What, exactly, is a Vingean singularity?
STHLMGUY
Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
what it means?
Regards,
Sven Johansson
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Martin Wisse
<transact...@spray.se.invalid> wrote:
>I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
>Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
>what it means?
In science, a singularity is a black hole, a point where the laws of
nature have stopped functioning: anything could happen.
Similairy Vernor Vinge, amongst others has speculated a point in human
development where we transform from the recognisably human into
posthuman. After this point we have no hope of understanding.
In Vinge's view this singularity will be a very short period, the end of
an exponentially growing process. He has described the aftermath of such
a singularity in his novel _Marooned in Realtime_ where the only
"survivors" are the people not present for this singularity.
A good webpage discussing this can be found at:
<http://www.transhuman.com/mirrors/www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Singularity/>
Martin Wisse
Tom Womack
"STHLMGUY" <transact...@spray.se.invalid> wrote
> I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
> Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
> what it means?
It's a very extreme version of 'quantity has a quality all its own'. The
idea is that sufficiently rapid exponential growth of technology eventually
leads to a point such that all that comes afterwards is incomprehensible
given what came before: in _Marooned in Realtime_, people stuck in stasis
come out after the Singularity and discover that the only humans left are
the ones stuck in stasis.
Tom
Joe "Nuke Me Xemu" Foster
> I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
> Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
> what it means?
I think this is it:
<http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html>
The basic idea is, once superhuman intelligence is created, human beings
will be about as important to the world as chimpanzees. Unfortunately,
I doubt humans would be very good pets...
--
Joe Foster <mailto:jfo...@ricochet.net> Space Cooties! <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above They're coming to
because my cats have apparently learned to type. take me away, ha ha!
Mark Atwood
> STHLMGUY wrote:
>
> > I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
> > Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
> > what it means?
>
> It's the Rapture for atheists.
It's better (and more likely) than the Fundie Christian's Rapture.
--
Mark Atwood | It is the hardest thing for intellectuals to understand, that
m...@pobox.com | just because they haven't thought of something, somebody else
| might. <http://www.friesian.com/rifkin.htm>
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Gareth Wilson
STHLMGUY wrote:
> I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
> Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
> what it means?
It's the Rapture for atheists.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gareth Wilson
Christchurch
New Zealand
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nancy Lebovitz
Joe \"Nuke Me Xemu\" Foster <jfo...@ricochet.net> wrote:
>"STHLMGUY" <transact...@spray.se.invalid> wrote in message news:2107d358...@usw-ex0105-037.remarq.com...
>
>> Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
>> what it means?
>
>
><http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html>
>
>The basic idea is, once superhuman intelligence is created, human beings
>will be about as important to the world as chimpanzees. Unfortunately,
>I doubt humans would be very good pets...
>
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com
October '99 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Jeffrey C. Dege
>Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
>what it means?
The idea is that on very rare occassions in the evolution of human
society, there are technological and sociological changes to rapid and
so fundamental that those who lived before it are completely unable to
visualize what the world of those who live after it will be like.
There have arguably been one or three of these already, with the neolithic
revolution being the first.
The extension on this idea is that we're rapidly approaching another one.
--
Windows2000 - from the people who brought you edlin.
Robotech_Master
<transact...@spray.se.invalid> wrote:
> I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
> Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
> what it means?
Here's Vinge's essay on the subject, from his own homepage.
<URL:http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html>
Layperson's explanation: "You know how it seems like technology keeps
getting better faster than it used to? Like in the last hundred years
we've gone from railroads to nationwide highways to the moon and
computers and beyond? Well, imagine if the rate of improvement gets
_so fast_ that the world is completely unrecognizeable from how it was
_fifteen minutes_ ago." That's a singularity.
--
Chris Meadows aka | Co-moderator, rec.toys.transformers.moderated
Robotech_Master | Homepage: <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~robotech/>
robo...@eyrie.org | PGP: <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~robotech/rm.key.txt>
robo...@jurai.net | ICQ UIN: 5477383
Chuck Bridgeland
<transact...@spray.se.invalid> wrote:
>I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
>Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
>what it means?
Technological eucatastrophy. What happens after we enhance either ourselves
or our computers past human intelligence.
See http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html
See also Vinge's _Marooned in Realtime_.
--
Brass is a precious metal. Save your brass.
Chuck Bridgeland, chuckbri@mwci-dot-net
http://users.mwci.net/~chuckbri
Ernest Tomlinson
wrote:
>Layperson's explanation: "You know how it seems like technology keeps
>getting better faster than it used to? Like in the last hundred years
>we've gone from railroads to nationwide highways to the moon and
>computers and beyond?"
To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart from CASABLANCA, "I wouldn't bring up
the moon if I were you, it's poor salesmanship."
I'm still driving an internal-combustion engine car, and reading this
message on a cathode-ray tube. Some things have changed drastically;
some haven't.
The idea that technological advancement must necessarily maintain its
current rate of acceleration seems to me just another instance of the
fallacy of believing that _any_ trend, once established, must continue
unabated.
tomlinson
--
Ernest S. Tomlinson, incola Seattilis - hyaci...@yahoo.com
http://www.flash.net/~etomlins/
"You don't make up for your sins in the church. You do it in the
streets. You do it at home. The rest is bulls**t and you know it"
(Martin Scorsese)
Vincent Archer
> I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
> Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
> what it means?
A term loosely associated with Vernor Vinge's own extrapolation of the
future.
Roughly, a Vingean Singularity is the point in history at which human
species starts finding ways of producing something that is better, or more
intelligent than it is, either by design, by accident, by intelligence
enhancement, AI, whatever. All rules of society break down at that
point, and you usually cannot understand what goes on after that, no
more than, say, a dog can make sense of our society, the motivations
of a human, or its technology.
Most vingean singularities bring up something we interpret as a kind of
catastrophe, since nothing ressembling the human species is left after
that (or maybe, for story's sake, a few stragglers that got left behind
the massive sweep of change).
--
Vincent ARCHER Email: arc...@frmug.org
Ian A. York
Ernest Tomlinson <hyaci...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>The idea that technological advancement must necessarily maintain its
>current rate of acceleration seems to me just another instance of the
>fallacy of believing that _any_ trend, once established, must continue
>unabated.
You're probably right. It's probably also true that faster-than-light
travel will never happen, that no one will ever go back in time and step
on a Jurassic butterfly, that self-aware computers will guide robot barges
to free penal colony moons, that an orphan trained as a torturer will
become king of an Earth while the sun goes out.
But what if it did?
A standard SF technique is to look at today's trends and say " ... what
if?" Vinge, as far as I know, is the only writer who actually looked at
today's trends and said, "What if they continue?" Everyone else either
didn't even consider the possibility, or sniffed at it and ran away,
yipping, afraid to deal with it.
To say "Well, that's probably not going to happen" is missing the point by
about 180 degrees. If that's your reaction, then you probably shouldn't
be reading SF.
--
Ian York (iay...@panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold
>
> STHLMGUY wrote:
>
>> I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
>> Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
>> what it means?
>
Atheist bumper sticker: "If the Singularity's today, somebody grab my
steering wheel!"
-- M. Ruff
Nancy Lebovitz
Jeffrey C. Dege <jd...@jdege.visi.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 18 Jan 2000 08:31:45 -0800, STHLMGUY <transact...@spray.se.invalid> wrote:
>>I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
>>Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
>>what it means?
>
>society, there are technological and sociological changes to rapid and
>so fundamental that those who lived before it are completely unable to
>visualize what the world of those who live after it will be like.
