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'kay, so, this singularity thing...

Started by P3nT4gR4m, January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM

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P3nT4gR4m

So I dunno if everyone's in on the theory or not but it's basically, moores law, extrapolated into the future, but applying to more than transistor thingamybob doubling, more sort of broadening to apply to scientific progress in general. So at some point in the future we reach an exponential skyrocket or precipice and either turn into gods or some shit or we all melt into gray goo.

So I heard about it years back and was all, like, "yadda yadda, what-evs, f'kin miles away but, yeah, sure maybe it'll go one of those ways if we survive the next couple of million years or so". So now I'm hearing some guru fuck, name of Kurtrzwell or something has said he reckons it's a decade and a half away or some shit and he's got "followers"

So now my bullshit detectors are flashing amber and I'm thinking, "lolz, it's the next utopia cult, going to get their heads lopped off and carbon frozen or some shit" so I watch some doc on youtube, all university dudes and I reckon I get the punchline already and I just want to hear the joke. Only nothing these guys are talking about seems impossible to me, only the timescales but, even then, those curves are heading practically vertically at some point. I dunno enough about the curvature-analysis to pass judgement on the timescale but I do know that exponential gets fucking massive really fucking quick once it gets going.

What I do know is that I've been present since the early days of this bullshit and I reckon I could have just about have imagined a future with devices like smartphones in it but only as a vague "video call" device from the 21st century. I'm pretty confident I have a handle on how some of this shit is going to develop over the next half dozen or so years but, beyond that? Fuck knows, man. Am I a believer?

Still desperately trying to keep my whole concept of belief down to a bare minimum, but I'm sure as hell feeling a lot more optimistic about the whole life-after-death or just plain never having to go through the death part at all.

That's a big old concept for me to wrap my head around. If my existence is eternal or, fuck it, even if it's going to be a thousand years or so, suddenly there is a long-term, goals and ambitions - scenario that hasn't been there since I was about 7 and worked out that Jesus was most probably bullshit.

Suddenly there's a worry about whacking myself accidentally before I can back up my brain or "upload" or whatever the fuck might be on it's way. Suddenly I find myself concerned about dying "too soon". Not much but a little niggling thing that wasn't there before, in the back of my mind, niggling.

Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right?  :eek:



I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM

Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right?  :eek:

1.  It's "fazed".  I know you're a Scotsman, but still.

2.  The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society.  There is no AI Jesus.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

P3nT4gR4m

I get the AI jesus thing, although, to be honest, I can't rule it out but I can envisage a metric fuckton of technologies which smart people are currently trying to invent, which would enable me to go for longer, indefinitely? How far away is some way of bridging the neurons in my brain and rerouting the information through artificial braincells? I can't imagine them doing it in the next ten years. The decade after that? Fuck if I know. Some drug that totally reprograms DNA and keeps me a healthy 25 or 30 years old, indefinitely. Next ten years? To be honest I know fuck all about that shit.

Meanwhile the world is changing in impossible to predict ways. Someone invents a nano replicator or atomic transmogrifier whatever. Suddenly scarcity based economics is rendered irrelevant. Bunch of other impossible to predict shit goes down. This is chaos run rampant. This is my idea of heaven. Not in my lifetime, right?  :argh!:

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:37:00 PM
Someone invents a nano replicator or atomic transmogrifier whatever. Suddenly scarcity based economics is rendered irrelevant. Bunch of other impossible to predict shit goes down. This is chaos run rampant. This is my idea of heaven. Not in my lifetime, right?  :argh!:

Oil company buys the patent and sits on it.  Have some high-starch poor people food.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM

Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right?  :eek:

1.  It's "fazed".  I know you're a Scotsman, but still.

2.  The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society.  There is no AI Jesus.

Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.

Hope hope hope.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Nigel's Red Velveteen Skinmeat Snacks on January 07, 2014, 09:44:16 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM

Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right?  :eek:

1.  It's "fazed".  I know you're a Scotsman, but still.

2.  The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society.  There is no AI Jesus.

Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.

Hope hope hope.

That would be horrible.  I don't know what the hell I'd be like if I didn't have hormones.

I'd be all QUIET and there'd be no sexytime.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: Nigel's Red Velveteen Skinmeat Snacks on January 07, 2014, 09:44:16 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM

Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right?  :eek:

1.  It's "fazed".  I know you're a Scotsman, but still.

2.  The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society.  There is no AI Jesus.

Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.

Hope hope hope.

