Talk:Accelerating change

message: No discussion? i thought most articles had a discussion.
Maybe in critisism, there should also be this is just straight line drawing in logirithmic scaled graphs rather then linear ones.
Also some of the pictures also show the progress of evolution, while that may be critised aswell. Why didn't the dinosaurs get intelligent already?
This article is heavily balanced towards the existence of accelerating change yet according to some authoritative sources there is no evidence of this even existing, a fact that isn't even mentioned.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Singularity Preparation (talk • contribs) 20:36, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticisms

message: I assume that y'all have accurately portrayed Ray's picture of evolution. It seems overly simplistic compared to a real biologist like Stephen J. Gould.
217.40.67.106 14:34, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Kurzweil's picture of Evolution vs. Stephen J. Gould

message: This article describes LAR as exponential growth, but LAR is actually a case of hyperexponential growth; the rate of increase (in proportional terms) actually gets exponentially faster and the differential equation (if the damn thing doesn't break down) is such that this numerically defined "progress" goes off to infinity in finite time. While this probably wouldn't play out as such in practice, this is the essence of technological singularity. Czar Dragon 04:34, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: One note on LAR

message: I propose that this article's topic should be changed from the Law of Accelerating Returns to the more general school of thought concerning accelerating change, (super-)exponential growth in technology, etc. There is as of yet no official Wikipedia article on the topic, but much of the content in the present article really concerns accelerating change in general, not just Kurzweil's particular take on it. If nobody voices any objections here within the next few days, I intend to change the article's name to "Accelerating change" and reword the introduction appropriately. -- Schaefer (Talk) 04:19, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In science, the word "Law" essentially means "theory". The article should make clear that this is a theory - albeit a widely accepted one - and not a simple observable phenomenon. --RichardVeryard (talk) 09:48, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article move 

message: Hey guys. I'd like to understand this phrase to complement the translation of the article in foreign language, but I'm not sure the meaning of it accurately since I'm not good command of English. It simply means a sequel to the Low of Accelerating, is it? Does it contain more meanings?--Uiweo 15:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not meant that way. "Returns" is a noun, not a verb. That is, it's a law about returns where the returns are accelerating, not a law about accelerating where the law is returning. It's intended as a reference to the much more famous law of diminishing returns. -- Schaefer (talk) 05:13, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the information. That's make sense.--Uiweo 09:50, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The meaning of ''the Law of Accelerating Returns'' 

message: The charts on this page, particularly :Image:ParadigmShiftsFrr15Events.jpg, are extremely misleading and have little actual informational content.  The graph points sharply to a technological singularity as right around the corner ("next year", actually); but in fact, this is a mathematical necessity of how the graph was constructed.
Take a look at a few of the individual series on the chart.  Neither Encyclopedia Britannica, Davis Nelson, or Goran Burenholt list any events within the last 10^4 years.  Yet all three of these plots seem to indicate exactly the same trend that Kurtzweil aims to illustrate.  How can this be?  How can Nelson's list of paradigm shifts — which ends with our divergence to homo sapiens 200,000 years ago — possibly be used to suggest that there will probably be even one more shift (under Nelson's criteria, whatever they may have been) within the next 10, 100, or even 1000 years?
In fact, regardless of the sequence of key events chosen, and regardless of when the graphic is made, the log plot must point straight towards next year the present.  The plot mathematically has to be a sharp diagonal on the right side: anything with "time to next event" greater than "time before present" would require the list to contain future events.  And our imprecise historical knowledge puts a limit on how fuzzy the left side can be.  For example, the wheel was invented "in the 4th millennium BC", according to that article.  That's about 6000 years ago.  If you consider the invention of the wheel to be a key event, then what's the shortest possible time to next event?  Keeping the same number of significant figures, the soonest next event would be 5000 years ago.  The time to next event for the wheel (6*10^3 years ago) would be, at minimum, 10^3 years, less than one tick below the axis of symmetry.
So it's not a matter of selecting a reasonable list of key events — there's simply no realistic way that one could create a sequence (even an unreasonable one!) that looks different from this plot.
--Dzhim (talk) 02:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Additionally, embedding Kurtzweil's graphics into every section of the article (including the "criticisms" section—what?) raises POV concerns... --Dzhim (talk) 03:44, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Aetheling, you're correct in pointing out one possible sequence that would look different when plotted in this fashion.  However, even a young-earth timeline would have fit reasonably well among Kurtzweil's others for the first few centuries AD (had Kurtzweil and logarithms been around then).  The difference relies partly on the fact that the sequence covers a range of time that is narrow relative to how much has passed since.  This is due to the graphing methodology, which (by rather circular logic) implies the present as an additional event in each sequence: for each sequence, the final point has equal X and Y values, meaning "time to next event" equals "time before present." --Dzhim (talk) 01:21, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kurtzweil's diagrams are worthless 