>
>There have arguably been one or three of these already, with the neolithic
>revolution being the first.
>
>The extension on this idea is that we're rapidly approaching another one.
>
use of caffeine is worth a few extra IQ points and has made a difference.
Nancy Lebovitz
Ernest Tomlinson <hyaci...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>wrote:
>
>>Layperson's explanation: "You know how it seems like technology keeps
>>getting better faster than it used to? Like in the last hundred years
>>we've gone from railroads to nationwide highways to the moon and
>>computers and beyond?"
>
>To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart from CASABLANCA, "I wouldn't bring up
>the moon if I were you, it's poor salesmanship."
>
>I'm still driving an internal-combustion engine car, and reading this
>message on a cathode-ray tube. Some things have changed drastically;
>some haven't.
>
>current rate of acceleration seems to me just another instance of the
>fallacy of believing that _any_ trend, once established, must continue
>unabated.
>
(things will get so different that we-as-we-are-now couldn't understand
them) doesn't require ever-accelerating change.
Jordan S. Bassior
>Most vingean singularities bring up something we interpret as a kind of
>catastrophe, since nothing ressembling the human species is left after
>that (or maybe, for story's sake, a few stragglers that got left behind
>the massive sweep of change).
For those who particpated in the singularity, of course, it's "wonder and
glory".
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and
a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
Malcolm
> I'm still driving an internal-combustion engine car, and reading this
> message on a cathode-ray tube. Some things have changed drastically;
> some haven't.
My theory is that Western civilisation peaked in 1969. Computers are still
being developed rapidly and there's still genetic engineering. I think the
cathode ray tube will improve but your car will steadily get worse. Certainly
a 2000 street-scene is very similar to a 1960's street scene.
>
> The idea that technological advancement must necessarily maintain its
> current rate of acceleration seems to me just another instance of the
> fallacy of believing that _any_ trend, once established, must continue
> unabated.
>
Precisely. There probably will be super-advanced civilisations, but not this
civilisation. Sexual immorality is destroying us. All the bright students are
studying economics and marketing rather than science, because that is what
capitalist culture values.
> tomlinson
> --
> Ernest S. Tomlinson, incola Seattilis - hyaci...@yahoo.com
> http://www.flash.net/~etomlins/
> "You don't make up for your sins in the church. You do it in the
> streets. You do it at home. The rest is bulls**t and you know it"
> (Martin Scorsese)
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Aaron M. Renn
>A standard SF technique is to look at today's trends and say " ... what
>if?" Vinge, as far as I know, is the only writer who actually looked at
>today's trends and said, "What if they continue?" Everyone else either
>didn't even consider the possibility, or sniffed at it and ran away,
>yipping, afraid to deal with it.
>
>To say "Well, that's probably not going to happen" is missing the point by
>about 180 degrees. If that's your reaction, then you probably shouldn't
>be reading SF.
Yes, but in this case I don't think Vinge is engaging in thought experiments.
I think he actually believes it.
--
Aaron M. Renn (ar...@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/
Ian A. York
Aaron M. Renn <ar...@urbanophile.com> wrote:
>
>Yes, but in this case I don't think Vinge is engaging in thought experiments.
>I think he actually believes it.
Yeah, and H**n***n was a f*sc*s*, ***n** was a ***s*, and ***** was a
*****.
I don't think it makes any difference; it's a cool possibility.
Ian
Barry DeCicco
>
> Vincent Archer said:
>
> >Most vingean singularities bring up something we interpret as a kind of
> >catastrophe, since nothing ressembling the human species is left after
> >that (or maybe, for story's sake, a few stragglers that got left behind
> >the massive sweep of change).
>
> For those who particpated in the singularity, of course, it's "wonder and
> glory".
>
Perhaps. In the book 'Vaccuum Flowers', there is a successful attempt
on Earth to create a cybernetically-linked group. It is successful
beyond the experimenters' wildest dreams and nightmares, because the
group doesn't want to be destroyed by having the links cut. They (it)
takes over the Earth, putting everybody into a group mind called the
Comprise. It's only limitation is speed-of-light lag (which gets rough,
considering the volume of communication). Therefore, it is initially
limited to Earth, but it seriously pursuing esoteric physics research
in hopes of finding FTL communication.
Individuals outside the Comprise consider it to be a horrible thing.
But maybe its just humanity beyond the Singularity?
Barry
Ernest Tomlinson
>A standard SF technique is to look at today's trends and say " ... what
>if?" Vinge, as far as I know, is the only writer who actually looked at
>today's trends and said, "What if they continue?" Everyone else either
>didn't even consider the possibility, or sniffed at it and ran away,
>yipping, afraid to deal with it.
I mistrust speculation of such a...a millennial bent.
Prognostications of catastrophic change, that sort of thing.
>To say "Well, that's probably not going to happen" is missing the point by
>about 180 degrees. If that's your reaction, then you probably shouldn't
>be reading SF.
Increasingly, I'm not. If I step back and consider all of the
"speculative fiction" writers (comprising both fantasy and SF) who
really, _truly_ spoke to me in some way...they've all been fantasy
authors, with the sole exception, perhaps, of C. J. Cherryh.
Matt Austern
> On 19 Jan 2000 13:40:49 GMT, Ian A. York <iay...@panix.com> wrote:
> >A standard SF technique is to look at today's trends and say " ... what
> >if?" Vinge, as far as I know, is the only writer who actually looked at
> >today's trends and said, "What if they continue?" Everyone else either
> >didn't even consider the possibility, or sniffed at it and ran away,
> >yipping, afraid to deal with it.
> >
> >To say "Well, that's probably not going to happen" is missing the point by
> >about 180 degrees. If that's your reaction, then you probably shouldn't
> >be reading SF.
>
> Yes, but in this case I don't think Vinge is engaging in thought experiments.
> I think he actually believes it.
Do you care? I think that Marooned in Realtime is an excellent book,
and I'm willing to suspend my disbelief long enough to read it. Maybe
the author believes in the book's central premise; I'm sure he doesn't
believe in all the details. As long as I enjoy the book, I don't
think it matters all that much.
Ian A. York
Ernest Tomlinson <hyaci...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>Increasingly, I'm not. If I step back and consider all of the
>"speculative fiction" writers (comprising both fantasy and SF) who
>really, _truly_ spoke to me in some way...they've all been fantasy
>authors, with the sole exception, perhaps, of C. J. Cherryh.
Interestingly, that's approximately what I said on my first post to
r.a.sf.w. (though I didn't except Cherryh).
William December Starr
Malcolm <malcolm...@my-deja.com> said:
> My theory is that Western civilisation peaked in 1969.
And the Mets won the World Series. Coincidence? I think not...
-- William December Starr <wds...@crl.com>
Nancy Lebovitz
Jordan S. Bassior <jsba...@aol.com> wrote:
>Vincent Archer said:
>
>>Most vingean singularities bring up something we interpret as a kind of
>>catastrophe, since nothing ressembling the human species is left after
>>that (or maybe, for story's sake, a few stragglers that got left behind
>>the massive sweep of change).
>
>For those who particpated in the singularity, of course, it's "wonder and
>glory".
>
the Singularity might be as much fun for them as Western Civ was for
people on battlefields during the World Wars.
Robotech_Master
> Yes, but in this case I don't think Vinge is engaging in thought experiments.
> I think he actually believes it.
