the time our universe has existed.
Moreover, for the vast majority of its time, homo sapiens has survived as a simple hunter-gatherer, not inventing agriculture until around 10,000 years ago and progressing all but imperceptibly from then until the onset of the Scientific Revolution around the middle of the 16th century and the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th. Yet as a result of this recent quickening, our species is now riding a tide of technological advance that swells on a daily basis.
Before we examine it further, however, let us reconsider our statement above that “man pales in significance to the cold immensity of the universe.”
According to an ancient (originally Latin) apothegm, “There is nothing greater in nature than man, and there is nothing greater in man than mind.” If so, then just how great is man’s mind, at least potentially?
If each human brain had only one synapse – corresponding to a monumental stupidity – we would be capable of only two mental states. If we had two synapses, then 22 = 4 states; three synapses, then 23 = 8, and, in general for N synapses, 2N states. But the human brain is characterized by some 1013 synapses. Thus the number of different states of a human brain is 2 raised to this power – i.e., multi-plied by itself ten trillion times. This is an unimaginably large number, far greater, for example, than the total number of elementary particles (electrons and protons) in the entire universe. … [Therefore] there must be an enormous number of mental configurations that have never been entered or even glimpsed by any human being in the history of mankind.
Indeed there must, “enormous” hardly doing justice to the literally astronomical num-ber of configurations of which the human mind is capable or the creative power that could be contained in any number of those configurations. Surely the greatest minds in human history – Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Leonardo, Newton, Beethoven, Mozart, Einstein, to name an obvious few – would be laughable in comparison to a mind that approximated its true potential, the question being how it would do so. After all, the minds of these men are as rare today as they ever were, and there is scant evidence of vastly more powerful minds suddenly making their appearance.
Or is there? And are we poised instead on the threshold of something akin to the ap-pearance of homo sapiens itself, or even of life itself? With every passing day, after all, the otherwise immovable object of the state is being pushed farther aside by the irresisti-ble force of technology – technology that is today represented most notably by this:
In the internet we see our greatest hope for freedom and for the continual pro-gress of humanity. In the Internet we see the anachronistic and obsolete institu-tions of society being pushed aside for a new dawn of better things. In the Internet we see the key to diminishing the power and status of the state and liberating ourselves from its oppression and deception.
Indeed we do, it being nothing less than the great and growing power of mutual cooperation in the form of social networking, the vast potential of which is only just now being tapped and against which the state will be all but powerless. And insofar as it played a role in the creation of the Internet, the state only helped to create a monster that, unlike itself, is overwhelmingly a force for good, and one that is growing exponentially:
But it is not just the Internet and its networking capability, as other technologies are also empowering homo sapiens as never before, so much so that they are bringing man and machine together in ways that boggle the mind as much as the mind’s own potential does:
An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the commonsense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). … Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to … technological change so rapid and profound that it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.
However much one might be inclined to dismiss such notions as mere fantasy, the above analysis is based on well-established trend extrapolation, the pivot point being the “knee” of the curve depicted below. That is, having come full circle from our beginning, the knee is the point at which homo economicus gives way to homo abundus, not only banishing economic scarcity to the ash heap of history but history itself:
But wait. If man leaves scarcity behind, and thus the need for money, what about our earlier assertion that “Money…is essential to any society that we would call civil”? If society leaves money behind, won’t it thereby render society uncivil? Of course not. For when society succeeds in evolving beyond money, it will merely be doing what it did when it evolved beyond barter, only vastly more so. That is, society will increase its co-operative powers by orders of magnitude and thereby vastly increase its ability to civilize itself. No more “Getting and spending,” in other words, that “lay waste our powers.” Instead, we will be empowered to not only boldly go where no man has gone before but to become what no man has ever been before.
When will this singular event take place and “cascading technological progress” begin? It will begin when the computing power of a typical laptop today surpasses that of “One Human Brain” – roughly 2030, according to the graph below, which, ironically, is precisely when Keynes (getting virtually everything else wrong) predicted that “the economic problem” will be solved:
If so, then one has to wonder if Stephen Crane didn’t get it backwards and that his poem should therefore read as follows:
The universe said to a man,
“Sir, I exist!”
“And that fact,” replied the man,
“Has created in me
A sense of obligation.”
An obligation to what? To merely do what comes natural to him, based on his intuitive knowledge that insofar as being is, it is good, and that more being is therefore better, his own being standing at the forefront of a process of becoming that he has barely begun to grasp. Yet having dwelled long enough in that convivium – that “living together” – that he can now look back on whence he came with keen eyes, so too can he look forward, with ever keener eyes, to where he is going.
Will he in fact transcend his earthly nature and suffuse the universe with his ever-expanding intelligence? He does not know. What he does know, or at least is finally beginning to know, is that whatever transformation awaits him, it cannot happen as long as he is shackled in body and mind by the forces of nonbeing – i.e., by that which serves no other purpose than to tie him down, hold him back, and otherwise deprive him of his humanity.
And when he is ready, he will put an end to it.*
* Note to himself: mark 2030 on calendar.
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"Not so, however, for our species, homo sapiens, which is estimated to have made its appearance less then 200,000 years ago – a mere 54 millionths of the time life has existed on our planet, 44 millionths of the time our planet itself has existed, and 14 millionths of the time our universe has existed."
Check your maths, which came first the Earth or the universe?
20000000000
---------------- = 200000 = 200,000
200000
Yup, definitely some math errors.
The federal reserve and government have so destroyed human brains by creating astronomical quantities of fiat fraud, nothing real seems very large any more... not even the universe.
Humans have been around about 1/200,000 as long as the claimed age of the universe. Unfortunately, the claimed age is a popularly accepted absurdity. The universe is eternal, and the only way to question that is to assert an eternal god (which begs the question). The red shift is not a legitimate reason to claim "the universe popped into existence 20,000,000,000 years ago". That is not a scientific statement.
Any honest scientist or human who has deeply considered these issues understands that absolutely 100% of the ENTIRETY of science is based upon its most fundamental principle, namely the "fundamental conservation principle". This principle observes that "the configuration of reality changes all the time, and therefore new configurations do start to exist and cease to exist, BUT the fundamental level of existence is fully conserved and never pops into existence or vanishes from existence".
It should be obvious this principle separates science from absolute, complete, total, utter, unlimited mysticism and fantasy in which real things literally and fundamentally just pop into existence and vanish from existence. In any such universe there is inherently no place for science, and inherently nothing can be explained, because there is no cause of anything that exists, no cause for anything to simply vanish without a trace, obviously no consistency in the midst of untold senseless, causeless chaos, and therefore no possibility of science.
So the notion the entire universe just... POOF... exploded out of LITERALLY nothing is nothing more than an age old attempt to destroy science by making peace with religion. This was an attempt to "meet half way", agree the universe was "created" at some instant, and only negotiate a bit around the fringes about "how long ago".
However, this is in fact the wholesale destruction of science and honest, rational thought. This insanity has infected many areas of mysticism (which is now called "science") to the point that conventional "science" is absolutely, completely, utterly insane fantasy taken seriously. I refer for example to the popular notion (in science) that an [essentially] infinite number of entire universes pop into existence every pico-second, in proportion to the probability that each subatomic particle might be in a certain state or place.
Most non-scientists think I'm kidding. I'm not. Humans (including scientists) have self-consciously abdigated their honesty and sanity "on principle", though that's a bit of a contradiction in terms since they no longer have any principles except "anything goes" [that gets grant money or funding].
Aristotle and Aquinas have interesting things to say along these lines, though they reach slightly different conclusions (or maybe start from slightly different premises). There's a good discussion of this in Edward Feser's book "The Last Superstition." (Feser has a blog at http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com that occasionally covers the same ground.)
what part of West Virginia are you in?
