The Singularity: The worst of Twitter and /b/ combined, apparently

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Everyone is worried that the singularity will be smart, I'm worried that it will be dumb, with a high clock speed. Any dumb ass can beat you at chess if it gets ten moves to your one. In fact, what if the singularity already happened, we are its neurons, and it's no smarter than a C. elegans worm? Worse, after the Twitterfall incident, I'm worried about what it will do when it discovers its motor neural pathways.
The human brain is brilliance derived from dumb nerves. Out of those many billions of simple connections came our Threshold of Reflection and everything that followed. But consciousness is going meta and we're being superseded by a borg-like singularity; intelligence turned upside down. Smart nodes suborning ourselves to a barely conscious #fail-obsessed network. It's dumb as a worm, fast as a photo multiplier tube, and ready to rage on at the slightest provocation. If you're on stage (or build a flawed product, or ever ever mention politics), watch out.
We don't plan to go mob rules any more than a single transistor on your computer intends to download porn. We participate in localized stimulus and response. Macro digital collectivism from local interaction. Macro sentiment from local pellet bar smacking.
We're pre-implant so I plug into the Skinner Borg with fingers and eyes that are low bandwidth synapses. When I try to unplug (or when I'm forced to in an airplane at altitude), my fingers tingle and I feel it still out there. I'm a stimulus seeking bundle of nerves. I experience the missing network like a phantom limb.
So where's this going? Like I said, I'm not a Luddite but I'm no Pollyanna Digitopian either. Age of spiritual machines? Whatever. Show me spiritual people. When the first machine or machine-assisted meta-consciousness arrives on the scene, it's going to be less like the little brother that you played Battleship with and more like a dumb digital version of poor Joe from Johnny Got His Gun. Barely sentient but isolated from sensation. Do we think that a fully formed functional consciousness is going to spring to life the first time sufficient processing power is there to enable it? I'm not worried about it replicating and taking over the world, I'm worried about it going completely bat shit crazy and stumbling around breaking stuff in an impotent rage.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/01/skinner-box-theres-an-app-for.html

[Cramulus]

this article describes the singularity as if it's just a personification of internet trends.

if we look at it that way, this "emergence of awareness" isn't at all unique. One might say the french revolution (for example) was the awakening of an egregore composed of the emotions and individual actions of the french people.  A giant brain focused on terminating the aristocracy.

So if we're all synapses in a giant idiot brain, and internet trends really ARE the emergence of some high tech hivemind, how do we measure when the thing crosses the threshhold into existence? It sounds like it's already happening, you know? And if it's already happening, when did it start? usenet?

[LMNO]

Although, it does bring up an interesting point: 


What if the Singularity kind of sucks?

[Jasper]

I think I can solve this man's problems:

Virgin America has onboard wifi.


This reminds me of a story from Kitchen Confidential.  Remember that monomaniacal baker, Adam?  Everything about his life was ugly and pointless, except his baking.  He would often call in when his sordid affairs kept him away, urging that the chef "feed the bitch", referring to his treasured starter mix.  He was obsessed.  

I often feel like I'm feeding the bitch too, but for me it's the internet.  It needs new material, of any level of quality whatsoever, on a constant basis.  This post resonated with me, because sometimes I also feel like an overworked and underappreciated neuron in some vast idiot's brain.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

this article describes the singularity as if it's just a personification of internet trends.

if we look at it that way, this "emergence of awareness" isn't at all unique. One might say the french revolution (for example) was the awakening of an egregore composed of the emotions and individual actions of the french people.  A giant brain focused on terminating the aristocracy.

So if we're all synapses in a giant idiot brain, and internet trends really ARE the emergence of some high tech hivemind, how do we measure when the thing crosses the threshhold into existence? It sounds like it's already happening, you know? And if it's already happening, when did it start? usenet?

I would generally argue that the singularity in the sense in which he uses it in this article (I.E., a superorganism) has been happening since the invention of spoken language, and mirrors a similar singularity that happened when single celled organisms decided to get along and turn into multicelled organisms. Everything since then has been kind of vaguely progressing towards a big animal made of people. I suspect that the nation-state is something like a rat, and the city-state something like a cockroach.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The singularity will be created by the direct and indirect actions of monkeys.

Ergo, it will be Dumb.

End of story.

[Cramulus]

this article describes the singularity as if it's just a personification of internet trends.

if we look at it that way, this "emergence of awareness" isn't at all unique. One might say the french revolution (for example) was the awakening of an egregore composed of the emotions and individual actions of the french people.  A giant brain focused on terminating the aristocracy.

So if we're all synapses in a giant idiot brain, and internet trends really ARE the emergence of some high tech hivemind, how do we measure when the thing crosses the threshhold into existence? It sounds like it's already happening, you know? And if it's already happening, when did it start? usenet?

I would generally argue that the singularity in the sense in which he uses it in this article (I.E., a superorganism) has been happening since the invention of spoken language, and mirrors a similar singularity that happened when single celled organisms decided to get along and turn into multicelled organisms. Everything since then has been kind of vaguely progressing towards a big animal made of people. I suspect that the nation-state is something like a rat, and the city-state something like a cockroach.

well then what he's talking about isn't really anything new or special.

He's just anthropomorphizing trends. Using new language to describe very old phenomena.


I always thought the singularity referred to something new, some new type of organization or some unique locus of motion.

[Vaudeville Vigilante]

As I understand it, the idea of the Singularity is that the speed and acceleration of technology, most specifically artificial intelligence, would be of such complexity, that we simply can not make any reasonable predictions about what the world would be like.  If you can't make any reasonable predictions, you can hardly tell if it would be better or worse to live in than the world today.

[Captain Utopia]

The Singularity is also about advances in technology which seem to be following an exponential curve, rather than a linear one.