Have you actually read his paper on it? All the way through? If I
remember correctly, he notes that a full-scale singularity (as seen in
"The Peace War") is only one of several possibilities, depending on
how technology develops (or does not develop), and posits the effects
of each of these possibilities. He does not say "I believe it will
happen," he says "I believe one of several things could happen."
Interestingly enough, in the universe of "A Deepness in the Sky,"
things took another track, a singularity failed to develop, and
automation eventually reached its limits.
Robert Pearlman
wrote:
>In article <7416D49116B6174B.3A99DFD4...@lp.airnews.net>,
>Ernest Tomlinson <hyaci...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>On 19 Jan 2000 03:07:58 GMT, robo...@eyrie.org (Robotech_Master)
>>wrote:
>>
>>>Layperson's explanation: "You know how it seems like technology keeps
>>>getting better faster than it used to? Like in the last hundred years
>>>we've gone from railroads to nationwide highways to the moon and
>>>computers and beyond?"
>>
>>To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart from CASABLANCA, "I wouldn't bring up
>>the moon if I were you, it's poor salesmanship."
>>
>>I'm still driving an internal-combustion engine car, and reading this
>>message on a cathode-ray tube. Some things have changed drastically;
>>some haven't.
>>
>>The idea that technological advancement must necessarily maintain its
>>current rate of acceleration seems to me just another instance of the
>>fallacy of believing that _any_ trend, once established, must continue
>>unabated.
>>
>There are different flavors of Singularity. The most modest definition
>(things will get so different that we-as-we-are-now couldn't understand
>them) doesn't require ever-accelerating change.
Maybe it does. If the change happens too slowly, and without
acceleration, perhaps we'll understand it as we go along. How slow is
"tool slowly"?
Pearlman
GSV Three Minds in a Can
.net> from the wonderful Ernest Tomlinson <hyaci...@yahoo.com>
asserted
>On 19 Jan 2000 13:40:49 GMT, iay...@panix.com (Ian A. York) wrote:
>
>>A standard SF technique is to look at today's trends and say " ... what
>>if?" Vinge, as far as I know, is the only writer who actually looked at
>>today's trends and said, "What if they continue?" Everyone else either
>>didn't even consider the possibility, or sniffed at it and ran away,
>>yipping, afraid to deal with it.
>
>Prognostications of catastrophic change, that sort of thing.
>
Seems sort of reasonable to me. Look at the technical advances from 1800
to 1900 (sort of pre-steam, to flight, just barely), and then from 1900
to 2000, and figure out what sort of information / technology / magic
will be available in next 100 years, and if that still doesn't blow your
mind, add another 100 years and try again.
Anything that doubles every x years (eg CPU power, data on the Internet,
population, whatever) is eventually going to get seriously large in a
hurry. If/when the thing is 'intelligence' (or compute power, or
whatever) the consequences could be more than interesting.
It's been said before, but today 'joe average' can buy more horsepower,
firepower, or 'equivalent manpower' than the average ruler could hope to
get his hands on just a few hundred years ago .. and more computer
power, and data/information than even =existed= just 30 years ago.
In 100 years time 'joe average' may be able to command more 'research
power' than the universities of the world can muster today, or more
'medical care' than the average hospital can turn out.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Nancy Lebovitz
quite comprehensible in retrospect.
I think my post was unclear--I meant that we-as-we-are-now couldn't
understand the world on the other side of the Singularity, not that
we'd necessarily be unable to understand the changes as they happened.
Niall McAuley
>Anything that doubles every x years (eg CPU power, data on the Internet,
>population, whatever) is eventually going to get seriously large in a
>hurry.
The point the skeptics are making is that anything which doubles
every x years is going to hit a limit of some kind in a hurry, too.
--
Niall [real address ends in se, not es]
Martin Ripa
Malcolm <malcolm...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm still driving an internal-combustion engine car, and reading this
>> message on a cathode-ray tube. Some things have changed drastically;
>> some haven't.
>
>My theory is that Western civilisation peaked in 1969. Computers are still
>being developed rapidly and there's still genetic engineering. I think the
>cathode ray tube will improve but your car will steadily get worse. Certainly
>a 2000 street-scene is very similar to a 1960's street scene.
Here, 1960 street was very different from 2000 street.
For one, instead of "Lenin lives forever", "Long live the
Communist Party" there are "Pepsi" and "McDonalds".
>
>>
>> The idea that technological advancement must necessarily maintain its
>> current rate of acceleration seems to me just another instance of the
>> fallacy of believing that _any_ trend, once established, must continue
>> unabated.
>>
>
>Precisely. There probably will be super-advanced civilisations, but not this
>civilisation.
Which one will displace yours, in your opinion?
> Sexual immorality is destroying us.
Speak for yourself. ;-)
> All the bright students are
>studying economics and marketing rather than science, because that is what
>capitalist culture values.
Could be worse. On the other side, the brightest students
were studying the intelligence and counter-intelligence
tactics at the Dzerzhinski academy, because it was what the
socialist culture valued.
Besr wishes
Martin
--
"I feel your pain."
Dr. Alice Hong
Martin Ripa
arc...@hsc.fr (Vincent Archer) wrote:
>STHLMGUY (transact...@spray.se.invalid) wrote:
>> I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
>> Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
>> what it means?
>
>A term loosely associated with Vernor Vinge's own extrapolation of the
>future.
>
>Roughly, a Vingean Singularity is the point in history at which human
>species starts finding ways of producing something that is better, or more
>intelligent than it is, either by design, by accident, by intelligence
>enhancement, AI, whatever. All rules of society break down at that
>point, and you usually cannot understand what goes on after that, no
>more than, say, a dog can make sense of our society, the motivations
>of a human, or its technology.
Technology - maybe. But what human motivations are
incomprehensible for dog?
Best wishes
Ernest Tomlinson
together bits from two messages:
On 19 Jan 2000 13:40:49 GMT, iay...@panix.com (Ian A. York) wrote:
>To say "Well, that's probably not going to happen" is missing the point by
>about 180 degrees. If that's your reaction, then you probably shouldn't
>be reading SF.
From there, the exchange went:
On 19 Jan 2000 20:06:28 GMT, iay...@panix.com (Ian A. York) wrote:
>In article <2F516CEA39CFD9CC.59C2275D...@lp.airnews.net>,
>Ernest Tomlinson <hyaci...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>Increasingly, I'm not. If I step back and consider all of the
>>"speculative fiction" writers (comprising both fantasy and SF) who
>>really, _truly_ spoke to me in some way...they've all been fantasy
>>authors, with the sole exception, perhaps, of C. J. Cherryh.
>
>Interestingly, that's approximately what I said on my first post to
>r.a.sf.w. (though I didn't except Cherryh).
That _is_ interesting. I take it that you don't find this any longer
true?
I used to like futuristic speculation a lot more, and the favorite
science fiction writer of my teenage years was Clarke; his writing is
about nothing else but futuristic speculation--what's it going to be
like when we establish space stations and lunar colonies, &c. A
fascination with AI and the possibility of making thinking computers
was what induced me to get into computer programming. I watched
next-generation Star Trek regularly for a time, because I loved all
the whizbang technology (plausible or not) which adorned the show.
I've changed too much since then, I suppose. I hesitate to employ a
hackneyed, pop-psychological phrase, but today, personal growth is,
for me, absolutely paramount--which was certainly _not_ true of me
when I was seventeen. Hence I've grown impatient with fiction which
doesn't, in some way, communicate some _immediate_ personal insight or
perspective. And for whatever reason, I've been finding this more
in fantasy than in science fiction literature.
