Talk:Technological singularity/Archive 1

message: Arvindn, the difference in speed is more significant than "hertz" precisely because it affects any form of computation.  Nonclocked computers already exist, and in these, Hertz is meaningless.  Even so, human being clock at about 10 Hertz (that's why movies run at 24 frames per second).  The 200Hz cycles are because neurons use frequency modulation to encode analog values.  
So, I'm going to restore the "speed" text.  I appreciate the grammar corrections, by the way.  User:Ray Van De Walker
:Fine. BTW, you should use Foobar rather than Foobar for user pages. -- Arvindn
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I wonder what that meant: "technological progress rising to "infinity."" I have never seen this particular misinterpretation. Since progress is the process, it can't rise to infinity - only its speed can, or the level of technological development. Could the person who wrote it rewrite this part into what he/she wanted to say.
Paranoid 21:01, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old talk 

message: I'm about to suggest that this article, interesting though it may be, really doesn't belong in its present form in Wikipedia.  I think it should be moved to Wikisource or somewhere else more appropriate for original research, opinions and the like.  If it were simply an encyclopedic account of a set of speculations, that would be different, but actually it seems to be nothing but a series of speculations presented in an uncritical manner.  The references to "Moore's Law" are particularly irritating to anyone who understands the origins and application of the phrase.
--Minority Report 00:50, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Some of the speculations need to be trimmed down and attributed. I'm removing the second section on Moore's law, as it seems especially speculative (I've no idea where those numbers are from). Moore's law itself is too significant to cut out entirely, but I'll try to ground it more in reality. I'll look for some sources for the bits in the "Singularity technologies" heading. As for the article being "uncritical", I'm just not seeing it. There's decent-sized section of attributed criticisms. — Schaefer 03:16, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: Your main qualm about this article seems to be the misrepresentation of Moore's law. Yes, I realize that Moore's law really only concerns transistor densities, but it's very often generalized outward beyond that. I believe Ray Kurzweil actually gave some fancy name to the more general form to distinguish it from the old Moore's law, but most transhumanist keep using the latter because it's more well-known and thus more convincing. I'll try to rewrite the infringing sections to reflect Kurzweil's law instead of Moore's. — Schaefer 03:26, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: I definetly think this is an important subject that deserves much expantion. Note: since I will be preparing a presentation for the end of April on this subject, I will likely work on the article over the coming days. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 13:40, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Original research

message: Just so you know, the lead-in quote to this week's cover article in New Scientist was Wikiipedia's definition of the Singularity. . — Asbestos | Talk 16:40, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The definition they use (without specifying article version date) is: 'In futurology, a technological singularity is a predicted point in the development of a civilisation at which technological progress accelerates beyond the ability of present-day humans to fully comprehend or predict. The singularity can more specifically refer to the advent of smarter-than-human intelligence, and the cascading technological progress assumed to follow.'. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 13:03, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Scientist article 

message: * Old Wiki defintion: 'In futurology, a technological singularity is a predicted point in the development of a civilisation at which technological progress accelerates beyond the ability of present-day humans to fully comprehend or predict. The singularity can more specifically refer to the advent of smarter-than-human intelligence, and the cascading technological progress assumed to follow.'
**  Votes to keep:
* Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk proposal: 'A technological singularity refers to a predicted point or period in the the development of a civilisation at which due to the acceleration of technological progress, the societal, scientific and economic change is so rapid that nothing beyond that time can be reliably comprehended, understood or predicted by the pre-Singularity humans. 
** Votes to adopt: --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 13:03, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed new wiki definition 

