Would you prefer the red line or the blue line?

Psychologically, the blue line would make us happier because of less ups-and-downs. However, the red line has a larger surface area underneath it, and so that means an economy that's maybe 2 or 3 times as large.

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, speaking at The Singularity Summit, said that booms and busts are symptoms of the approaching Singularity. Each boom is a new bet on the Singularity.

I'm not sure if this is exactly the case, as Tim Swanson cites that the booms and busts have had more to do with financial market bubbles.

However, there is something to be said about the Singularity just being a really good boom.

On a related note, this represents my view of history:

I believe that in the longview, things are getting better:

Cross-posted on DLog

So guess what, there is going to be a Singularity University now. It's interesting to see that the concept of the Singularity is starting to go mainstream. Ray Kurzweil really spearheaded the movement with his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. I read that book in college and became instantly mesmerized by the concept.

Recently, Kurzweil gave a PowerPoint presentation at TED pitching the University and also the idea of the Singularity. I decided to extract the slides from the PowerPoint that I term, "logarithmic plot porn." These are graphs that really nail home the point that we may be approaching an End of Days scenario very soon. Here they are, all in one place:

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I have a phantom clipboard. This is where I copy (Ctrl+C) something on my computer, drift off and do something else, forget what I copied, but have a lingering sense that I have something ready for pasting. It's like an extra limb, or a phantom limb, that is holding an imaginary tray of stuffs.

File this under: "Things like the Tetris Effect."

UPDATE: I've cross-posted this on futurehi.net where there is a larger discussion taking place. Please post your comments there. Also, I found a deeper manifesto by Lanier wherein he argues against "cybernetic totalism."

I went to a talk by Joel Garreau who just published the book Radical Evolution. The subtitle of the book is "The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies" And What It Means To Be Human." The talk and the book are about the radical changes to come amidst a world of limitless technology.

I normally avoid these talks because I have—so I've thought—internalized the interesting perspectives on where the Singularity will take us. Turns out I just only have two extremist views. There's Ray Kurzweil who, in The Age of Spiritual Machines, describes a "Heaven" scenario for mankind, wherein we upload our minds to machines and simulate a paradise of infinite beauty. Then there's Bill Joy who asks: In a world where a million people can make an atom bomb, how do we stop ourselves from self-annihilation? (cf: Why the future doesn't need us). We can call his the "Hell scenario."

Garreau introduces an alternative view titled the "Prevail Scenario," which he ascribes to Jaron Lanier.

The rest of this post is about the Prevail Scenario, pulling quotes from Chapter 6 of Garreau's book.

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Ray Kurzweil says that the biggest challenge for society as we approach the Singularity will be defining what it means to be human.

Heh, yeah right. I really doubt that the semantics of the word "human" will really bother anybody. Derrida and his gang of deconstructionist obfuscators have already shown how easy it is to skewer words and have nobody blink their eye.

People will treat humans as humans in a "I know it when I see it" kind of fashion. And the fact of the matter is, people have had a broad spectrum of what they treat as human for the longest time. Our American founding fathers treated people who were born south of the equator inbetween the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean who also happened to have an evolutionarily beneficial, but darker, pigmentation in their skin, as not human; i.e. slaves.

I think the questions that will come up is how humans, when granted enlightened thinking by machines, will be able to stand on the crutches of traditional human illusions.

For example, Nietzsche announced "God is dead." But I don't think everybody got the memo.

But, in the Singularity, once everybody is given the computing power of a billion Pentiums, they will be able to digest all of the human knowledge in the timespan of a hic-cup, and then get Nietzsche's news. Okay, perhaps this is not a problem because there are many atheists out there who are doing fine without God--or are they? Many studies show that religious faith is highly correleated with happiness.

But what about other illusions, like time, existence, love, purpose.

How will we react when we have a true understanding that time doesn't really exist, and that cause and effect is just a trick of perception, will we cease to treat things the way we treat them? Will we fear death like we used to? Will death even matter?