Consider the original subject of this thread, Vinge. I've read one
book of his, A FIRE UPON THE DEEP. I responded most strongly to the
"Tines" subplot, even though (to quote Sean O'Hara) "...the story
(Space travelers from an advanced culture stranded in/needing the help
of a primitive society) has been done to death." An accurate remark,
but a narrow one. I felt that the Tines characters were touched with,
for lack of a better word, a humanity, which made their struggles
important to me; they grappled with matters of loyalty, trust, and
friendship. I was so much less interested in the technological and
futuristic trappings of Vinge's novel--the Known Net, the theory of
the Zones and Transcendence, &c.--that I was surprised to see how
completely these matters (especially the ideas behind the Zones and
"Singularity") dominated all discussion of A FIRE UPON THE DEEP on
r.a.sf.written. I saw them as plot devices needed to keep the story
rolling; other readers, manifestly, saw more.
I guess it's true; science fiction (with emphasis on the science) just
doesn't do it for me anymore. I can work up an occasional interest in
predictions and speculations about future technology, but it's not
what I'm after when I read, any more than I read fantasy because I
like magic and swordfights. I found CYTEEN powerful because it's
about profound personal conflicts, not because it's about genetic
engineering.
Ross Presser
>Technology - maybe. But what human motivations are
>incomprehensible for dog?
Profit. Professionalism. Aversion to nudity.
--
Ross Presser
ross_p...@imtek.com
"And if you're the kind of person who parties with a bathtub full of
pasta, I suspect you don't care much about cholesterol anyway."
Christopher K Davis
> Now, if there has been no singularity-type shift in the last 5000 years
> of human development, why should we suppose that computer developments
> will cause one? I'm sure that it will be something of a barrier, but
> why should there be an insurmountable one that we annot comprehend?
Intelligence amplification. See Heinlein's "Gulf" for the non-computing
version of this, or Vinge's "Bookworm, Run!" if you can find a copy
(it's in the _True Names and Other Dangers_ collection, and you CANNOT
have my copy).
Basically, man's "thinking tools" have grown in power from the use of
rocks to keep track of numbers on to present-day computing, with some
minor setbacks such as Microsoft Windows. However, the actual
brainpower of a human hasn't grown, and the human<->world bandwidth
hasn't grown either, in those 5000 years.
Now, increase either the human's brainpower, or its bandwidth to an
external system (say, a high-speed neural interconnect to a wearable
computer). You've now increased that person's capabilities by some
factor. Put their effort into improving the connection or the connected
hardware. Repeat, causing exponential growth in capability.
When the graph goes "voom!" off the top of your chart, Singularity.
--
Christopher Davis * <ckd...@ckdhr.com> * <URL:http://www.ckdhr.com/ckd/>
Put location information in your DNS! <URL:http://www.ckdhr.com/dns-loc/>
Dave O'Neill
Joe Slater <joeDEL...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au> wrote in message
news:k4ve8sk1l0bs6pubf...@4ax.com...
> GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.freeuk.com> wrote:
> >Seems sort of reasonable to me. Look at the technical advances from 1800
> >to 1900 (sort of pre-steam, to flight, just barely), and then from 1900
> >to 2000, and figure out what sort of information / technology / magic
> >will be available in next 100 years, and if that still doesn't blow your
> >mind, add another 100 years and try again.
>
> real difficulty operating in Hammurabi's era. In fact, I think
> Hammurabi would adjust to the twentieth century reasonably well. The
> Israelis had to incorporate a lot of Ethiopian villagers into a modern
> technological society and they accomplished that in a period of months
> rather than years.
Take it a step further back and ask whether you could incorporate a nomadic
hunter gatherer with limited language skills into modern society. Perhaps
the development of agriculture was a singularity event and we haven't
matched it yet.
>
> Now, if there has been no singularity-type shift in the last 5000
> years of human development, why should we suppose that computer
> developments will cause one? I'm sure that it will be something of a
> barrier, but why should there be an insurmountable one that we annot
> comprehend?
I mentioned the possible reasons elsewhere but baiscally:
1) Machine augmented intelligence
2) AI's cleverer than us
3) Uploading
4) Being able to spend a portion of your life, or all of it, online rather
than in the real world.
Add Drexlian nano-technology and can you image the kind of society that
emerges?
If not, then you've got your comprehension problem.
Dave
3rd man on cart
Dave O'Neill
Niall McAuley <Niall....@eei.ericsson.es> wrote in message
news:8673ec$i9h$1...@newstoo.ericsson.se...
This is an issue, however, I recommend Damien Broderick's The Spike which
addresses this.
Basically Vinge is concerned about the point when computing power equals or
surpasses human intellect. The computer industry is doubling, it is still
doubling and currently there is no sign of this trend not being able to
continue to the point where the curve goes asymptopic - there are a couple
of niggles around that point (circa 2016 +/-2yrs) - but generally there is
no reason why until then computers can't double over that sort of period.
When computers reach human intellect we have an issue. Either we find AI is
impossible ala Deepness or Richard Penrose, or it is possible. If it is the
later then we have an issue.
If a method of direct cranial interface is developed which seems likely,
there is another issue. If uploading proves possible that is also an issue.
All of these are not way out technologies, but they will have a profound
effect on human society. The final joker which Broderick mentions is
Drexlian nano-technology. Again, if that proves possible then we have a
type of society which might not necessarily be post-singularity but it is
very had to predict.
Add them all together and try to image whether the kinds of societies which
have survived since we learnt to talk and build cities can survive. If they
can, fine no singularity. If they can't then BANG - you got it. I think
interesting times may be ahead whether we like it or not.
Dave
>
>
Dave O'Neill
Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> wrote in message
news:8672dm$3...@netaxs.com...
> >Maybe it does. If the change happens too slowly, and without
> >acceleration, perhaps we'll understand it as we go along. How slow is
> >"tool slowly"?
> >
> Vinge has mentioned the possibility that the Singularity might look
> quite comprehensible in retrospect.
>
> I think my post was unclear--I meant that we-as-we-are-now couldn't
> understand the world on the other side of the Singularity, not that
> we'd necessarily be unable to understand the changes as they happened
I think you get a version of this watching TV from the 1970's - well British
TV anyway. I saw an episode of The Sweeny (which was a cutting edge drama
about the Flying Squad (police) from the middle of the decade) - you realise
just how much has changed in just 25 years. The cars, household goods,
clothes are all very different.
Looking around my flat, there's about a dozen items which simply were not in
my parents house in 1975 either because they did not exist or we for serious
gov/corporate use only. I've the PC, fax, microwave, video, CD player,
remote colour TV (well we didn't get one until 1980), mobile phone and so
on. There was very limited food choice in the shops, you certainly couldn't
get out of season fruit or veg easily. My sister had her appendix out and
was in hospital for a week, I had mine out 15 years ago and was in for 3
days, I understand they release you the next day now... Changes go
un-noticed whilst they are happening until you realise little things you now
take for granted have creapt up on you.
You know, this sort of thing reminds me just how awful the 1970's really
were. :-)
Dave O'Neill
> >
> Maybe not. If the post-Singularity entities aren't sensible, then
> the Singularity might be as much fun for them as Western Civ was for
> people on battlefields during the World Wars.
This is something which has worried me. Assuming it happened around
2016-2020 (based on computer power curves and nano-technology research) that
is about the time I ought to be lounging around on my fat pension and share
options, travelling a bit, reading and trying to kill my liver at
conventions.
If society is re-structured that is the sort of thing which could really
bugger up a man's retirement.