message: Perhaps I am being obtuse, but I don't see the connection between Terminator's one self-aware AI and the technological singularity as cited in the Singularity and Culture section. Isn't is more all of the AI's becoming self-aware, and human computational ability so vastly enhanced that it is impossible to tell who is organic and who is AI? I feel Skynet would fail a Turing Test, and so not qualify for Seed AI. I suggest the reference be removed to avoid confusion (like what I just experienced). - Thanks, Rlacy853 6 July 2005 23:48 (UTC)
: Rose: Be bold. I agree it is not perfect - the Terminator's  world does indeed fail the 'rapid changes' definition - so try to fix it. On the other hand, we know little about Skynet to be sure it would fail the TT, but as it can design apparently sentient cyborgs I would err on the side of caution. Same argument could be used for example on 'Sentient's from Odyssey 5. Now that I came to think of it, the world's destruction (episode 1 so no spoiler :D) could be viewed as a singularity, don't you think so? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 7 July 2005 08:07 (UTC)
:: Piotr: Thank you tremendously for the reference to Be Bold. The rest of the Culture section is so strong I feel it doesn't need any reference to Terminator. Also, good point that Skynet designed sentient cyborgs, but I have to disagree about whether they are sentient. It voluntarily self-destructed based on a chain of logic that served its master. I wish I had seen the Odyssey 5 series. I don't have cable, but I will order the series from Netflix.
::: Cut section Although their treatment of the subject is superficial at best, Hollywood's "Terminator" films all have a technological singularity as a major element to their overall plot in that a defense supercomputer dubbed "Skynet" attains sentience and, as its first "conscious" decision, begins the global extermination of humanity.  
::Rose Rlacy853 8 July 2005 00:48 (UTC)
:::I'm putting reference to Skynet under "Sentient AI and baseline humans" Rose Lacy 00:00, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, last time I checked, the Turing Test was not necessary for a seed AI :-) but rather the fact that seed AI produces more seed AI beyond its own class. --Ihope127 18:09, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was Skynet a Seed AI? 

message: This article needs someone (who knows more about the subject than I) to include some discussion of Alvin Toffler's famous book Future Shock. →Raul654 08:21, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
: Good point. I will do so soon. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 09:34, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: A *MAJOR* Omission

message: About 20 years ago I read the greatest short story about humanity acheiving Singularity through nanotechnology. The touching part was humanity's need for an emotional anchor as they explored the universe with their minds. The heroine of the story was a simple woman who had an elemental connection with her own humanity, and through her mind being a part of the collective, provided the emotional safe harbor and anchor needed for the whole race to achieve Singularity. 
The story was in Analog. Naturally I went to their site to search their archive. No luck! I couldn't find a searchable archive. Any ideas? I'd love to add this story to the Singularity and Culture section. 
Thanks, Rose_Lacy 21:01, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a type of question that you may want to ask at Talk:Science fiction or perhaps the relevant sf usenent group. As a side note, one of the best stories about singularity I read have been written by Jacek Dukaj - unfortunately majority of his works is untranslated into English :( The entire fiction section could use much expantion. We should mention the works of Iain M. Banks, Greg Egan, Greg Bear - just out of the top of my head. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 23:09, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thank you again, my Wiki mentor! Rose_Lacy 22:03, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

text:  A reader on the Analog discussion forum thinks the story is "The Gentle Seduction" by Marc Stiegler. I've ordered a copy of his anthology containing the story to confirm. Rose Lacy 18:16, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Marc Stiegler? Never heard of him. Do let me know if he is good. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:28, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I finally got a copy of the collection The Gentle Seduction. It's just as touching as I remember. The description on Marc Stiegler's page has been expanded. Rose Lacy 04:00, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Author/Title of short story with nano and Singularity? 