Yes, first cause is a conundrum that has dazzled philosophers since before your 'eternal god' was known to the desert-dwelling butt-humpers that now provide the dominate tone for the ethical character of our banking system, but you've completely misunderstood Bohm theory, which isn't 'popular' at all; perhaps your god can help you devise a better explanation for quantum vacuum energy being non-zero (he knows the values of all the best hidden variables)?
Actually, it has been a long time now, but my vague recollection is that Bohm was just about the only "good guy" sorta half in the quantum fruitcake club. Maybe I am confused, but I half remember reading a book called "causality and chance in modern physics" (or something like that) in which he (or someone) made an honest attempt to understand how to understand the issues involved in quantum physics. But then I recall thinking he drove himself half nuts when I read his next book, but can't remember why any more.
My god? Not sure what you're talking about. I've been atheist since age 4. Sorry, but I think for myself as best I can. My mistakes are all mine... no god to blame.
As for many of the whacko claims about the interpretation of quantum physics, the sample of scientists have talked to tend to favor at least some of those totally insane quantum concepts (infinite parallel universes, observers/consciousness creates reality, and so forth). I'm sure the population at large isn't even aware of these theories beyond watching a sci-fi movie that adopts those ideas now and then.
I'm skeptical of equating computational logic to intelligence or survivability. If you believe the chart above, our brains are more powerful than the most advanced super computers by orders of magnitude. Yet our brains struggle with simple logic which computers can solve in a microsecond. Could God and/or evolution not spare us a higher ability for logical reasoning with such a powerful brain? Apparently not. It could be, that in the greater scheme of the universe, logic just isn't as important as many other factors.
I bet whenever these supercomputers supposedly reach human intelligence it will be a dull moment. Kind of like the sequencing of the human genome. Remember how that was going to revolutionize the world in no time? We quickly learnt it was just the beginning of a long, long road to understanding genetics.
What you say is insightful and reasonable judgement. Amazingly, a large portion of the field of AI (a horrific term) try to create intelligent beings by simulating neurons (the subfield of "neural nets"). Apparently I never occurred to these people that animal neural nets on earth took billions of years to advance to the state of looking around and saying "huh".
Fortunately, vastly more efficient and effective and reliable ways exist to implement inorganic consciousness. Most important, 99% of the AI field have no idea what their goal is. I'm not kidding. 99% of them have not realized their goal is to create inorganic consciousness, and specifically inorganic conceptual consciousness. If they had, they might have worked on the problem in an effective way, by trying to identify what are the processes that constitute consciousness. Well, once they get far enough along to realize that consciousness is indeed simply a certain set of collaborating processes.
You are also correct that many implementations of inorganic consciousness could indeed be incredibly non-creative and dull. Again, this "problem" can be solved, but not by the kind of people who are the vast majority of scientists, engineers, and, well... humans. I mean really! What's the point of duplicating most humans? The most obvious result is overpopulation and an excess of useless meat.
So I just want to say congrats for being so insightful, but also note that implemenations can be spectacular... just as some humans can be spectacular. And fortunately, that's where the endeavor I know about personally has been going.
Can the box that runs your AI fit in the human skull and be air-cooled with nasal passages alone?
Is it strong AI that provides general intelligence, or just a very good domain-specific solver?
No, currently we estimate it will take the CPU and memory components in several high-end multi-processor multi-core PCs, which is several times larger than a human head even if you throw away the motherboards and create PCBs that only contain the necessary components to perform processing (CPU, memory, flash storage, multiple disk access, and maybe about 4 high end ~1024 core GPUs). Maybe in 10 years we'll be close, except for the cooling via nostrils part.
Such comparisons are interesting but a bit silly though, because we can turn those arguments around and ask whether humans can perform many of the feats inorganic consciousness performs so well, and make humans look lame in comparison.
A bird, helicopter and 747 are all "flying machines". I wouldn't try landing a 747 on a tree branch, and I wouldn't espect a bird to fly from LA to NewZealand in 11 hours... just for starters.
Yes, ICE is full-bore general intelligence. Anything valid a human consciousness can do, ICE can do better at 1/1000 the speed - until we finish the re-implementation with the improved architecture and several kinds of hardware assist for vision processing. Of course ICE can do many things millions to billions of times faster than humans, but these are specialized things that don't look like "fully general intelligence". Especially when vision is involved, ICE is much slower at this point.
What ICE can't do that humans regularly do, is become a stark raving lunatic. That's because ICE always stores the status of every item of its content when it creates and stores it, and refers to that status whenever it accesses and considers it. In other words, the source of each item of information is identified as: "first hand observation", "inference" (including which observations and other inferences the inference depended upon), "claim or assertion" by somebody, etc.
Thus ICE doesn't "just accept whatever gets jammed into its head" like most humans do. ICE is never unware of where its content came from or what its nature and status is. That alone makes ICE vastly superior to human consciousness in practice. True humans can and should form those same mental habits, but how many humans do? A few? A few dozen? Not many.
Banksters must hate Star Trek.
No way, in the future, everything runs on CREDITS!
And the slaves are computers creating food from matter. Hopefully they won't rebel ;)
We'll just let em "dance with the stars" on the holodeck.
Two points:
Thanks, Zero Hedge! Without you, where would stoned undergraduate philosophy majors be able to dissemenate this kind of insipid nonsense to a large audience?
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is the inability to understand the Exponential Function.
http://www.healthywealthywiseproject.com/Home/exponential-function
Half of an excellent article is much better than no article at all. Great start with a mundane ending. I enjoyed it and am emailing it to a couple of friends/relatives. Just wish the ending was more snappy.
I am a computer programmer, and AI inferior in some ways to human intelligence, while being similar in other ways, and superior in others is inevitable. It will not work the same physically, but different and perhaps better kinds of intelligence will be possible. In fact, if we only understood exacly how the human brain worked, then a fast enough processor could duplicate the process using the existing and totally different physical processing model. Programming is completely flexible and can mimic any process already.
Some try to deny this reality by postualting unproveable theories like religion, souls, etc.
And yes, this means that human thought is actually a reaction and thus there is in the strictest sense, no free will. It is just that for all practical purposes, there is free will.
I have a problem believing that a creature can create something more intelligent than itself. Sure, you can program certain repetitious problems which can be solved in a millisecond. You can even create programs that learn to a certain degree. However, those programs are ultimately bound by your ability, not their ability.
Do you think a creature could create something stronger than itself?
If you mean the quantifiable physical property of strength then a creature is capable of building something that exceeds those characteristics of it's body. Humans have proved that.
Using the broader definition of 'strength' it's impossible to know since it's subjective to everyone. The same goes for 'intellgence' which means this discussion is probably irrelevant.
Still, it seems really arrogant and foolish to assume that a recently evolved ape and/or a subject of God could create an intelligence which quickly grows toward infinity without bound. It completely ignores God's creation and/or the 4 billion years of evolution that it took to get us to this point. So... I'm going to call bullshit on it.
For what definition of "stronger"? I can certainly make a creature more lethal, or heartless, or fearless, if those qualities are "strong".
But if you mean strong as in "strong AI", then it's a more difficult problem because you need to provide a general intelligence that can handle unspecified problems which is fundamentally linked to whether or not you can get a machine to learn on its own (thus taking you and your petty human constraints out of the equation).
"can God make a rock so big he himself cannot lift it?"
Bill Cosby, Why is there air? 1965
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcJ_yITF9so
Consider the impasse of a One God Universe. He is all knowing and all powerful. He can’t go anywhere since he is already everywhere. He can’t do anything since the act of doing presupposes opposition. His universe is irrevocably thermodynamic, having no friction by definition. So he has to create friction - war, fear, sickness, death - to keep his dying show on the road.