Dave O'Neill
Malcolm <malcolm...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8652bb$igl$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
>
> > I'm still driving an internal-combustion engine car, and reading this
> > message on a cathode-ray tube. Some things have changed drastically;
> > some haven't.
>
> My theory is that Western civilisation peaked in 1969. Computers are still
> being developed rapidly and there's still genetic engineering. I think the
> cathode ray tube will improve but your car will steadily get worse.
Certainly
> a 2000 street-scene is very similar to a 1960's street scene.
Hmmm... not sure I can agree there. Cars are still getting much much
better. Whether we are still allowed to own them in 30 years time might be
more of an issue. I got a new car last week to replace the last one
(company car) and its spec seriously beats the previous one just 2 years
old. CD players, aircon, electric whistles and bells, no to mention drive
computer etc... all standard in most makes now.
Computers are a part of it. But half the domestic goods in the shops now
were not around in '69, certainly not for a normal person. CD's, DVD's,
mobile telephones, game consules, microwave ovens, and so on.
Surgery in 2000 makes what they did in '69 look embarrassingly dangerous -
ok I'll grant that the chance of post operative infection is higher, but
that is tempered by being able to actually operate. Medically we've a lot
more equipment and treatments available.
The one thing, oddly, I do not think will improve much is the CRT - that is
old technology which is going to go the way of the dodo to be replaced by
smart paper and a host of other LCD etc based goodies. I want my wall
screen and I want it NOW!
>
> >
> > The idea that technological advancement must necessarily maintain its
> > current rate of acceleration seems to me just another instance of the
> > fallacy of believing that _any_ trend, once established, must continue
> > unabated.
> >
>
> Precisely. There probably will be super-advanced civilisations, but not
this
> civilisation. Sexual immorality is destroying us.
Where? Tell me, I wanna go!
All the bright students are
> studying economics and marketing rather than science, because that is what
> capitalist culture values.
>
> > tomlinson
> > --
> > Ernest S. Tomlinson, incola Seattilis - hyaci...@yahoo.com
> > http://www.flash.net/~etomlins/
> > "You don't make up for your sins in the church. You do it in the
> > streets. You do it at home. The rest is bulls**t and you know it"
> > (Martin Scorsese)
> >
>
>
Ian Sutherland
> Niall McAuley <Niall....@eei.ericsson.es> wrote in message
> news:8673ec$i9h$1...@newstoo.ericsson.se...
> > GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote in message
> <5Ecj6AAa...@quik.freeuk.net>...
> > >Anything that doubles every x years (eg CPU power, data on the Internet,
> > >population, whatever) is eventually going to get seriously large in a
> > >hurry.
> >
> > The point the skeptics are making is that anything which doubles
> > every x years is going to hit a limit of some kind in a hurry, too.
> > --
>
> doubling and currently there is no sign of this trend not being able to
> continue to the point where the curve goes asymptopic - there are a couple
> of niggles around that point (circa 2016 +/-2yrs) - but generally there is
> no reason why until then computers can't double over that sort of period.
What, exactly, are you talking about "doubling" when you talk about
"[t]he computer industry" and "computers" "doubling"?
--
Ian Sutherland email: ia...@cs.depaul.edu
DePaul University
Sans Peur
William December Starr
rpre...@NOSPAMimtek.com.invalid (Ross Presser) said:
>> Technology - maybe. But what human motivations are
>> incomprehensible for dog? [Martin Ripa]
>
> Profit. Professionalism. Aversion to nudity.
Literacy.
Mark Atwood
> GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote in message <5Ecj6AAa...@quik.freeuk.net>...
> >Anything that doubles every x years (eg CPU power, data on the Internet,
> >population, whatever) is eventually going to get seriously large in a
> >hurry.
>
> The point the skeptics are making is that anything which doubles
> every x years is going to hit a limit of some kind in a hurry, too.
Yes, but for computrons, "x" still has decades to go and orders of
magnitude to cover, before such ideas as rod logic and molecular gates
are topped out.
--
Mark Atwood | It is the hardest thing for intellectuals to understand, that
m...@pobox.com | just because they haven't thought of something, somebody else
| might. <http://www.friesian.com/rifkin.htm>
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Mark Atwood
>
> Individuals outside the Comprise consider it to be a horrible thing.
>
> But maybe its just humanity beyond the Singularity?
Too much SF is "horrified" by anything "beyond human", starting with
"Frankenstein" and continuing thru it all, and typified by drek like
"Star Trek".
The Borg thought they were right. In their view, they were. In mine,
they might indeed be.
Mark Atwood
> I think he actually believes it.
He's not the only one.
Either the technology curve is going to continue to be exponential
(the curve is driven by more better educated brains talking to each
other more easily, and all 3 variables are in a positive feedback
loop), *or* it's going to stop, and either one will be a great shock
to "western technological society".
Mark Atwood
>
> Interestingly enough, in the universe of "A Deepness in the Sky,"
> things took another track, a singularity failed to develop, and
> automation eventually reached its limits.
That's because he pulled a rabbit out of his hat, with the "zones".
Out in the Trancend, singularities happen. Post singularity "societies"
are called Powers.
Mark Atwood
>
> minor setbacks such as Microsoft Windows. However, the actual
> brainpower of a human hasn't grown, and the human<->world bandwidth
> hasn't grown either, in those 5000 years.
Actaully, that's not true, in practice. In theory, best case humans
havnt got any smarter, but we getting more and more humans closer
to that "best case".
Education "unlocks" wasted brainpower.
Decent childhood nutrition makes a noticable impact. My dad, when
he's working in Bolivia, can see it in the people who were on the
edge of starvation as children, vs the ones who were not.
As for "human<->world bandwidth", it has been asserted by more than
one technology historian that one of the things that lead Europe out
of the medival ages was the introduction of *eyeglasses*, which
allowed skilled craftsmen to basically double their working life.
I'll bet most of the readers of this group would have a much "narrower"
"bandwidth" without good optics, no?
Mark Atwood
> alt.disting...@iol.cz (Martin Ripa).wrote.posted.offered:
>
> >Technology - maybe. But what human motivations are
> >incomprehensible for dog?
>
> Profit. Professionalism. Aversion to nudity.
First and last maybe, but not the middle.
Dogs understand the pride and reward of a job well done.
Too many humans dont.
Mark Atwood
> on. There was very limited food choice in the shops, you certainly couldn't
> get out of season fruit or veg easily. My sister had her appendix out and
> was in hospital for a week, I had mine out 15 years ago and was in for 3
> days,
It is now often outpatient surgery.
If you went an even more extreme example, go find someone who had gall
stones or kidney stones 40 years ago...
Richard Horton
On 19 Jan 2000 15:49:48 GMT, na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
wrote:
>Not quite a full-fledged Singularity, but it's possible that the
>use of caffeine is worth a few extra IQ points and has made a difference.
OTOH, there's the Egan quote, I think from Distress, which I will no
doubt misparaphrase as follows:
"Now we know that caffeine both decreases one's judgment and increases
confidence in one's judgment. That explains a lot about the 20th C."
Anyone else think Egan at times shows a rather prudish streak? (Just
that the objects of his prudery are different.)
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.sfsite.com/tangent)
Richard Horton
On 19 Jan 2000 12:54:10 -0800, wds...@crl.com (William December
Starr) wrote:
>In article <8652bb$igl$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>Malcolm <malcolm...@my-deja.com> said:
>
>> My theory is that Western civilisation peaked in 1969.
>
>And the Mets won the World Series. Coincidence? I think not...