I guess the answer to those questions is, "it depends on how internalized the knowledge becomes." If we are able to process and deal w/ knowledge in a cold fashion, maybe it won't bother us like it doesn't bother intellectuals now--or does it? I read some of Consciousness Explained from Daniel Dennet, and I had to put it aside because I was seriously starting to lose my mind.

Or another problem in the Singularity is when we have absolute power to control our own emotions. Would we just shut off all pain? Maybe you would say, "but I'll always retain free will, and so I wouldn't choose to shut off all pain." But what if you could shut off your care of free will? "But I wouldn't shut it off." But you would be so smart to know that after you have shut off your care for free will, you wouldn't have any regret, and therefore it is a rational choice. In other words, what is to stop us from ending up in stable equilibrium of being a vegetable in bliss? Would there be safegaurds against it?

I still fantasize a bit about the Singularity and all the cool things I'll be able to do while in it, but to be realistic, I'd say that the Singularity may very well be just one big death. I'm not talking about a physical death, but a pandemic death on every human-laden concept. Even death will die. Life probably won't mean anything to us. Even the notion of "us" and "meaning" will dissolve.

My biggest worry in the Singularity is total dissolution. But then I temper that worry with the trust that even worriment itself will be dissolved. Yipes!

A prototypical blueprint for "Seed AI." A Seed AI is an artifically intelligent program that passes a threshold of intelligence required to improve its intelligence. Once the program is able to significantly improve itself, the sky's the limit.

Humans were "designed" by a process without design or foresight. Humans constitute only a tiny point in the space of possible minds. The study of AI is ultimately the study of minds in general, and there are several classes of advantage that a mind-in-general can have which human minds do not. Some of these advantages have already been touched on - the ability to add new sensory modalities, or the ability to carry out "boring" abstract processes using fast low-level computing elements rather than slow high-level deliberate intelligence. Other classes of advantage exist as well - for example: blending conscious and low-level thought; fine-grained self-observation; adding hardware to cognitive processes; deliberate learning; and more.

...

If you need to place a hard upper bound on the possible speed of a seed AI, the only answer is that there isn't one. If there's something you need to do before the rise of superintelligence, you need to do it before the first successful seed AI. The time period separating the two could be arbitrarily short. Not just "short" relative to the speed of human cultural improvement, or "instantaneous" relative to the speed of human evolution - it may even be "short" relative to the timescale of human thinking. There's that ten-million-to-one disparity in (current) hardware clock speeds. (Read the Full Article)

Eschaton is defined as the moment when the World ends. This word is derived from the Greek word eskhatos which means last.

For Christians, this is Rapture or the "Second Coming of Jesus." For a vivid description of Rapture, read this Darwin Award of a woman dying while attempting to experience Eschaton. Other religions also have some sort of Heaven-situation where we are suspended in an infinite afterlife.

Paranormal types also have their own Eschaton found in novelty theory and approaching concrescence, which describes a mystical and complicated conclusion to Life.

But if you are a naturalist, atheist, or agnostic type, how do you conceive the End? Well, the Sun will eventually engulf the Earth and the Universe will either dissipate or pull a reverse Big Bang ("The Big Crunch"). But is this a satisfying Eschaton?

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We are impulses, rapidly firing off, so many times per second per second, that we lose a sense of the negative space: whatever it is in between those impulses. We have discrete decisions, discrete ideas, discrete actions dotting a timeline that is our life, but in between those dots is infinitely crisp emptiness.

Just stop, hold your breath, look at the clock and realize for a second, that nothing has to move. Motion is just an illusive blur between time steps. Progress is just an emotional heart beat, an experience of relative tipping of the scales. In other words, nothing matters.

Nothing. Matters. From the nothing, comes the matter. The nothingness is the matter. We have to make everything matter otherwise we lose hope.

However, I take a twisted pleasure fantasizing on the ultimate truth, that there is no matter. That what I observe before me are just chemical reactions creating a sensation of a sense of self and a sense of impending need.

