X-Message-Number: 27949
Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 09:23:31 -0500
From: Jeff Dee <>
Subject: Re: Singularity - triumph of technology
References: <>

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>> Basie writes:
>  
>
>>> Singularity already exists. It is called God.
>>
>
>> Andrew Clifford writes:
>
>> No it isn't.
>

 > Basie writes:

 > How do you know? We may very well be the figmentations of a 
Singularity. One
 > could call it God if one wish.

"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling 
a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
     -Abraham Lincoln

Likewise, calling the technological singularity a god does not make it a 
god.

 > The fact is that when one replace the word
 > Singularity with God

What Andrew and I are challenging is the sensibility of replacing the 
one word with the other. We know what people mean when they say, "God", 
and it is not at all the same thing that people mean when they say, 
"Singularity".

 > much of it looks like religion.

Now you're just being rude. The same sort of thing is said by ignorant 
people about cryonics. But cryonics is not a religion, and neither is 
the concept of the Singularity.

 > If a primitive tribe
 > in the jungle comes across a sophisticated computer that runs itself they
 > will probable build a pyramid around it and call it God.

Yes, but they would be mistaken - because we know that a sophisticated 
computer that runs itself is just a sophisticated computer. It is *not* 
a god.

 > I think religion is that pyramid.

If, as you suggest, the singularity has already happened, and theistic 
religions are really worshipping *it*, then those religions are 
mistaken. Because we know that wildly advanced technology is just wildly 
advenced technology. It is *not* a god.

-Jeff Dee

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