In fact, we can pinpoint the exact date. It was the day I saw my
first baseball game live, at Wrigley Field. Ken Holtzman no hit the
Braves. (Legend and my memory conspire to agree that the last out was
a fly ball by Henry Aaron which was actually over the fence but which
the wind blew back in to be caught on the warning track.)
It was not long after that August day that the Cubs began the losing
trend which allowed the Mets to overtake them.
Richard Horton
On 19 Jan 2000 15:46:49 GMT, ar...@urbanophile.com (Aaron M. Renn)
wrote:
>On 19 Jan 2000 13:40:49 GMT, Ian A. York <iay...@panix.com> wrote:
>>A standard SF technique is to look at today's trends and say " ... what
>>if?" Vinge, as far as I know, is the only writer who actually looked at
>>today's trends and said, "What if they continue?" Everyone else either
>>didn't even consider the possibility, or sniffed at it and ran away,
>>yipping, afraid to deal with it.
>>
>>To say "Well, that's probably not going to happen" is missing the point by
>>about 180 degrees. If that's your reaction, then you probably shouldn't
>>be reading SF.
>
>Yes, but in this case I don't think Vinge is engaging in thought experiments.
>I think he actually believes it.
But I don't see how this should affect our response as readers.
Scott Fluhrer
Dave O'Neill <david.o'nei...@vXrgXn.net> wrote in message
news:86843i$sap$1...@nclient11-gui.server.virgin.net...
> > Now, if there has been no singularity-type shift in the last 5000
> > years of human development, why should we suppose that computer
> > developments will cause one? I'm sure that it will be something of a
> > barrier, but why should there be an insurmountable one that we annot
> > comprehend?
>
> I mentioned the possible reasons elsewhere but baiscally:
>
> 1) Machine augmented intelligence
> 2) AI's cleverer than us
> 3) Uploading
> 4) Being able to spend a portion of your life, or all of it, online rather
> than in the real world.
>
> Add Drexlian nano-technology and can you image the kind of society that
> emerges?
>
> If not, then you've got your comprehension problem.
Actually, if you *can*, then its not really a singularity :-)
--
poncho
Joe Slater
>Seems sort of reasonable to me. Look at the technical advances from 1800
>to 1900 (sort of pre-steam, to flight, just barely), and then from 1900
>to 2000, and figure out what sort of information / technology / magic
>will be available in next 100 years, and if that still doesn't blow your
>mind, add another 100 years and try again.
On the other hand, apart from the language barrier I think I'd have no
real difficulty operating in Hammurabi's era. In fact, I think
Hammurabi would adjust to the twentieth century reasonably well. The
Israelis had to incorporate a lot of Ethiopian villagers into a modern
technological society and they accomplished that in a period of months
rather than years.
Now, if there has been no singularity-type shift in the last 5000
years of human development, why should we suppose that computer
developments will cause one? I'm sure that it will be something of a
barrier, but why should there be an insurmountable one that we annot
comprehend?
jds
Nancy Lebovitz
If you're not lucky, mere humans will dying in wars between autonomous
operating systems.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com
October '99 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Coyu
>Anyone else think Egan at times shows a rather prudish streak? (Just
>that the objects of his prudery are different.)
Yes. I gather he was deeply involved in some sect at one point in his
life, and now has turned completely away in what he professes. But
the _style_ is the same IMO.
Erik Trulsson
> .net> from the wonderful Ernest Tomlinson <hyaci...@yahoo.com>
> asserted
>>On 19 Jan 2000 13:40:49 GMT, iay...@panix.com (Ian A. York) wrote:
>>
>>>A standard SF technique is to look at today's trends and say " ... what
>>>if?" Vinge, as far as I know, is the only writer who actually looked at
>>>today's trends and said, "What if they continue?" Everyone else either
>>>didn't even consider the possibility, or sniffed at it and ran away,
>>>yipping, afraid to deal with it.
>>
>>Prognostications of catastrophic change, that sort of thing.
>>
> <Snip>
> Seems sort of reasonable to me. Look at the technical advances from 1800
> to 1900 (sort of pre-steam, to flight, just barely), and then from 1900
> to 2000, and figure out what sort of information / technology / magic
> will be available in next 100 years, and if that still doesn't blow your
> mind, add another 100 years and try again.
> Anything that doubles every x years (eg CPU power, data on the Internet,
> population, whatever) is eventually going to get seriously large in a
> hurry. If/when the thing is 'intelligence' (or compute power, or
> whatever) the consequences could be more than interesting.
> It's been said before, but today 'joe average' can buy more horsepower,
> firepower, or 'equivalent manpower' than the average ruler could hope to
> get his hands on just a few hundred years ago .. and more computer
> power, and data/information than even =existed= just 30 years ago.
> In 100 years time 'joe average' may be able to command more 'research
> power' than the universities of the world can muster today, or more
> 'medical care' than the average hospital can turn out.
Yes, but will his life actually be all that much different? I don't think
that the lives of people 100 years ago were much different from today even
if our technology is much more advanced.
Similarly I don't think that 100 or 200 years from now the way people live
will be all that different from now, even if technology continues to advance
at its current rate.
--
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr...@student.csd.uu.se
Christopher K Davis
> Christopher K Davis <ckd-...@ckdhr.com> writes:
>> However, the actual brainpower of a human hasn't grown, and the
>> human<->world bandwidth hasn't grown either, in those 5000 years.
> Actaully, that's not true, in practice. In theory, best case humans
> havnt got any smarter, but we getting more and more humans closer to
> that "best case". [through education, nutrition, extended working
> lifetimes due to eyeglasses, and presumably similar tools]
Granted, and that's probably one of the accelerating factors in the
curve. However, I'd argue that it's "merely" an optimization of
existing resources, not the large change that makes a qualitative
difference the way a doubling of wetware I/O speeds would.
> I'll bet most of the readers of this group would have a much "narrower"
> "bandwidth" without good optics, no?
Oh, probably true (though my eyes are still good, both of my parents
need corrective lenses, so I'm almost certainly doomed to 'em myself).
I will admit to having oversimplified the argument somewhat to keep
the size of the original post down. Even the tools we have today are
effectively mind-boosters of various types (ObSF: Simon Illyan's
memory chip, compared to my Palm V).
Aaron M. Renn
>Either the technology curve is going to continue to be exponential
>(the curve is driven by more better educated brains talking to each
>other more easily, and all 3 variables are in a positive feedback
>loop), *or* it's going to stop, and either one will be a great shock
>to "western technological society".
More likely just slow down. There seem to be few people that believe
the law of diminishing marginal returns applies to technological development.
I believe it does. We shall see. It could be that the last 150 through the
next say, 25-50 years were simply humanity scoring all the "easy wins",
and future gains will be much harder.
Also note that history has examples of "high tech" societies that completely
collapsed to barbarism. The best example being the Roman Empire, many
of whose engineering feats weren't replicated until the 19th century.
--
Aaron M. Renn (ar...@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/
Aaron M. Renn
>> >Anything that doubles every x years (eg CPU power, data on the Internet,
>> >population, whatever) is eventually going to get seriously large in a
>> >hurry.
>>
>> every x years is going to hit a limit of some kind in a hurry, too.
>
>Yes, but for computrons, "x" still has decades to go and orders of
>magnitude to cover, before such ideas as rod logic and molecular gates
>are topped out.
You might have thought that about grains of wheat on a chess board too.