That's the fucking exact thing I'm talking about. Hope. Never had it and, truth be told, I don't like it one bit. It's like suffocating or something. I'm fucking suffocating in hope. MAKE IT GO AWAY GODDAMNIT  :argh!:

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:45:46 PM
Quote from: Nigel's Red Velveteen Skinmeat Snacks on January 07, 2014, 09:44:16 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM

Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right?  :eek:

1.  It's "fazed".  I know you're a Scotsman, but still.

2.  The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society.  There is no AI Jesus.

Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.

Hope hope hope.

That would be horrible.  I don't know what the hell I'd be like if I didn't have hormones.

I'd be all QUIET and there'd be no sexytime.

I'm pretty sure a computer complex enough to house my personality would also be able to mimic some kind of hormonal and emotional swings.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:48:11 PM
Quote from: Nigel's Red Velveteen Skinmeat Snacks on January 07, 2014, 09:44:16 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM

Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right?  :eek:

1.  It's "fazed".  I know you're a Scotsman, but still.

2.  The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society.  There is no AI Jesus.

Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.

Hope hope hope.

That's the fucking exact thing I'm talking about. Hope. Never had it and, truth be told, I don't like it one bit. It's like suffocating or something. I'm fucking suffocating in hope. MAKE IT GO AWAY GODDAMNIT  :argh!:

Well, like I've always said. Hope kills; despair is merely tiresome.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Junkenstein

Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:45:46 PM
Quote from: Nigel's Red Velveteen Skinmeat Snacks on January 07, 2014, 09:44:16 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM

Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right?  :eek:

1.  It's "fazed".  I know you're a Scotsman, but still.

2.  The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society.  There is no AI Jesus.

Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.

Hope hope hope.

That would be horrible.  I don't know what the hell I'd be like if I didn't have hormones.

I'd be all QUIET and there'd be no sexytime.

I'm reasonably confident that a computer complex enough to mimic human thought processes would eventually get to replicating hormone effects. That'd probably be 2.0.

As for no sexytime, well, that would sort of depend on how you've been stored I guess and potential connectivity to other stored beings. With the increasing prevalance of wifi, it may actually mean sexytime all the time whether you like it or not.

Seriously, just look at humanity and tell me this shit won't evolve along without a bunch of "oops" and unintended consequences. No hormones will be the least of your woes compared to the flying fucking clouds of people drifting through your lunch.
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

tyrannosaurus vex

Immortality through AI. It sounds great at first, right? Who wouldn't want to live FOREVER? Of course, it's not so much the living forever thing we're after. As we already know, any jackass who makes it to about 70 or 80 stops living anyway, even if he lives to be 125. He's just not dead yet. And that's what we're after -- we don't want to live forever, we just want to not have to die.

So anyway, AI and uploading your memories and personality. Unfortunately that really isn't a solution. You're basically just programming some fancy computer to act like you act. Even if they eventually get it to 169% accuracy (and though I don't want to live forever, I do hope I get to live through the trial and error phase of that project), what the hell does that have to do with you? So there's a computer out there attached to a robot body and nobody can tell the difference between that thing and you unless the batteries run out. Well so what? Is that robot you now?

They'll have to answer more fundamental questions than how to make a faster CPU to accomplish that. They'll have to answer big, scary questions like "who are you, anyway?" What is the nature of consciousness? What about your human brain adds up to that sense you have that you exist at all? Does the robot have the same thing? If it does, is it morally equivalent to the original?

I think the only real way to answer that question is to go through the upload procedure and then be woken up in a room with only you and the newly-activated Robot You. You'll be given two hours to chit chat with that robot, and the purpose is for the robot to convince you beyond a shadow of a doubt that it really is you, and that your biological form no longer has the right to that identity. And there will be a gun in the room, and the only way to stamp your approval on the robot's consciousness is to relieve yourself of your own. Otherwise, we'd just be filling the planet with robots who act just like we act because we think we're so god damned special that our final gift to the world would be us never going away.

And as full of myself as I am, I just don't think I would wish that on anyone.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

P3nT4gR4m

Dude, you just totally 2.0'd the turing test!  :eek:

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

LMNO

Quote from: V3X on January 07, 2014, 11:29:59 PM
Immortality through AI. It sounds great at first, right? Who wouldn't want to live FOREVER? Of course, it's not so much the living forever thing we're after. As we already know, any jackass who makes it to about 70 or 80 stops living anyway, even if he lives to be 125. He's just not dead yet. And that's what we're after -- we don't want to live forever, we just want to not have to die.

So anyway, AI and uploading your memories and personality. Unfortunately that really isn't a solution. You're basically just programming some fancy computer to act like you act. Even if they eventually get it to 169% accuracy (and though I don't want to live forever, I do hope I get to live through the trial and error phase of that project), what the hell does that have to do with you? So there's a computer out there attached to a robot body and nobody can tell the difference between that thing and you unless the batteries run out. Well so what? Is that robot you now?