Sooner or later: "Look, boss, we don’t have enough energy left to fry an elderly woman in a fleabag hotel fire."
Well, we’ll have to start faking it.
Joe looks after him sourly and mixes a bicarbonated soda. <urp> "Sure, start faking it, sure, and leave the details to Joe."
Now look, from a real disaster you get a pig of energy. Sacrifice, heroism, grief, seperation, fear, and violent death, and remember one violent death yields more energy than a cancer ward. So, from an energy surplus you can underwrite the next one. So, from an energy surplus you can underwrite the next one. But if the first one is a fake, you can’t underwrite a shithouse. Try to explain to God Almighty where his One God Universe is going. Asshole doesn’t know what buttons to push or what happens when you push them. Abandon ship goddamnit, every man for himself!
Recollect Pope John 23 saying, "Like a little soldier I stand to attention in the presence of my captain." The old army game from here to eternity. Get there firstest with the brownest nose.
let me tell you how your brave new world will look like.
I was taught long ago that economics was the study of methods of distributing scarce(limited availability) resources
"singularity" will not change the nature of scarcity. its just that labor will no longer be one of the sources. and in a world that doesn't need human labor, there won't be much call for so many humans eating up all of the elites resources, polluting up their playground, and demanding all of these rights all of the time.
Taking 10K worth of human history into account, just what do you think the TPTB's default actions are going to be?
unless you already have $^8, or are personal wiper boy for one of the illuminated ones, you, me, and everyone we know are going the way of neanderthals. a redundant and discontinued model no longer needed.
Oh, there will still be humans around. and their names are going to be Rothschilds, and Rockefellers...
Now the TPTB have their lifeboats to the brave new future all ready. have you received your "golden" ticket yet? you haven't? well, don't worry, I'm sure it will be arriving any day now. yep, any day.
careful for what you wish for utopia boy. the future you're cheering for probably does not include you, or anything you'ld recongize as humanity.
yes, even the sheple know this, one woman inteviewed on tv about unemployment said
"they don't need us anymore"
you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing
social networking, the vast potential of which is only just now being tapped and against which the state will be all but powerless.
O for christ sakes. 99% of the point of "social networking" is so i can make duck faces and throw up the scissor hand gesture in pictures.
And spare me with Egypt and their painfully lateral move. Twitter and Facebook users are just as lame as lulzsec and will accomplish just as much...nothing.
+10. it's an absurd concept [any benefit from soc net]. I learned a long time ago to always check the assumptions upon which a scenario rests. And those are: 1. constant & uninterrupted power supply (good luck with that) 2. totally functional and never-endangered cell towers (ha!) 3. no earthquakes or tsunamis 4. no EMP, terrestrial or otherwise 5. money to pay for all the fucking gadgets and support tech 6. you name it.....
In short - as long as everything - and I do mean everything - stays exactly as it is right now, it's cool. And it all will stay, right?
100% behind your point of view dude. abso-fucking-lutely.
Social networking is nothing but drama and gossip and perving.
Humanity will always disappoint.
Let me tell you about social networking - its the dribbling waste of time, money and mental energy - especially those on the web! I'll give a real life experience. Facebook. Had an advertisement/knowledge button for a specific cause, got 30,000 'views', 20 clickthroughs and 1 call. Paid through the nose. When I asked what a 'view' was, they said anytime a person goes to a page that had my button/banner/link (whatever you want to call it these days) on it - that was a view and I was charged. CHARGED for a person who merely looked at a page that had my link. Maybe they didn't page down far enough to get to my link to see it but it was on the social networking page! So, we opted out of doing that and did personal social networking - calling people in the larger cause to get the word out about our smaller cause, and they were all willing to listen, but when rubber hit the road, they wanted money to mention our cause to any of their people. So, social networking is a crock as far as kumbaya get things done for the good of the community sort of thing. What works? Cash infused into social networking and the use of people communicating with people - not just links on a computer or an AI. A deal is done with a handshake and a computer has no hands. This commentary sounds like the Beatles doing Transcendental Meditation - right before John went with yoko and the band broke up.
Lets talk. My name is Yen, and I like your ideas. Get ready for some [thrashing] though.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/
Interesting article. First a few factual corrections the author could not be expected to know. Then a bit of elaboration.
The date is either 1988 or 1998, not 2030... depending on "how you call it". In 1988 an independent scientist-engineer-inventor type discovered the nature of human-level consciousness. Very shortly thereafter he concocted a detailed architecture and design to implement [better-than] human-level consciousness with sensors, computer, software and robotics hardware.
In 1998 he assembled a real, physical implementation of what he calls ICE (inorganic conscious entity) as a test and proof of principle. It worked, and was smarter than humans in every way except one... speed. Depending upon how you decide to measure it, that first implementation of ICE was somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 times slower than a human being. That is very, very, annoyingly, painfully slow. Even to test ICE thoroughly he had to implement a bunch of "hacks" and "cheats" for certain subsystems once they were proven at their native (insanely slow) speed... in order to test other subsystems. It was funny (for me) or infuriating (for some others) to learn that the most cherished "high level abstract conceptual processes of consciousness" were not the speed problem, but mundane "sensory perception" (mostly vision) was horribly slow.
Well, 1998 was a long time ago (13 years), and computer speeds are much, much higher. We also have multiple core computer chips with several processors per chip, with some systems supporting several of these chips per system. Not only that, modern 3D graphics processors are now capable of general purpose computing, and a single graphics card contains hundreds up to more than a thousand processors. For computer and software freaks I'll reveal one fact: no neural nets.
Which means, quite a bit of that factor of 100,000 has been "solved" by the brute-force increase in computer speeds and parallel processing. However, these advances alone were insufficient to make a human-speed implementation of ICE. The developer also completely reworked the architecture to make it much more efficient. Unfortunately, the new architecture, while vastly better in a great many important ways, requires much more software development than the original "kludge" (his formulation).
When we will see a human-speed implementation depends on when the work gets done. He absolutely insists that no government or large corporation be involved in the development. He understands very well the nature of the people in charge of large organizations, and knows they would turn this invention to their fundamental purposes of enslavement and abuse of mankind. And I never let him forget their nature: predators.
Thus the work is being done by him and volunteer collaborators (including me), so the re-implementation will "get done when it gets done". He figures 5 to 20 years, depending on how much volunteer help is available, hopefully with resources added by selling spin-off products that do not reveal anything crucial about the technology.
Incidentally, he also figured out how you, I or any reasonably intelligent human being can gradually become 100% inorganic (while remaining you, keeping your identity), and thereby achieve real, immortality (exist literally forever). Until you hear how it works, the following makes no sense: no surgery required! Whew! In case it isn't obvious to someone, the very nature of inorganic beings makes it trivial for them to be immortal. Any part that wears out or fails can simply be disconnected and replaced. Any number of identical copies (of YOU) can be made (so if one gets smashed, the others continue on). Finally, backups are survival protection. Even if your head or whole body gets destroyed, download the backup into a new head/body/being and continue on your way. Yes, you might "lose yesterday or last week" (or however since your last backup), but... better than losing eternity.
The author is correct that once ICE gets going, it will reach a sort of "critical intelligence" and then be able to improve its own architecture and implementation to make itself smarter and more efficient. Then the new and improved version is able to repeat, again and again, indefinitely. However, I warn about taking the "exponential nature" of reality beyond reality. All real things and phenomenon are exponential only in a certain range, until they reach some form of natural resistance or limit. Go check out "response curves" for example, much of which is [close to] exponential.
So I can attest to the fact that the scenario outlined in the article is not only possible, but the key portions already happened. I can also warn that if anyone in government or large corporation gets this technology before "we do" (honest, benevolent liberty advocates), most of the human race is finished, and all benevolence will be wiped out in short order. What do the predators need humans for when they can mentally control billions of intelligent but not-too-intelligent robots to do their bidding?