Del Cotter
William December Starr <wds...@crl.com> wrote:
>rpre...@NOSPAMimtek.com.invalid (Ross Presser) said:
>
>>> Technology - maybe. But what human motivations are
>>> incomprehensible for dog? [Martin Ripa]
>>
>> Profit. Professionalism. Aversion to nudity.
>
>Literacy.
Appreciation of elegance.
--
Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk
"Choose the Dark Side... now why would I do a thing like that?"
--Obi-Wan Renton
Del Cotter
>Basically Vinge is concerned about the point when computing power equals or
>surpasses human intellect. The computer industry is doubling, it is still
>doubling and currently there is no sign of this trend not being able to
>continue to the point where the curve goes asymptopic - there are a couple
>of niggles around that point (circa 2016 +/-2yrs) - but generally there is
>no reason why until then computers can't double over that sort of period.
I've seen this claim a couple of times now. Who is it that keeps saying
Moore's Law has an asymptote (note spelling), and why do they pick
2015-2020?
Exponential curves have no asymptote, vertical or otherwise. Are they
saying they've spotted a relationship which is different from Moore's
Law, and if so, what is it?
Mark Atwood
> >magnitude to cover, before such ideas as rod logic and molecular gates
> >are topped out.
>
> You might have thought that about grains of wheat on a chess board too.
No I wouldn't have that that, because I know the rough order of
magnitude of the size of chess boards, the size of grains of wheat,
and world wide grain production, and so can do the "back of the
envelope" math that shows the problem with the old "chessboard"
story.
(I am probably a little weird this way, but I understood base2
counting before I was 10, and when the chessboard story was first told
to me, I knew immediately that there was no way in hell the king was
going to be able to come up with (2^65)-1 grains of wheat.)
I also know the rough order of magnitude of the size and speed of
possible molecule sized computing elements, and can see the resources
spent on several *different* lines of R&D that are driving towards
them, and don't see anything standing in the way. It's just a matter
of which technique, and which corporation/nation gets to it first...
Mark Atwood
>
> >Basically Vinge is concerned about the point when computing power equals or
> >surpasses human intellect. The computer industry is doubling, it is still
> >doubling and currently there is no sign of this trend not being able to
> >continue to the point where the curve goes asymptopic - there are a couple
> >of niggles around that point (circa 2016 +/-2yrs) - but generally there is
> >no reason why until then computers can't double over that sort of period.
>
> I've seen this claim a couple of times now. Who is it that keeps saying
> Moore's Law has an asymptote (note spelling), and why do they pick
> 2015-2020?
>
> Exponential curves have no asymptote, vertical or otherwise. Are they
> saying they've spotted a relationship which is different from Moore's
> Law, and if so, what is it?
It's not so much a real mathematical asymptote, as a "key threshold".
If Moore's Law continues, at about 2015-2020 or so, it will be
feasable to build a computer with the "equivalent processing power" of
a human brain...
Dave O'Neill
Erik Trulsson <ertr...@student.csd.uu.se> wrote in message
news:869sk4$rrn$1...@Zeke.Update.UU.SE...
> Yes, but will his life actually be all that much different? I don't think
> that the lives of people 100 years ago were much different from today even
> if our technology is much more advanced.
> Similarly I don't think that 100 or 200 years from now the way people live
> will be all that different from now, even if technology continues to
advance
> at its current rate.
Well here lies the rub. If you think really hard about it it is going to
have to be very different.
Points to consider:
1) No conventional economics of the kind we've had for 6000 years
2) Instant recall
3) You might not need to even have a physical body
4) Humans are no longer top of the intellectual food chain
Any of these and all are possible. Take anyone and it affects life in ways
hugely different to the changes of the last 100 years.
Dave
Greg Dougherty
>
> Gareth Wilson <gr...@student.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:
>
> > STHLMGUY wrote:
> >
> > > I've seen this term crop up now and then in this forum.
> > > Would somebody please be so kind as to inform me about
> > > what it means?
> >
> > It's the Rapture for atheists.
>
> It's better (and more likely) than the Fundie Christian's Rapture.
How would you know?
Dave O'Neill
Ian Sutherland <isut...@condor.depaul.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.GS4.4.10.100012...@condor.depaul.edu...
ble over that sort of period.
>
> "[t]he computer industry" and "computers" "doubling"?
Just the extension of Moore's law. Sorry, I ought to have been clearer.
Dave
Dave O'Neill
Aaron M. Renn <ar...@urbanophile.com> wrote in message
news:slrn88h8q6...@shell-3.enteract.com...
> On 20 Jan 2000 18:19:20 -0800, Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >> >Anything that doubles every x years (eg CPU power, data on the
Internet,
> >> >population, whatever) is eventually going to get seriously large in a
> >> >hurry.
> >>
> >> The point the skeptics are making is that anything which doubles
> >> every x years is going to hit a limit of some kind in a hurry, too.
> >
> >magnitude to cover, before such ideas as rod logic and molecular gates
> >are topped out.
>
> You might have thought that about grains of wheat on a chess board too.
The difference is we know roughly where we will start hitting the walls on
computer technology and we are far enough away from those limits for us to
reach the point which had Venor concerned before it becomes an issue.
Dave
3rd man on cart
Dave O'Neill
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:m3k8l3x...@flash.localdomain...
> Del Cotter <d...@branta.demon.co.uk> writes:
> >
> > >Basically Vinge is concerned about the point when computing power
equals or
> > >surpasses human intellect. The computer industry is doubling, it is
still
> > >doubling and currently there is no sign of this trend not being able to
> > >continue to the point where the curve goes asymptopic - there are a
couple
> > >of niggles around that point (circa 2016 +/-2yrs) - but generally there
is
period.
> >
> > I've seen this claim a couple of times now. Who is it that keeps saying
> > Moore's Law has an asymptote (note spelling), and why do they pick
> > 2015-2020?
> >
> > Exponential curves have no asymptote, vertical or otherwise. Are they
> > saying they've spotted a relationship which is different from Moore's
> > Law, and if so, what is it?
>
> It's not so much a real mathematical asymptote, as a "key threshold".
> If Moore's Law continues, at about 2015-2020 or so, it will be
> feasable to build a computer with the "equivalent processing power" of
> a human brain
That is the point Broderick makes in The Spike. Beyond that its hard to see
what the next stage is for "mere" humans.
Dave O'Neill
> "Dave O'Neill" <david.o'nei...@vXrgXn.net> writes:
> > on. There was very limited food choice in the shops, you certainly
couldn't
> > get out of season fruit or veg easily. My sister had her appendix out
and
> > was in hospital for a week, I had mine out 15 years ago and was in for 3
> > days,
>
> It is now often outpatient surgery.
>
> If you went an even more extreme example, go find someone who had gall
> stones or kidney stones 40 years ago...
>
I remember my grandfather being hospital with his gall bladder for the best
part of 2 months that was in the early/mid seventies.
My father had his Oesophogus removed and was out in 10 days.
Times have moved on. Still, I think I'll try and avoid the radical surgery
all the same :-)
Dave
Dave O'Neill
Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix2.netaxs.com> wrote in message
news:868m1u$l...@netaxs.com...
> If you're not lucky, mere humans will dying in wars between autonomous
> operating systems.
Ah yes, always look on the bright side of life.
The third alternative, seeing as we need a 3rd way for everything in the
Noughties, would be by then I'll be living a paradisical online life.
We shall no doubt see... eventually.
Dave
Greg Dougherty
>
> > In 100 years time 'joe average' may be able to command more 'research
> > power' than the universities of the world can muster today, or more
> > 'medical care' than the average hospital can turn out.