message: It would nice to mention/link in how the switching energy for a single transistor has decreased over time.  Couldn't find the appropriate page on Wikipedia.  Does it exist?--Michael C. Price talk 20:24, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Switching energy

message: Unless there's any objection, I'm going to remove the diagrams currently in the article. All are OR violations (who picked out the selected inventions, etc., and who says there're notable?), with the possible exception of the patents given one, which still needs a source and more information, since it's obviously been smoothed. Thegreenj 06:43, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: All diagrams are from The Singularity is Near, so not OR; but as said above, there's no need for so many in the article, and might there be copyright problems? ~~ N (t/c) 01:33, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Wikipedia is not a democracy. ~~ N (t/c) 01:27, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

text: I have removed the most egregiously stupid of the illustrations from the article (that is, any with "time to next event" as an axis).  Aside from potential POV/balance and copyright concerns, I have no problem with the ones that remain.  If necessary, I will happily argue that the graphs I removed are not useful illustrations. -- Dzhim (talk) 00:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Diagrams

message: The best parallel computers are already made of DNA, but they need a few breakthroughs such as nanopore sequencing before they can be brought into the home. The other, arguably more famous advance in computing power comes from quantum computing. Both are set to be actionable in our lifetimes.
What I'm getting at is that we should set up sections for technologies (from computing, communications, energy, to transportation and so on) and highlight possible new advancements as they come along. Wiki is (after all) an ever changing encyclopedia. 99.236.221.124 (talk) 14:41, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Computing Power 

message: The exponential acceleration of technological progress culminating in a technological singularity is associated with the writings of Vernor Vinge, who not only wrote for an academic audienceVinge, Vernor. "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era" (crediting earlier related thoughts by Stanislaw UlamUlam, S., Tribute to John von Neumann, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol 64, nr 3, part 2, May, 1958, p1-49. and I. J. GoodGood, I. J. "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine", Advances in Computers, vol. 6, 1965.), but also popularized the concept  in SF novels such as Marooned in Realtime (1986) and A Fire Upon the Deep (1992). The former is set in a world of rapidly accelerating change leading to the emergence of more and more sophisticated technologies separated by shorter and shorter time intervals, until a point beyond human comprehension is reached.
The latter starts with an imaginative description of the evolution of a superintelligence passing through exponentially accelerating developmental stages ending in a transcendent, almost omnipotent power unfathomable by mere humans. 
Quiname (talk) 19:46, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Vernor Vinge]]'s [[accelerating change]] 

message: I'm sure there must be some source out there talking about how space travel completely bucked the trend of accelerating change. 100 years ago, we could barely fly on earth, 50 years ago we had satellites in space, 40 years ago we were on the moon and we haven't done anything more impressive than that since.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Heresimach (talk • contribs) 18:20, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  space travel? 

message: "While many scholars have suggested accelerating change, the popularity of this theory in modern times is closely associated with various advocates of the technological singularity, including Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, among others." was snipped, and restored without comment.
I support this removal as it appears to be personal opinion, and is unsourced.  I also do not see how it is encyclopedic.  It seems clear to me that the accelerating pace of change, from the 1800s, has been a key facet of at least US society.  Unless there is an argument or a source, I expect to remove this promptly.Shajure (talk) 16:45, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Going to add a CN tag and let it lie for a bit before applying the editorial hatchet.Shajure (talk) 19:02, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually..this is unsourced material in the lead.  Dropping it now.Shajure (talk) 03:39, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Support removal 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I stumbled across this page through a link from James Burke, and was very surprised to see that there is no mention at all of Alvin Toffler and his book Future Shock. Toffler's book was so influential that one could almost claim that he invented the idea of accelerating change as discussed in this article, so to not have him at least mentioned in it is... strange. Joseph Petek (talk) 02:47, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Well then why haven't you edited the article yet? (If you have sources) There's a link to Future Shock in the see alsos though. --Fixuture (talk) 19:01, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Alvin Toffler]] and ''[[Future Shock]]'' 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: In the image showing the computational speed of various media, it is confusing because it has a picture of a punch card, which doesn't calculate, that's done by relays, transistors, tubes, or whatever electronic switching medium the computer uses.
This is more confusing as relays, vacuum tubes, and transistors are shown along side punch cards.
So, I'm not really sure how this is meant to be interpreted. VoidHalo (talk) 21:09, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moore's Law 5th Paradigm Image Doesn't Seem to Make Sense