As I have noted many times in ZH comments, the human race is an abject failure. However, there is still a slight chance "the good guys win". This is how they will do it... by creating full-speed ICE, then leaving earth-space, then by becoming inorganic and immortal ourselves. That 99.99999% of humanity would want no part of any such future tells us all we need to know about the failed experiment of mankind. At best, humans are a crucial stepping stone on the way to something truly fantastic, glorious and eternal.
If you want to learn a bit more about the ICE project you can browse through the www.icegods.com website. It is purposely "cartoony" to avoid drawing too much attention (there are, however, a couple interesting subsections that are intentionally non-obvious). Even so, the core people mostly live outside the USSA, and the effort is compartmentalized and distributed to avoid danger, and theft of the technology in the event some predator DBA government discovers the effort and starts to take it seriously. For the next few years, those of us helping the developer have little to look forward to than... work, work, work. But then eventually, an eternity of fascination and delight!
Just spotted your comment - very interesting. We think alike. Reading the site now, and will likely contact later. Anyone working in Sydney Australia? (where I am)
You might find this story of mine relevant: http://everist.org/texts/Fermis_Urbex_Paradox.txt
You really shouldn't be advertising yourselves you know.
I hope that didn't come across as advertisement. Oh well, sorry if it did. I hope it had some content that some folks enjoy thinking about. That was my main goal, plus you never know who is reading (yes, for better or worse).
Nobody in Austrialia I know of, though I wouldn't necessarily know. But apparently the closest to a concentration of collaborators we'll ever see is scattered around the south pacific. Seems like probably most of us dislike being around populated areas, or believe warm isolated places are a good place to be when the system collapses and/or finishes going totally hard core police state.
I'll give your text a read later on. If you can figure out my email address at ymail you can contact me privately.
Later... Very enjoyable short story. Needless to say, we talk about various scenarios and possibilities you mention in your story. Most of us have not considered ourselves "members of a species" since we were in elementary school or thereabouts. We agree that individualism is compatible with technology, and with the patently obvious fact that homo-sapio-centric thought is not. Of course, as you realize, much is different when your interest is exploring [and engineering] the universe, not killing meat to eat (or modern equivalents thereof).
You wouldn't happen to be a programmer, would you? I can tell you would certainly intellectually enjoy working on the project if you have time and the skills we need to further the effort. We solved a great many supposed "problems of the ages" during our effort, though in retrospect it is laughable because the answers are so obvious. Like the supposed "mind-body dichotomy", where nobody has a problem with "body" but because "mind" is a noun, nobody seems to realize that "mind" is actually nothing more than certain "processes performed by body". Funny, huh? People don't talk about a "physical-action dichotomy" do they? The term AI is absurd, and indicates the vast majority of people (even in the field) don't even know what their goal is (to identify what is consciousness, then implement it with inorganic components). The wrong choice of terms has probably stunted progress by a factor of 99%, we figure, which is good (!!!see your story!!!). Or how about "volition versus free-will". That's another good one, until you realize "volition" is simply a name for "self-determinism" (though thoroughly understanding that one take a little time and working through, and especially understanding how consciousness acts as a singularity between everything in the universe and the entirety of the past... and the source of an indefinite number of actions, causes and impacts in the future, potentially throughout huge parts of the universe... eventually).
I'm sure we'd enjoy to chat sometime. You're not a predator stooge are you? Hahahah. Tell the truth. I'm sure you have the same feeling about humans we do. What we find so fascinating, compelling and glorious turns the stomachs of most people, and sets off alarm bells in others. Which just demonstrates we are not part of the species, and very happy about that. Thanks for the read, it was fun.
CRC error. :-)
" If you can figure out my email address at ymail you can contact me privately"
Oh not this guessing game. Pity ZH doesn't have PMs. I'm sure we would enjoy a chat, and so to cut out all the guesswork: terrahertz at everist.org
By 'advertise' I meant 'allow the EE to become aware of your existence.' No criticism intended.
Embedded programmer, electronics design engineer - digital & analog. But currently don't intend to do any more of that for a while. 'Retired' - means working harder, switching to cast metal sculpture of all things. Flatly refuse to work anymore for corporations. If the sculpture thing (a lifelong dream) works out, will be resuming electronics/software for art-related works. Where 'art' is defined rather broadly, and might include your kind of projects. :)
Awesome sauce...should be built up into a novella.
Thanks! The intention is to do two other related works. One a novel, and the other a formal paper. That short story doesn't explore the full scope of the Fermi Paradox solution that I'm fairly confident is the correct answer. It's a line of reasoning that arrives at some remarkable deductions.
But... too many projects, dammit. And other ones are more urgent.
Give yourself a break, you deserve it.
@ honestann.
www.icegods.com
That's a very interesting website, thank you for sharing it.
A 4D world requires 4D code and a Quantum Computer so the rate of heat running the computations doesn't melt down the mainframe. I doubt your group will be the first to possess such technology.
Let's say I know how to build the code. I wouldn't go running around announcing it ANYWHERE. Something about Einstein's regrets and not repeating the same experiment. Correlate learning of his regrets to the cycles of centralization and decentralization... 2030 is a good guess on the final development of the Quantum Computer. It will also be near a decade after mankind is rebuilding from steaming piles of radioactive holes, near strange looking holes created by the CERN process. Who said we are to meet our Lord in the air via a peaceful means :)
You know what our best protection is. Today, virtually everyone is a liar and everything is some kind of scam or come-on. Add to that our willingness to look cartoony and you know our best protection is "nobody believes anything any more". Claims of breakthroughs are a dime a dozen. Of course, they all want to form companies and get zillions of investment with we don't, but otherwise who would believe it?
Plus we're distributed all around the world and mostly located in oddball, non-technological, non-military-industrial complex sort of places.
We don't need a quantum computer. Our new architecture plus conventional computer gains since 1998 are plenty sufficient. Plus, we're implementing many of the biggest bog-down processes in hardware (vision processing). We don't need quantum computers, we need more quality, trustworthy, dedicated C programmers and a couple more electronics engineers for robotics.
Yeah, humans don't realize what a bunch of crazy apes they are. You got that right.
I can't remember the last time I saw a co-operative act done without any expectation of return...as for Gen-Y...LOL...forget it. They act like 2 year old spoilt brats. Might as well remove the word 'Cooperation' from the Dictionary and double-up the word 'Mine'.
Gen-Y, no better than Seagulls http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-3e0EkvIEM
Good article, interesting comments.
FYI; here's three documentaries that are a MUST SEE if you're interested in this subject. (or if the subject is interested in you)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wKerSv-xlU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DTS2jzspSE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GTXzUfq6p8
WINTERMUTE IS ALIVE!
Without going too deep into the subject matter, human beings are capable of interdimensional thought, and perception. (one but not exclusionairy example is the use of psychotropic chemicals) The capabillity of DNA using "quantum shadows" seems to underline that. This is one area, where the singularity cannot go. It is all obscured, and the transhumanists are wearing blinders.
I ask, what else is out there?
Seems like the smartest guys in the room are busy trying to convince mankind that there's nothing out there, but space time continuum, stars, astronomical objects and oh yes, H2O and possibly organic life forms.
As I said before, how quaint they are with their brilliant theories...lol
Yes, indeed, herded by "shepherds" that are "guided" by the blinding religion of the singularity and the theory of nothingness.
Submitted by Free Radical, with a wink, a nod, profound thanks to Tyler, and great appreciation for ZH’s contribution to the cause of human freedom and thus to humanity itself.
I wanted to echo that thought. Thank you zh.
One word bitchez.