I find it amusing sometimes, though, to see everything move with so much direction and purpose. I sit in restaurants or in school in awe of how forward facing our vectors are. I'm not crying for a "live in the moment" mantra here, but rather a look at how "living" we are. Or rather, look how any "verb" we are. We are a "doing" species, always with an A and a B. A forwards and a backwards. Even if you are going to "live for the moment," let's say, by enjoying that Snickers candybar you just bought, you participate in a process of self-satisfice.

And that's what we are trapped in, this huge process layered upon process of self-something.

But what about the backdrop, what about the space between the points. There is a static noise that doesn't move, that seeks no A to B. I sometimes skip a heart beat thinking, what if I were to fall in between the cracks. What if I just got derailed from all trajectory. If every neuron in my brain said, "okay, let's stop." I wouldn't just end, the universe as I perceive it would end.

This hopefully illustrates how fascinating it is that the brain is so constant. The brain must be some continuous loop that repetitively bites the same function. We wake up everyday and don't forget to go to school or work, right? We eat on time, we in general survive. But why? In general there is a track before us, and we kind of shift left and right for the hell of it: to get a better partner, to make more money, or to be happier perhaps. But ultimately it's the same track with the same startpoint and the same destination: birth and death.

I wonder how this awareness of the abyss will be resolved in the Singularity. If we are truly to end up as enlightened as we may be in the Singularity, then people will just pop themselves off realizing there is no need to go from A to B anymore. Well, the Singularity will probably be a handicapped enlightendness, where we are still the same constant loop, constantly striving for whatever.

Or maybe I'm just sick of studying for Finals Week.

This JPEG captures and symbolizes how integrated we are with the machine. In the image, a throng of Japanese women are holding up picture-phones to the sky, digitizing a campaign speech.

This is the essence of technological amputation. Our eyes, which I expect were genetically 20/20 for most homo sapiens, is seen simultaneously extended and amputed in that picture. In each woman's palm is both a screen and a third eye. It's as if the bundle of nerves attached to their biological corneas is stretched a hundred times in length, tunneling through their arms and terminating in their Nokia 3600s. Even bits of their brains are extended into their picture-phones as memories of the event are stored for future retrieval.

Technological amputation is not a new phenomena, as we use satellite TV as a proxy for our ears, eyes, and mind. But seeing such a concentration of oridnary people intersperse a computerized device between them and an open-air event demonstrates human's broad, natural symbiosis with the machine.

Look at that picture again. What is the ratio of artifical to organic devices? They wear clothes, many of them wear contact lenses, and they sport hair styles created in shops that rely on electricity. Then factor in the content of their brains, which are largely instructed through technology transfer--reading books, watching TV, and surfing the Net. Don't forget the food that they eat: so much food is processed by chemicals and artifical selection that the sale of "organic foods" is now a novelty.

Humans have such a willingness to substitute silicon, metal, and plastic contraptions in place of their existing organic capacities. Our integration and co-dependence with the machine is the norm, not the exception. You get the picture, right?

There was news today that I saw on MSNBC that stem cells have been extracted from human clones ////

Commentary follows...

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Many say that if there was no death, then their life would have no meaning. There would be no rush and no "import" to their actions, as they could be undone or recuperated later.

Just as those who look at death as a deadline to make stuff happen, us Singularitarians have a different kind of deadline.

I believe in the Singularity, or some point in our future, like within the next 20 years, when technology will ramp up so fast that life will be like the Matrix or some other unimaginable techno-fantasy. After which point, we will live forever, but the ramifications of that will not be the same as if we were to live forever otherwise.

Personally, believing in a Singularity does reduce the meaning of things that I do. By knowing that march of technology is unceasing and inevitable, I don't get excited to become a scientist. I also don't get excited by building "big foundations" for posterity. Like if offered the opportunity to do what Ghandi did to India, I'd say screw it, that's so temporal.

To answer Peter's question, do I feel claustrophobic, then? Quite the opposite, more like I'm in the desert waiting for the party.

What narratives haven't been explored?