message: Piotrus wrote: "Nonetheless Kurzweil is one of the top voices in this field. Regardless what we think of his ideas and graphs, they are notable." As of 20 July 2005, Googling for "singularity" shows that Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns doesn't pop up until result number ten. This doesn't say much by itself until you consider that of the ten results, only two appear to be unrelated to the topic of this article (it's used twice as a brand name), and the first three results are Vinge's original essay on the Singularity, a collection of Singularity links that makes no mention of Kurzweil, and the homepage of the Singularity Institute. Granted, Google searches aren't the be-all and end-all of ways to determine notability, but I think this should at least suggest that the article should focus more on Vinge than on Kurzweil, and I think as it stands the article gives the false impression that Kurzweil's opinions represent all Singularity promoters. Yes, Kurzweil's graphs are notable enought to warrant inclusion, but I think the context of "this is what Kurzweil thinks" should be made more clear, instead of presenting them as fact, which appears non-NPOV and in favor of the Singularity in general and Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns in particular. -- Schaefer 15:32, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I wrote that Kurzweil is notable, not that he is the most notable. Vinge, as the 'father of singularity' is definetly more notable, this is why he is mentioned in lead. Btw, this brings me to this quote: "Predictions range from 2007 (Dan Clemmensen 1996) and 2012 (Terence McKenna 1996) " can we have a source for their publication with those predictions? Otherwise, as they are also not that notable, I'd like to move this sentence out of the lead somewhere into the main body. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:42, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I rewrote the intro (before seeing your comment here) and removed McKenna in the process for the same reason, but left in the 2007 figure as a lower bound. But now that I Google for Dan Clemmenson I see he's not really notable at all. (He is, however, humorously optimistic -- in one 1996 message I found he schedules a reunion party at a specific crater on the Moon on May 1st 2006, fully expecting the Singularity to have happened by then.) -- Schaefer 16:35, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  As for the lead, I started a discussion about it some time ago (see talk above) but nobody replied then. While I don't mind you shortening the references to other singularities, I would like to stress that I spend a lot of time working on the every word of the first para  of the definition. Let me go over your major changes: 1) you changed ' point or period in the development of a civilisation' to 'future event' and 'societal, scientific and economic change' to just 'societal change' - both of make the definition shorter, and I could live with them, as it wise to make the definition as KISS as possible but limiting it just to societal change is I think a bit to specific, I would suggest droping the adjective and just go with 'change' or 'change in our enviroment' 3) most importantly you changed the logic by replacing 'due to the acceleration of technological progress, the societal, scientific and economic change is so rapid that nothing beyond that time can be reliably comprehended, understood or predicted by the pre-Singularity humans. ' to 'where technological progress and societal change accelerates due to the advent of superhuman intelligence beyond the ability of present-day humans to comprehend or reliably predict.' Where the older definition had the 'acceleration of the technological progress' as the cause of the singularity, you limit to 'advent of AIs', and from what I read, not everybody agrees AIs will be invented first - some speculate that nanotechnology will be required to reach that level. In the definitions I cited above, not that von Neumann, Ulam and Kurzweil do not mention inteligence, just the acceleration of changes. 4) Finally, you replaced the 'pre-Singularity humans' with 'present day humans' - this is an error, as many theories argue that some humans will be able to 'accompany the singularity, transcendt, etc. - thus some of those present day humans may in fact be able to comprehend or understand the Singularity world, if they undergo some kind of transition. I would recommend replacing your version with this: 'due to the acceleration of technological progress and likely advent of superhuman intelligence the change in our enviroment is so rapid that nothing beyond that time can be reliably comprehended or predicted by the pre-Singularity humans.' How does that sound? One last thing: why do you think that 'evolution of society' should be a subsection of the Kurzweils' law section? I see little connection, at best I'd do it the other way around. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:10, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm continuing this in a new heading below, as it no longer concerns the Kurzweil log charts. -- Schaefer 21:13, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Kurzweil's notability and representativeness

message: I think the singularity has already occured. See Duffy's law. -- 216.234.56.130 21:29, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  it's already happened 

message: Under The desirability
 and safety of the Singularity, the article states:
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"However, in one of Asimov's novels, despite these laws, robots end up causing harm to individual human beings which brings about the formulation of the Zeroth Law."
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I think the causation has been confused, surely the Zeroth Law led to individuals being harmed (presumably to humanity's benefit)?
Although not explicitly specified as the Zeroth Law, it is implied that the reinterpreted First Law of the 'Machines' (which is effectively equivalent to the Zeroth, if a replacement)  was their rationalisation of The Laws, not because of people being harmed (which it was said to allow, not prevent).
Also, perhaps it should be emphasised in the article that the novels generally demonstrated the fallibility of The Three Laws; given the subject at hand, it would seem important.
By all means, if you feel confident in your knowledge about Asimov's laws, Be bold. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:45, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Asimov's Three Laws 

message: Comments appreciated at Peer Review: Wikipedia:Peer review/Social evolutionism/archive1. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:45, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evolution of society