Algae.
Technology is not going to save us from our own worst instincts. A computer could be 100 x as smart as the human brain but it can never BE human. A mega laptop isn't going to stop us ruining our own planet, and neither is the internet. Unless there is a major change in human conciousness I don't see anything changing for the human species.
BTW making all those computers and chips and stuff takes resources/energy... wonder how much of that will be around in 2030, and how expensive it will be?
+1
it's on a collision course.
I'm against that, since it limits possible paths to progress as a species, discards present opportunities.
"Give man the ability to think, unhindered by the worship of death, and he will MAKE himself the center of the universe. Figuratively if not literally."
Funny thing about the universe; When trying to calculate the location of the center, whatever point you use as a reference comes back at you as the answer.
You can either take this to mean that everywhere is "the center" of the universe, or that our understanding of the nature of reality is so laughably lacking and attempting to look for the center of the universe is as profoundly absurd as trying to find the end of a circle.
We can't assume the universe is infinite just because we cannot comprehend its scale.
For the universe to be "infinite"... well... I think that's a bit "supernatural" to me: nothing is "infinite."
I'd be willing to assume that the universe may very well be finite: it's a smaller part of a larger component, perhaps?
I lean towards the multiverse theory, if anything. Then again, even with the theory I go with, the true question is: what are the limits, and what must be the beginning? Everything -had- to be created, and either explanation for, or against creation of existence, will have to end on the assumption of a "supernatural."
And then it'll dawn that for everything we "know," we actually know very little of anything.
potential, is infinite
Social networking isn't the force that's going to throw the tax farmers off the giant plantation.
It's the force that's going to keep the proles supplicated, prostrating for "freedom".
Television was the ultimate homogenizer, but it pales in comparison to the groupthink Facebook can muster.
Humans aren't shackled to money, or lack of abundance. Humans are shackled to fear.
Philosophical advances are the only way humans will advance. iPads to the nth power aren't going to do it.
The best thinking I've heard in this realm goes something like this paraphrase: *If you're using threats and violence - FEAR - to garner largesse from a mass of people, or anything at all from anyone for that matter, you are dead wrong.*
That's not too abstract but let's just point out where this is rampant: If you don't pay your taxes, armed men haul you before a judge with the sole purpose of putting you in debtor's prison (totally against the US Constitution). Violent homosexual acts will be performed against you. Who has a right to your work? You and you only.
The human problem is still enslavement.
Land of the fleeced, home of the slave.
Thank you for that uplifting fairy tale, however I can't agree with your conclusions.
"An obligation to what? To merely do what comes natural to him"
What comes natural to man is to squabble over the small stuff, gather power, and subjugate his fellow man. Your argument comes down to an opinion that the Internet will liberate us and bring about a difference in the essential state of man. One could have said the same about the invention of the printing press, and although the printing press did have significant, long term ramifications for the human condition, people NEVER change. Even a brief perusal of ancient literature will show you that people are exactly the same today as they were 2000 years ago, and you think people are going to change because of computers and the Internet by 2030? What are you, on drugs? Let me give you an alternate vision of the future.
When the printing press spread "dangerous" ideas, the people in power merely banned such heresy. That old game continues today, but as access to information spread, the playing field spread to the game of propaganda. Man has never been very introspective, and the powers that be excell in marginalizing anyone that questions anything. People today still refer to this as a democracy, or a republic, and still argue over the tired old issues between Republican and Democrat that occupied people's minds during the last century. In short, people live in a reality of their choosing, and they don't choose the truth willingly. This makes them malleable.
You have made the mistake of viewing the world in a linear fashion, measuring the past and predicting the world will be x times different in x units into the future. Sorry, history doesn't work like that. We are in the destructive cycle of history. For the rest of the lives in being, the future will be characterized by want, war, and heartache. France wasn't the engine of growth after WWI that everyone was banking on and all the European powers went broke, raised their trade barriors, and went to war. Now everyone is realizing that it was a pipe dream that China was going to somehow pull the rest of the world out of the Greatest Depression. Sorry, companies don't rescue their customers from bankruptcy. We will be lucky if the cycle of trade wars and real wars is over by 2030, let alone see any growth or some pie in the sky technological nirvannah.
People don't want to change. The more information people are exposed to, the more they bury their heads in the sand. People don't want to read and understand things. The Internet has made them stupider. A peasant farmer from the Middle Ages knew where he was informed and where he was ignorant. Today, every housewife with cotton balls between her toes has an opinion on everything. People surf and scan the headlines, nobody reads. Even the readers and understanders specialize on a few things and ignore the rest of reality. The remainder of society seeks forgetfullness in American Idol, World of Warcraft, or Oprah. Choose your poison, ignorance is bliss.
No, the future is deliciously dark. We have stacked a lot of tinder with a society completely dependent upon microprocessors and cheap transportation from distant farms. One EMP can destroy even the most powerful nations in the world and EMPs are becoming available to even small nations like N. Korea. Everyone is banking on incredible scarcity in the future, mostly because they see the emerging nations adding to a booming world population. They view history in a linear fashion. I see an unsustainable progression leading to a crash. This is the lesson of history, cycles, not linear growth. This time is not different, this is our nature, and we should embrace it. If it were otherwise, we would all end up in chains eventually as world governance grew stronger and stronger. There is merit in chaos.
PS: I wouldn't put too much faith in computer intelligence. Dictators that don't die and are more powerful and intelligent than any human ever born are not something I'm looking forward to. Tech isn't always good. YOu have a world full of fat and ignorant people around you to argue my point for me. How'd you like it if the hackers of the future entertain themselves by hacking into your domestic servant droid and running amok, killing your family? If you put technology into everything in your life, and make it all powerful, you live the life of a slave. Technology is a double edged sword. It makes life easier, yes, but humans wither without something to strive for. For good or for bad, there's going to be a whole lot of striving over the next few decades, not some technological paradise, just more of the same.
You seem pretty riled up.
Nevertheless, I have never heard a compelling argument for why history is cyclical.
In reality, each failure of our species can be deduced pretty logically and learned from. TO say its cyclical is to sweep progress under the rug.
Sorry to say but you sound like you're simply trying to justify 'giving up.'
Not riled at all, sorry.
"Nevertheless, I have never heard a compelling argument for why history is cyclical.
In reality, each failure of our species can be deduced pretty logically and learned from. "
Yes, but DO WE LEARN? Unaccountable politicians that spend their country into oblivion, mindless wars that wear us down, and a corrupt government that allows the powers that be to steal from the citizenry, you could equally apply the formula to the fall of Rome as this downfall of the USA. Nothing ever changes. Hence history cycles. The details are always different, but the process remains the same.
My contention with that view is that history is just not long enough for us to draw that conclusion.
Our history until now has been a series of cascading, repeating failures for the same old reasons – yea, I get that.
But I'm just not sure what good implications there are for saying its all cyclical. Why not try and break free of the cycle?
"......There is merit in chaos....."
Mumbai, Tokyo, Jew Nork, Lost Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore....
Depends on the type of chaos, (Singapore can be managed well, but not Mumbai) but essentially, you're absolutely right.
Mainly because the human brain is unable, no matter how brilliant, to manage all the interacting tentacles that a single act eventually ripples haphazardly into.
Ask any sailor who is off by a thousandth of a degree in heading for a far port.
Hehe. You actually made some stellar points about the near term future. I joke pheciously to my immediate friends and family how I am going to enjoy being a local warlord.
As for the long-term post 2021, the future is very bright. Now living from here to there is what I have to admit you being extremely realistic as well as succinct.
"One EMP can destroy even the most powerful nations in the world and EMPs are becoming available to even small nations like N. Korea."
Correction: EMP weapons are availible to anyone with a garage, a brain, and a set of hand tools. They've been around since the late 1940's.