They'll have to answer more fundamental questions than how to make a faster CPU to accomplish that. They'll have to answer big, scary questions like "who are you, anyway?" What is the nature of consciousness? What about your human brain adds up to that sense you have that you exist at all? Does the robot have the same thing? If it does, is it morally equivalent to the original?

I think the only real way to answer that question is to go through the upload procedure and then be woken up in a room with only you and the newly-activated Robot You. You'll be given two hours to chit chat with that robot, and the purpose is for the robot to convince you beyond a shadow of a doubt that it really is you, and that your biological form no longer has the right to that identity. And there will be a gun in the room, and the only way to stamp your approval on the robot's consciousness is to relieve yourself of your own. Otherwise, we'd just be filling the planet with robots who act just like we act because we think we're so god damned special that our final gift to the world would be us never going away.

And as full of myself as I am, I just don't think I would wish that on anyone.

You seem to be riffing on the Philosophical Zombie gambit.

Cramulus

First - worth linking to a Noam Chomsky's interview titled "The Singularity is Science Fiction"

Chomsky does not really buy into the Singularity idea - he thinks it's perhaps a useful way to get us to visualize what the future could be, and that in itself may produce social change and new technology, but he thinks it's basically a science fiction idea. Technology doesn't "do" things, humans do, so even if new tech is being invented by old tech, it's still a world of human production.

But that's not really related to the OP, no? You're talking about immortality research, not AI....


Cliff Pickover has a book called The Heaven Virus, which deals with the concept of "synthetic afterlives". The idea is that in the near future, we'll be able to image your brain and stuff it into a digital environment where it will continue to operate normally. Except instead of interacting with a physical environment, we just simulate a physical environment digitally - when your brain sends a "move your finger" signal, the simulation reads this and gives it the feedback to create that sensation.

So in the novel, a character wakes up in this digital afterlife. Somebody eventually explains that according to his file, he died in a train accident, but luckily, he had his brain imaged a few months beforehand, and at the moment of his death, they released it into this big digital heaven simulation. Pickover's version of heaven is like this incomprehensibly giant mall, where instead of stores, there are different kinds of experiences you can have. Except the simulation is also flawed, so that people don't become completely bored there... they have problems to solve and obstacles to overcome, too... So is it heaven or hell? and that's the main story of the book.


Just as an aside, imagine what we could do with that kind of tech... imagine we could image the brains of some geniuses, and dump them into a digital environment... now imagine that with enough processing power, we can adjust the speed of time within that environment... Allowing our digital researchers to complete their work FASTER than their meatspace counterparts. Imagine if we had the processing power to complete a year of research in an hour of processing time. Imagine if we could take a photo of Hawking's brain so we could continue to use that machinery after the original model has died - kind of like building a car engine based on schematics.

But either way - the YOU who is being imaged will be gone - at best, when you're gone, we'll have something like a hologram of 2Pac, spitting out P3nt attitude and it makes us all feel like you're still around. In the same way that a picture of my late grandma makes me feel like she's still around. But it's not her, even if that photograph could bake me cookies.

But that leaves immortality drugs -- drugs which defeat or reverse the aging process. There's new movement in that field every few years. Here's some from 2013.

But it feels like we've been 10 minutes from cracking the secrets of aging since like 1970, right? I mean, in the book Cosmic Trigger, doesn't RAW think the end of aging may be right around the corner? And that was 1977! If we ever crack that egg, it will definitely change everything we know about everything. Visualize hot chicks in bikinis at spring break showing you pictures of their great great grandkids. And they all look like 24 year olds.

But I dunno, it seems so far off, I wouldn't start making long term plans around it just yet. I mean, you won't be able to afford it anyway.  :p

tyrannosaurus vex

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 08, 2014, 02:01:42 PM

You seem to be riffing on the Philosophical Zombie gambit.

I think that's close. There's no way I can read that entire page right now but the general idea isn't really far from the AI bit. The "philosophical zombie" is a little overcomplicated, though. It's basically a question of the nature of consciousness, or the "soul" -- is your soul simply your ability to process information, or is it your awareness that you are processing information? I think that question may be reading too much into it, though I'm not a neuroscientist so I can't be sure. Maybe human self-awareness is just an artifact of processing information the way we do. A kind of doubled-up short-term memory that causes us to examine and reexamine the almost-now-but-not-quite all the time. Maybe a computer can be made that has the same sort of experience and thus becomes self-aware.

My concern is more about using AI to extend individual life, and whether the replacement is the original in terms of continuity of consciousness. I suppose it would be good enough if the experience of moving into an artificial was at least as smooth as the transition from wakefulness to sleep to wakefulness again. But how do you prove that's what has happened?
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.