In our search to kill boredom and quench our search for novelty, we have killed novelty

One day, we will narrow the whole thing down to a few basic metaphors, a few universal truths on a tablet

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Another rought draft of an idea, too hot to hide,,,,,,,,,,,,

pick one... we are now part of the global, or rather universal consciousness and now you can have a global project to work on:

rationality--- can we improve the overal rationality of the world

breaking power laws--- how can we reap the benefits of networks without the defecits of power laws, such as the rich get richer

ending the inevitability of disease--- diseases on the INternet, in life, don't have to be an "inevitable" component of our universal existence

understanding the system--- research into the way in which the whole works

hedonism imperative--- does anybody who wants happiness get it?

I'll leave this in draft form....

We are now operating on the big picture, not on the small picture. Instead of I'm hungry, lemme get food, it's a plan, we have our whole dietary picture.

Business has largley and still is a game or an art, there is no science to it, you can't predict whether people will buy your products nor antitpate what the interaction between you business and the economy will be... but with the brigtening up and closing of the earth, we have a better vision of everything, better maps, and can make better predictions, no longer can we just walk in the dark... marxism and the like are dead, like, what is the dialectic of dialectism, a straight line rather than a back-and-forth, which gives us more control, more control means shorter time periods to delivery.. means faster pace to singularity...?

Acceleration of technology inspires more amputations of our existing functions in order to find better ones, which lead to more new appendages, which then accelerate technology further... more proof of the underlying mechanisms of Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns.

Excerpted from Laws of New Media

The Extended Phenotype
In genetics, an organism's phenotype is the outer manifestation of the tendencies inherent in the genetic material

The extended phenotype is the reach of genetic tendencies beyond the organism into the external world "e.g., a bird's nest, a spider's web, or the caddisfly larva's stone house"

Media As Man's Extended Phenotype
Media act as humanity's extended phenotype by extending our sense, motor, and mental capacities
Reify: from the Latin res, thing: to treat an abstract concept as a concrete object or entity.
Evanescence: from the Latin evanescere: the tendency to vanish like vapor.
+ Thought and experience are evanescent
+ Media allow us to reify (and thereby capture) them for later consumption

Examples Of Extension
+ Writing extended speech over space and time
+ Arithmetic extends our capacity for measuring and balancing
+ Libraries extend our capacities for memory and recollection

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"Formerly, when one invented a new function, it was to further some practical purpose; today one invents them in order to make incorrect the reasoning of our fathers, and nothing more will ever be accomplished by these inventions." (poincare)

Maybe the Singularity or singularities in individual fields occur when developments become purely reflexive, i.e. serving no utility outside of itself. Where discussion is about soley previous discussions or about itself. A confab of the most meta-significance. You can already see this happening w/ regard to tech nerds, where a "nerd" is defined as someone who uses a telephone to talk about telephones.

Let me tell you a little secret, if you don't already know: Some people think that what we are all doing is together building a mind. Said less often, but perhaps at least as interesting, is that -that- mind is building -our- minds. (Abyssal Mind)

If the global mind is a machine with the individual components or neurons being individuals, then the individual parts must be deterministic for an effective whole to emerge.

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Transhumanist FAQ

Transhumanism is a way of thinking about the future that is based on the premise that the human species in its current form does not represent the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase (by way of Quantum Theology)

When they say that the Singularity will be here on 2012 the knee-jerk reaction is... only 8 more years?!?!

It seems too soon, but then I keep coming across articles that give me pause.

Case in point: NTT has found a way to use humans as wireless ethernet cables. Basically, they were able to transfer data using special tiles that tap the electrical fields naturally generated by humans.

Stop and visualize that for a second.... all of my wireless devices buzzing to life as soon as I step into the room? Or how about being a WAP for some guy's laptop?? Maybe our imagination is inhibited with floaters that make us think the Singularity will happen when we extend our bodies with machines and become cyborgs. If it's the other way around, where machines extend themselves through us, the Singularity may happen a lot faster than we think.

// My personal basis for gauging the proximity of the Singularity is to look for signs that we may already be there: the end of pain, holodecks, man-machine blurring, infinite knowledge, the global mind, the end of time, etc..

If the Singularity were already here or is almost upon us, surely we would experience at least parts of the irrelevance of time.

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