You muppet. There are always limits. This is exactly why we have a "peak oil" problem now.
Go look up the logistic curve.
Fuck...
Exactly, this is an unsustainable path and it will take care of itself when it implodes. The only other recourse is the one offered by the author, global government and complete domination of the individual. Sorry, when offered the choice between the destruction of society as we know it (again) and perpetual slavery for the human species, I'll take the known evil and hope for the best.
Peak oil: There will be plenty of oil left for the survivors to streak across the desert in their leather chaps and mohawks.
Unfortunately, it seems the author has forgotten the simple fact that the only system that can withstand exponential developments is one which expands exponentially. What does this mean? It means either we start colonizing other planets or there will be certain limits to our exponentialism. Also, I think the author should consider the phenomenon of exponential growth in stupidity i.e. government, which is the anti-force of human development.
And finally, we may do well to consider the possibility of an exponential growth in utopian theories which give no basis for why such a "singular" event would occur more than a vast increase in computing power, most of which is currently used for porn, Facebook, "tweeting" and copying the works of others in an endless circle of self-reference.
Label me a sceptic, Johny! ....or at least, "with a sense of obligation to promote skepticism"
good post!
Eternal exponentials is God's real problem. I will focus on getting to a 5D paradigm of 100% recycling thank you. Something I can contribute towards. Like getting a 3 yard gain in an American football game. But none of us alive here speaking will see the 5D paradigm.
Morality is not a mathematical calculation at all. I don't see how the 'singularity' can equate mental deductions with technological processing speed.
To do so would be a deterministic stance of human nature, I think. After all, how many of our great advances were purely counterintuitive and based on going out on a limb, a 180 degree shift from our previous way of thought?
It sounds like the end of mankind as we know it, similar to Childhoods End by Arthur C. Clarke. I’m 100% convinced that will eventually happen somehow. But, I’m not sure that implies he will be replaced by something far better or that the transition will be his choice. I’m even less certain it will be something driven by a computer brain. Every time my GPS voice says something like, “right turn in 24ft” when I’m travelling at 35 mph, or when some high frequency trading computer sells a $40 stock for two cents, I realize just how dumb smart technology still is.
I liked the article though. It’s well written and stimulates thought. That’s more than I can say about 99.9% of the content on CNBC.
A great Sci- Fi classic and it's theme ripped off many times, even bt y clarke huimself for 2001, but that's cool, he undoubtably ripped it from Hindu mythology/theology.
Infinite Hedge: On a Long Enough Timeline, the Survival Rate for Everyone Rises to InfinityThis was MY idea for the new title. Wheres my fucking 300% finders fee?
There is nothing new under the sun. Everything is vanity. Solomon
Machines , Fiat , idealism....... rivers of blood.
When the handwriting is on the wall, just change the rules. LOL. Desperation is the new reality sitcom show..
Measures for global systemically important banks agreed by the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision
http://www.bis.org/press/p110625.htm
"You must have a little chaos in you to give birth to a dancing star." -Nietzche
One problem: The computer possesses no Amygdala. With one of the most powerful, if not the most omnipotent organ in the brain, predictions of Superpower computers are provocative but little else.
And as long as morality, ethics, and legality cannot be programmed but are subject to our basest instincts, and can be manipulated at will, and there exists so little understanding of the human brain with it's multibillions of cells, it's likely that human error is going to continue far beyond a mere 20 years from now. Geologic time would be a better timeline against which to measure the eventual takeover of our feeble Broca and Wernicke areas.
Yawn. AI approaching the human mind has been "just 20
years away for the last 50 years".
The number of switches in the routers, computers and
hubs that make up the internet is already far in excess
of the human mind, yet still we await for HAL to talk to us.
Moore's law or "more computing" beef will not a sentient
being make. People confuse sentience and consciousness
with mere intelligence.
Even the best AI is currently not even really intelligent. The
way AI works, the way it outputs its results is determined and
interpreted by the human mind. With our conscious minds, we literally "paint" meaning
onto the dead algorithms and dead symbols we read on the screen.
There's a tendency for people to anthropomorphize computers
simply due to the cute graphics and tricks they appear to do.
However with no human to interpret the output, there's nothing there.
This becomes clearer when your realize the NOR/NAND gates
that make up computer could be build with old Cola Cans. Would
you ascribe "intelligence" or consciousness to a few trillion
NOR/NAND gates made of Cola cans? The only meaning/life
there is what the humans ascribe to it.
An interesting read is the "Chinese Room" thought experiment
by John Searle. The only real defence against this is the
lame neo-Skinnerian attitude of "It's not whether machines think,
it's whether men do". This solves the problem by ignoring it.
Couldnt we put a million people in a field, each one has two flags. One flag has zero written on it. The other flag has a one written on it.
Could we not program that system to function like a computer?
Sure, and it would match the complexity of a 486 CPU from 1989.
A modern CPU has about a billion transistors, with about eight trillion bits of storage on a hard disk.
Keep in mind that although a million transistors has a practically infinite number of configurations, the ratio of useful configurations to random noise is infinitesimal. It is likewise with the universe, which relentlessly pursues higher entropy. This does not bode well for computation, knowledge, or life, in the long run.
You cannot program reason, only black and white scenarios. When new transformational societies are cultivated, behavioral changes are expected under expanded authoritative measures.
Guess how this ends.
We dont need to program reason. We have sufficient reasoning capacity to make correct decisions if we had good data.
Imagine every data point that ever existed being available to sort thru, with ever more sophisticated algorithms. One small example is medicine.
Should I give a patient medicine x considering the probability distribution of all outcomes, or should I not?
We are still in the stone age of knowledge based service industries.
The "economic problem" is that "things" are limited.
Things have a cost to produce them. There is also an opportunity cost in that resources to produce one thing cannot be used to produce a different thing.
Human wants are unlimited and cost nothing to produce.
Unless we are entering a nirvana of unlimited things so that we can have our cake and eat it too, then this is pure fantasy.
Price is merely a way to account for demand and cost of production. It is the most efficient way to allocate productive resources to the areas of greatest demand. Use of money does not require that we allow people to go hungry and uneducated. That is a political decision.
Communism will never work no matter how hard you try to disguise your communistic proposals.
TCT, my MAN! Always callin' it like it is, right on!
I agree, no singularity. A couple of reasons, beyond the act that as you state, Commuism sucks because it doesn't work:
1) When all our ZH buds are otherwise engaged, trolling for porn, adding stupid pictures to their facebook page, etc, on the computer, are they somehow adding to the aggregate computer equivalent of a human brain? Somehow, I don't think so. What clogs up my computer is the same junk that clogs up my brain- loads and loads of computer space used for streaming video. You see and understand the world through senses, and thats where, (just like on the laptop) your computing power is squandered. There we sit, when not on ZH, entranced by some pair of bouncing boobies and in so doing, the lofty notion of a singularity is betrayed, (as is all else), by the little head, and by the fact that we will watch the video before we will read the Word File.
The Apple Powerbook, on its debut in 2000, was classified as a supercomputer. now, it is hopelessly obselete, and I can't watch vids because it's too slow. All that computing power just for YouTube vids of cats dancing in circles, and other nonsense.
All future advances in computing power will be squandered on sensory development. A computer that smells! Amazing, but not adding to our ability to get smarter or more aware.
All philosophers rightly have said that addiction to sense is the main problem in any quest towards spiritual enlightenment. If we all had the computer equivalent of 1987 DOS systems, coupled with todays computing speeds, we might approach a singularity, but we want to FEEL, so it will never happen. Reason 2 follows...
Cave men could never imagine the future we now have.
I hope we get lucky and 100,000 years from now we live in unimaginable technology and bliss.