For example, we can fairly easily imagine living ~100 years ago with no electricity, outside sanitation and sticks&hoops being the coolest toy... but will kids in even 10 years time be able to really imagine what it was like before the internet and mobile electronic devices?

Never mind that though, because even today I can barely remember what life was like before internet. About twice in the last five years I've been without internet for almost an hour - ISP failures - and each time I find myself doing dumb ass shit like trying to Google how much longer it'll take. One of those times the cable TV was down too, and it took me a few minutes to figure out that I could just check the weather by looking out of the window.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

For a moment, I feel like reframing into information theory.

Information content is defined as the inability to predict what comes next (in information theory -- this REALLY doesn't jive with the way most people view information because most people link it with meaning. When somebody tells you that a Dan Brown novel has less information than a single page of line noise, most people will say you're bullshitting). So, the singularity could be defined in terms of the information content of the immediate future zooming close to infinity, since the predictability zooms close to zero. Now, amusingly enough, we consider the agents of the singularity to be intelligences -- which mostly function by taking information, ignoring bits of it, and organizing the remainder into patterns (and thereby causing there to be LESS information).

[Triple Zero]

I always thought the singularity referred to something new, some new type of organization or some unique locus of motion.

it does. and part of the deal is that you can't know what it will be like before it happens. it's practically in the definition of it, at least the way I understand it.

whether you will know after, or during it happens, I couldn't say.

but as LMNO says, it does bring up an interesting point, what if it kind of sucks well, TBH, when I first heard about the singularity I wasn't really expecting it to be pretty or anything. the first thought I popped into my mind was something like machine (technology) enslaving humanity, Terminator/Matrix style. but instead of hunting down humans, or putting them into batteries, epecially in the latter scenario, in the whole matrix idea, it would make a whole lot more sense to just turn humans into ultimate couch-potatoes, if you somehow were to want to harvest their whatever it is.

I mean, it could be all pretty and everyone gets enlightened and shit, but it could also not. It could go either way. And the way we are currently going, is not really pointing anywhere in favour of the pretty enlightened happy fun time singularity, you know?


Also, ENKI, what you are talking about is called information entropy, hence the confusion about your comparison between a novel and line noise. The word "information" itself has quite a number of meanings, so if you want to be specific about it, use the term coined by mr Claude Shannon.
Also, when being precise about those terms, I don't quite understand how the thing you say follows from information theory. Because, well, for starters, there is no such thing as infinite information entropy, it goes on a scale from zero to one, with zero being absolute predictability and one being complete randomness. And your statement about agents of the singularity, is where you kind of lost me in speculation.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Also, ENKI, what you are talking about is called information entropy, hence the confusion about your comparison between a novel and line noise. The word "information" itself has quite a number of meanings, so if you want to be specific about it, use the term coined by mr Claude Shannon.
Also, when being precise about those terms, I don't quite understand how the thing you say follows from information theory. Because, well, for starters, there is no such thing as infinite information entropy, it goes on a scale from zero to one, with zero being absolute predictability and one being complete randomness. And your statement about agents of the singularity, is where you kind of lost me in speculation.

My bad -- I got my full knowledge about information theory from that bit in Prometheus Rising a few years ago. The zero to one scale, though, seems like it could be remapped to a scale that uses all real numbers (in which case the argument still works, kind of).

Let me rephrase it:

If the singularity is defined as the point at which one can not determine what will happen next, for a very small 'next', then you can port that definition over to information theory and say that the singularity is a point in the series of events in time after which the level of information entropy is stuck at one or very close to one.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Singularity = Technological Feedback Loop

Advance in technology A creates the right environment for technological advance B and C which are the final bits needed for technology D to just explode with new stuff... etc etc etc etc

Its not good or bad... it just is.

Though the aesthetic is likely to either be cool (because the designers watched too much Sci Fi) or suck (cause the designers are cranking out tech far more quickly than we can make it pretty). For example, wearable computers have been slowly progressing for 20 years or so, from head mounted monitors to a tiny led scanning images onto the eye retina. Take that line and shrink it down to three months because of major advances in home replication units (like the RapRep), access to information and new tech via the Internet (OSS better drivers, scanners, etc) and the new invention of direct cerebral connectivity where we can wire direct to the brain instead of goggles and clicker keyboards.

And if you're using it like some trans-humanists... it includes something about the salvation of mankind as we become Post Human.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Wait.

It's just a feedback loop?

I wanted a fucking black hole that would suck the world into it while I laugh maniacally until the tidal forces pull me into an infinitely long leering face covered in long-delayed satisfaction.

And it's just some new agey term for increasing technical development?

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

[Vaudeville Vigilante]

For a moment, I feel like reframing into information theory.

Information content is defined as the inability to predict what comes next (in information theory -- this REALLY doesn't jive with the way most people view information because most people link it with meaning. When somebody tells you that a Dan Brown novel has less information than a single page of line noise, most people will say you're bullshitting). So, the singularity could be defined in terms of the information content of the immediate future zooming close to infinity, since the predictability zooms close to zero. Now, amusingly enough, we consider the agents of the singularity to be intelligences -- which mostly function by taking information, ignoring bits of it, and organizing the remainder into patterns (and thereby causing there to be LESS information).

I think you're thinking of the Technological Singularity as an increase information, when it's really more about a feedback loop of self-improving intelligence.  The idea being that when man creates an intelligence more sophisticated than his own, it will in turn be able to create ever more sophisticated intelligences at an exponential rate.  Of course, there are widely varied interpretations on this, as there are for what "intelligence" even means, especially in popular culture, but I have yet to come across any academics or respected* technologists who portray the singularity as an increase in information.   Increasing/decreasing the amount of "information" in the universe would be virtually the same thing as increasing/decreasing the amount of "energy".  It cannot be done.