X-Message-Number: 5302
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From:  (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: The Singularity is just a horizon
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 00:21:48 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <49emjq$>

I will ask him some time if he got it from somewhere else, but the man
who popularized the term singularity in this context was Vernor Vinge,
who certainly knows what a mathematical singularity is.

What he likes to talk about is the idea that technologies like AI,
brain-computer direct interface or human uploading might result in
what could be called transcendent intelligence.   Intelligence that
we at our level simply can't understand, any more than apes can understand
human intelligence.

He points out that predicting the actions and thoughts of such
transcendent intelligences is fruitless.  You're far more likely to be
wrong than right in most cases.

Thus a singularity, in that there is really no looking past it or
understanding what's past it.

It seems likely.  Intelligence is like that.  For example, how much
smarter was Einstein than the average man on the street?  In some
senses, only a small, manageable amount.   But in other ways infinitely
smarter.   If I had the strength of 10 men, you could understand that,
because 10 guys could life what I could lift.

But could 100 average minds develop general relativity?  Could 1000?
Could any number?   (No, although they might breed children who could.)

Anyway, the worry is that since we know almost nothing of the motives of
these transcendent intelligences, if they rule the world (and how can they
not rule it, unless they don't care to) we have no idea if they would care
to revive cryo-suspended normal intelligences.
-- 
Brad Templeton, publisher, ClariNet Communications Corp.	 
The net's #1 Electronic newspaper		     http://www.clari.net/brad/
		...Announcing 1 MILLION paid subscribers! (www.clari.net)


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