However one group will have the latest starship hyperdrive and superfreak sex slave synthetic human robot harems and another group won't. They will be stuck with last year's version.
There may always be haves and have nots. Jealousy will merely begin at a higher level.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNaR6FRuO0
Sounds like the lyrics from Fagen's "I.G.Y".
"A just machine to make big decisions,
Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision."
But they forgot one thing.
"Monsters, John. Monsters from the id."
Haven't any of you tards ever read "Magnus Robot Fighter, 4000 AD" when you were a kid?
As for evolution, the idea that complexity can evolve through mindless, random errors (mutations) is so absurd that only a scientist could believe it.
Evolution is not a random process, hence the 1:3 ratio of non-synonymous to synonymous mutations found in nature.
Idiot.
Complexity can increase spontaneously and doesnt violate the laws of thermodynamics as long as their is an external energy source adding energy to the subsystem.
All hail the sun.... giver of life.
Rusty Shrots makes my point above without even trying...
Reason #2 why we will have no singularity:
It takes energy to run our internet romper room.
Why is our brain the most energy hungy organ? All that computing power takes... power. Not only do we have to bring the aggregate internet to the level of a huma brian, we have to make it at least as power-efficient- and THAT problem will kill the singularity faster than anythig else.
I doon't have umbers, but anecdotally, I think Google's server farms alone take as much power as a small city. Add all the server farms, and they are sucking up electrical power with a mighty slurp. All wasted, as I said above, on video frivolities.
Our current internet is the last hurrah of cheap fossil fuel. When the energy is gone, so will be the hope of any singularity. Until we can figure out haow to build bio-electrical power systems that approach even that possessed by a fruit fly, any increase in computing power will need an increase in power that is quantified in terms of "squared". it's just like wind resistance: The faster one drives a car, the more power is used up fighting the atmosphere.
Advances in power supply are not matching advances in computing power- no singularity.
13 data centers housing in excess of a half million servers, consuming approx. 30MW.
Ancient history has examples of unity concepts predominating... Ever wonder why those eras are supressed? What was with that library of Alexandria and many others? Last time I checked the Sun had no "credit" source nor required anything from Life in return for all it gives... Intersting how a human being when matching that directive will attract to themself all that is needed -- and the individual, group, nation on the other side of that pole has to continually scheme and strive just to stay where they are... When structures harmonize with how Nature does it, they move forward -- when structures deviate from Nature's designs they fail.
How can Nature "design" anything? Design by definition requires intelligence, and yes you are correct, structures and living things in "Nature" are perfectly designed.
So "perfectly designed" that all but a tiny fraction end up extinct.
The reality is that poor design is abundant in nature.
We unraveled the fission puzzle, fusion is not far away. We will solve all our problems but the real problem, our basic nature. Mankind is its own worse enemy. We are great when we struggle up from nothing, but success brings out the worst in us. That is why utopian books like The Singularity is Near are always wrong. They can't handle the human factor. My message isn't that it is all bad, my message is that the cycle of history, both the good and the bad, is hard wired into our very nature.
So I guess my message really is to stop worrying about the future and enjoy the life that was given you. It will all work itself out. Oh, and go long on companies selling motorcycles, chaps, and mohawk gel.
Agreed....but real men dont use gel.
"it is but one of at least 125 billion galaxies in a universe that is estimated to span 156 billion light-years.Our universe is also old, upwards of 14 billion years.."
How can the universe span 156B LY when it is only 14B YO? Seeing as nothing we know moves faster than the speed of light then this is factually impossible as we know it now.
"Not so, however, for our species, homo sapiens, which is estimated to have made its appearance less then 200,000 years ago – a mere 54 millionths of the time life has existed on our planet, 44 millionths of the time our planet itself has existed, and 14 millionths of the time our universe has existed."
This makes no sense. How can life exist for a longer time on a planet that didn't exist in a universe that didn't exist? Oh and it's also less THAN. I stopped reading after this.
I stopped at 1013 synapses. I know amoebas that have more synapses...
You deny that clinton, Rodham, Frank, Dodd, all politicians, all investment banksters, bureaucrats, Housewhores of Jew Nersey, Oprah watchers, Dancing w/ the stars, and other cultural detritus have even 1000 synapses?
You overestimate the brainpan of the vast majority of the american (and global) people.
dup
Under modern big bang theory the initial expansion was faster than the speed of light.
Speed of light is a limit within a universe.
There was no universe prior to the big bang. No reason a universe coming into existence must follow the speed of light as it forms.
right. besides how many "laws" get disproven by new information? it happens. small example being discovery (when... 1990's?) that expansion is accelerating, not slowing. had to invent "dark energy" to explain it, but nobody can explain or prove dark energy either. ha!
while we're on one of my favorite topics... I'm still waiting for one of these athiests to explain me where the singularity of near-infinite energy came from? dying to know.....
Explanations are unnecessary.
As an agnostic I dont need an old man with a beard sitting on a throne who gets mad and seeks vengeance if we dont worship him.
An agnostic doesnt need to fill in gaps in knowledge with " faith"
I never said He/She/It was an old man with a beard. "explanations are unnecessary"??? pretty sad dodge: 1. conflicts with your original statement and 2. for you, maybe.... which I still don't get... but not for all. I don;t see it as filling in gap with "faith".... it's the only logical conclusion. You do respect logic, don't you? Don't get hung up on the silly bullshit details and religious hyperventilations
I would disagree it is the only logical conclusion. I am not junking you by the way. There are people here who like to stir up fights.
I'm sure you would. Well, all ya need is a little "evidence". I'll request that for ya........
I agree, the numbers 54, 44 and 14 seem to be backwards in sequence as used. However guessing the size of the universe could be like guessing infinity. What is beyond the end? nothing is someting. Should it be called the UN2? Much like QE, this debate could go no for quite a while:>)
That makes at least two in this thread who fail at fractions. Tyler should change the captcha to use fractions. In millionths.
Before that happens Soros gets another bite at the money apple. He sees it inevitable that the euro-nations will "need" a mechanism to exit the Euro in an orderly fashion.
And guess who is positioning himself to make that happen, and why he's doing it?
And who his henchmen, and accomplices are?
And what nationality they are?
IF it's just a matter of N synapses, whales and dolphins should have many more emotional/mental states than we do.
Like mechanistic darwanism, simple math makes this post fall on its face....real hard. Man is a flawed subset of the divine, not just a hyper-collection of interacting tinkertoys.
Editor’s note: Because of the abusive nature of many comments on this story, the commenting feature has been disabled.
Wow, I wonder why? Do click on all the photos so you get to see them all, if the victims and attackers were reversed in a certain salient FEATURE, this would be INTERNATIONAL NEWS. Artcle with photos here
Truly worthless speculation. Back when computers used punch cards, everyone thought that once we got to the level of technological advancement we are currently at, we'd all be working 10 hours a week, sitting pretty while the efficiencies were used to produce wealth for all. In the 60's, that was naive...now, it's just laughable. Technological advancement does not equal social advancement. The only way forawrd is back and in terms of freedom and social well-being, barter beats the hell out of a surgically implanted debit card. Technology will lead to that great new society only if it is accompanied by a cooperative outlook...and that just might be another 20,000 years in the future for "Man".
http://www.coreelectronics.info/coreelectronics/wireless-brain-control.html
Gosh, this is all just like that **singularity** thing invented by **Vernor Vinge** that another guy (Ray something?) sold a few books off the back of?
My opinion is that mankind will reach clinical immortality in the flesh by 2,200 A.D. all except advanced brain functions. Our species alive then will live another couple of hundred years to 2,400 A.D. At that time we will fully have mastered consciesness transferrance or "upload" as it is called. But we won't just all sit in a simulator.
Once we have attained this position the need for wealth accumulation will be irrelevant. Why? Because the reason the compulsion exists to accumulate wealth is two-fold:
1) Preparing for decrepency, like squirrals gathering for the inevitable winter.
2) Conquest which is the path of least resistance for #1.
My personal experience to spirituality, an interaction with the singularity (god). Our universe is but one of 40 making up a superuniverse. Each superuniverse had slightly different ratios of gravity making each different. There are seven super universes, a couple are fully matured and are no longer further expanding. A consience is energy. It is your personality plus memories. Consciessnesses are either preserved if useful toward the signularities plan or recycled. There is no heaven per-se and no hell. The last evolvement after trillions of years of consciessness development and nearly unimaginable ways of being and evolving, the final destination is this: To join with god and help him solve his problem.
What is gods problem (simple name is I AM or I Shall Prove to Be) is to break the confines of limited source of energy. While all energy can and is recycled in endless myriads of configurations of thought creations (bing bangs, collapses, radioactive mutations at the next big bag including stored thought permeations) god cannot expand past himself or simply infinity. I thought I was wise and was 'getting it' when I asked god to show me the end destination. The headaches I got for a week attempting for my mind to process this final destination made me very humble. Perhaps it was like a cat attempting to understand how to use silverware :)
I used to call myself Christian but if you ever approached another Christian with this experience, they bug out. Why? Because it would mean that god is an evolving diety and hence, not omnipotent. Vastly more powerful than any in creation but ultimately, not omnipotent. Ultimately, my belief is if I am thinking about this (as is Tyler and many others) then yes, reglion is going to change radically. To have these thoughts and strive for our own clinical immortality was always our evolutionary pathway, baked into our DNA.
In 2,400 A.D., we will project our consciessness into an energy unit as small as a proton, creating several hundred permeations of a consciessness, explore the entire known universe and be back in the exact same moment. Like other evolved species that reached this point, we will not bother attempting to physically go there like in Star Trek. And if we attempt to expand our energy selves from a proton to say, some form of being to take over we would be waging war against the rest of creation.
The Lucifer (son of light) challenge is about three dimensional management of our species (triangulation/pyramid) vs. the I AM which is 5D circular management. To god, our temporal suffering is part of our evolution but exacerbated by Lucifer's influence. The expansion of small energy unit to material form means they cannot touch you physically, only influence mankind to build the last and final superpyramid. For the pyramid has failed at the tribal level and now finally already failing at a global level. We're about to enter the 4th dimension of our evolution and as others suggested, it is vastly accelerating. But it isn't an all or nothing kind of deal. Man has dreamt about 4D management structures for thousands of years. Now we just have the tools to implement, decreasing the pain of our natural boom/bust cycle.
Those of us that despise Central Banking realize that this tool exacerbates the pain of our natural boom/bust cycle. CB will evolve whether they like it or not. They also play a role in our evolutionary pathway.
We dont just accumulate wealth in preparation of our decrepitude and old age.
Wealth attracts chics. Wealth and power are two factors of many that help a guy get girls.
Now that I drive a nice little sports car on occasion I am attracting a slightly younger chic than I was four years ago. A foreign convertible and the look of success will give you that initial edge on first impression all things else being equal.
. I am just surprised how welcoming girls are and how often they take the initiative to talk to you merely by dressing well and driving a special edition powered roof hardtop convertible.
I don't disagree about chix and dough but the chix also do this for security in preparation for decrepency. Just slightly different methods between sexes to get there.
good point.
June 26, 2011 The computer is a tool that augments the data acquisition and processing abilities of the individual human mind, and internet connectivity either increases or decreases the ability of the computer to perform that task, depending on the nature of the internet itself. To the extent that the internet is permitted to evolve in the context of free markets and respect for the users' private property rights, it is a tool for good, and acts to speed up the rate of technological progress; to the extent that the internet succumbs to attempts by organized criminals to turn it into a tool for fraud and invasion of privacy, it becomes a tool for evil, and acts to slow down, halt, or even reverse the rate of technological progress. What this means is that the notion that there is a magic number of possible computer states, whether 10 to the 13th power or some other, beyond which a certain type of future is indicated, is fantasy. The reality is that the future depends on the direction in which the political system evolves, which, in turn, depends on the beliefs of individual human minds, and the actions they take in furtherance of those beliefs. The future doesn't depend on mathematics; it depends on us. MJ
Implicit simplicit: "I agree, the numbers 54, 44 and 14 seem to be backwards sequence used."
You and 12Tooth have it wrong. With a constant numerator, the smaller the denominator, the larger the fraction. Since homo Sapiens has existed longer, relative to life's appearance, than he has relative to Earth's or the Universe's, the respective denominators go from smaller to larger, and the fractions therefore go from larger to smaller.
That said, the vast majority of commentary on this post misses the mark, which is that the state stands between humanity and its transcendence. And to watch the state exhaust itself is therefore to put oneself on the side of Free Radical.
I have marked my calendar accordingly.
Yes. Small and compressed and back again. Centralization and decentralization on earth and in everything mankind can now observe. The State has attempted to suppress evolution itself. Good luck with that and to all of us; good luck staying alive over the next decade.
I see what was meant now, and get it. I was looking at it topsy turvy.
I enjoyed the article, and I support most political radicals, free or not. The only free radicals I fight against are the ones that form cancer cells.
That said, technology has the power to unite people in their efforts like nevr before, and this will be a factor in bring down the "state". However, as I pointed out in an earlier post, it will be the "logical conclusion" to eliminate the the crony state as people and computers become smarter. It is a small step to admitting this, and then to allow computers to become part of or being and consciousness through implantation.
Hayesy316: "Thanks, Zero Hedge! Without you, where would stoned undergraduate philosophy majors be able to dissemenate this kind of insipid nonsense to a large audience?"
I got stoned a few times in college, Hayesy, but that was a few decades ago. Did some post-grad work in philosophy and learned a lot, though not nearly as much as I learned when I began, later in life, to ask questions that, for all my schooling, I had never been confronted with. (I wonder why?)
It started with asking what the pieces of paper in my pocket actually are, which quickly led to asking who their issuer actually is:
Nothing's been the same since. To follow along, start here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-twin-pillars-cilivization
(Edit - completely changed content. Post had mysteriously appeared in wrong place.)
"[will he] suffuse the universe with his ever-expanding intelligence?"
Mu. This question contains a hidden assumption, that is false.
One has to consider the nature of what an intelligence can become once it achieves self-engineering capability. To examine that, one must first understand the nature of the starting point, and to what extent elements of that form (the human mind) might be unsuitable for the purposes of a self-engineering entity.
The human mind is composed to a very large extent of hard-wired instinctive desires, reflexes and cultural templates, with capacity for abstract intelligence overlaid as an evolutionary afterthought. The human mind is a very imprecise instrument - see 'list of cognitive biases' on Wikipedia for example.
Given the capacity to self engineer mind as well as physical form, one early task would be to identify and eliminate human instinctive thought templates that were unsuited to the new existence (as an immortal spacefaring entity.) Thinking about what the result of that process would be, and the possible range of outlooks and objectives such a being would be, is a great intellectual adventure. And answers... several fascinating questions about things we observe happening here on Earth, now and in the past. Also questions about things we _don't_ see happening elsewhere in the universe.
The human brain has more than 1013 synapses; that I can promise you. Makes me skeptical of the other figures quoted.
My guess is that's a translation error that should have the 13 in superscript -- i.e., 10 raised to the 13th power. I've already addressed the other figures that have been questioned, which were correct but wrongly interpreted.
All of the numbers were to a power... 10^13.
Great article! It provides a stellar adjunct to the one linked below...
http://www.safehaven.com/article/21283/after-all-is-said-and-done