>
> that the lives of people 100 years ago were much different from today even
> if our technology is much more advanced.
Then I suggest you read some history. My mother's mother was a
nurse. At one time, grandma worked in a polio ward. My mom has
never stopped feeling awe at watching the polio wards disappear in
the space of about 1 year.
Just consider the changes in infant mortality that have occurred in
the last 100 years. Now think about artificial wombs, and what
effect they'll have on society.
> Similarly I don't think that 100 or 200 years from now the way people live
> will be all that different from now, even if technology continues to advance
> at its current rate.
For about $20,000 (when last I heard, it's probably less now) you
can buy a machine that can manipulate individual atoms. 20 years
from now (or sooner) I expect that hard drives will be replaced by
devices that do that, which means such devices will be getting
cheaper, and faster. How long until you can make your own molecules
at home, one atom at a time? How long after that until you can do
that fast enough to actually be able to make useful quantities of items?
How long until we sequence DNA and proteins by putting a single
strand into a device that reads the atoms on the chain (using
something similar to the items above)? Get your complete DNA
sequence, in the privacy of your own home. Then talk to the gene
engineers about correcting your particular problems.
Sorry, but your imagination and your knowledge of history are both
sadly lacking.
David Given
Ian Sutherland <isut...@condor.depaul.edu> writes:
[...]
>> The computer industry is doubling, it is still
>> doubling and currently there is no sign of this trend not being able to
>> continue to the point where the curve goes asymptopic - there are a couple
>> of niggles around that point (circa 2016 +/-2yrs) - but generally there is
>> no reason why until then computers can't double over that sort of period.
>
> "[t]he computer industry" and "computers" "doubling"?
Everything. Storage density, processing speed, bandwidths, etc. And before
you start talking about silicon limits --- optical and quantum switches
have already been demonstrated and the big companies are pouring grotesque
amounts of money in; and then there's biological and polymer computing
systems, which have also in development; nanotechnology; and even if
*none* of these pan out, there are plans afoot to develop silicon wafers
that are, er, cubes. Today's technology extended into three dimensions.
That hoary old car analogy doesn't wash because there are fundamental
limits to what it is desirable for cars to do. Not so with computers.
Me? I can't wait 'til 2016. I think the world's going to get *very*
interesting.
--
+- David Given ---------------McQ-+
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | Truth is stranger than fiction, because
| Play: dgi...@iname.com | fiction has to make sense.
+- http://wired.st-and.ac.uk/~dg -+
Coyu
>>>> Technology - maybe. But what human motivations are
>>>> incomprehensible for dog? [Martin Ripa]
>>>
>>> Profit. Professionalism. Aversion to nudity.
>>
>>Literacy.
>
>Appreciation of elegance.
In a very limited way, I think some dogs have that already. "Woo-hoo!
Here's a faster way!"
And some humans seem lacking.
Jordan S. Bassior
>I don't think
>that the lives of people 100 years ago were much different from today even
>if our technology is much more advanced.
The lives of upper or middle-class men weren't all that different. The lives of
lower-class men were slow, grinding agony by modern standards. All but
upper-class women in general were tied to housework to a degree today
unimaginable in an age of convenient home appliances.
>Similarly I don't think that 100 or 200 years from now the way people live
>will be all that different from now, even if technology continues to advance
>at its current rate.
You don't think being immortal and being able to access any fact required with
a thought; or going to work either at home or in a conveniently-near satellite
office, would make a difference in your life?
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and
a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
Jordan S. Bassior
>4) Humans are no longer top of the intellectual food chain
>
They are if you count humans who Transcend onto the same media the AI's are
using as "human". Still more if you count the AI's as "human" (and why not?)
Ernest Tomlinson
wrote:
>You don't think being immortal and being able to access any fact required with
>a thought; or going to work either at home or in a conveniently-near satellite
>office, would make a difference in your life?
Working at home is, already, supposedly the ideal. (The assumption
made and not questioned is that the "work" is to be some kind of
white-collar job which is _capable_ of being moved, like a programming
job, and not a blue-collar job tied to a particular industrial or
commercial installation.) We've heard a lot of gaseous proclamations
about "telecommuting". And, guess what? It's not happening, nearly
to the degree you'd expect from the hype. People still need, and I
think _want_, the discipline and community of convening in one
building to work.
As for the "being immortal and being able to access any fact"
argument, it's not even an argument. You're _assuming_ this will
happen and then asking rhetorically, "Won't this change everything?"
Certainly--if it should happen.
tomlinson
--
Ernest S. Tomlinson, incola Seattilis - hyaci...@yahoo.com
http://www.flash.net/~etomlins/
"You don't make up for your sins in the church. You do it in the
streets. You do it at home. The rest is bulls**t and you know it"
(Martin Scorsese)
Dave O'Neill
Jordan S. Bassior <jsba...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20000121154516...@ng-da1.aol.com...
> Dave O'Neill said:
>
> >4) Humans are no longer top of the intellectual food chain
> >
>
> They are if you count humans who Transcend onto the same media the AI's
are
> using as "human". Still more if you count the AI's as "human" (and why
not?)
As I recall from Vinges original paper this was the one positive outcome,
human/machine hybrids.
I can certainly see the start of the singularity being where you have to be
augmented just to perform leading to data "rich" and data "poor" classes.
We shall see. Lots of people won't want to play, but will they have a
choice I wonder.
Dave
Mark Atwood
> >
> > It's better (and more likely) than the Fundie Christian's Rapture.
>
> How would you know?
Because Fundies have a history of never been right about anything, and
engineers and scientists have a history of being right about an awful
lot.
All it takes for a Vingean Singularity is that technology types
continue to be right for another few decades.
John Schilling
>In article <Pine.GS4.4.10.100012...@condor.depaul.edu>,
> Ian Sutherland <isut...@condor.depaul.edu> writes:
>[...]
>>> The computer industry is doubling, it is still
>>> doubling and currently there is no sign of this trend not being able to
>>> continue to the point where the curve goes asymptopic - there are a couple
>>> of niggles around that point (circa 2016 +/-2yrs) - but generally there is
>>> no reason why until then computers can't double over that sort of period.
>> What, exactly, are you talking about "doubling" when you talk about
>> "[t]he computer industry" and "computers" "doubling"?
>Everything. Storage density, processing speed, bandwidths, etc. And before
>you start talking about silicon limits --- optical and quantum switches
>have already been demonstrated and the big companies are pouring grotesque
>amounts of money in...
Stop right there.
You just tried to skip over a rather important part - quite clearly
included in the "everything" subject to Moore's law, once you bother
to look - *is* the grotesque ammount of money being poured in to fuel
the doubling of everything else. Not the cost per unit of the end
product, but the R&D and capitalization costs of setting up to produce
that product. As someone else here pointed out, we're already at the
level of running Manhattan- or Apollo-style megaprojects to get one
more level of doubling.
There isn't enough money in the world to finance another ten generations
of doubling, and the money available isn't doubling every two years,
either. Or scientists, engineers, programmers, lab technicians, lab
space, construction workers to build more lab space, etc, if you have
trouble thinking in monetary terms.
And yes, the observation that initial costs double every generation
*does* consder the use of the most recent generation of computers to
help design the next ones, taking their share of the burden off the
scientists, engineers, etc. That's part of the equation, and the
reason the costs *only* double each generation.
Awe and wonder at what we theoretically could do with infinite resources,
needs to be tempered with an appreciation of what we can actually afford
to do.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
Ross Presser
>All it takes for a Vingean Singularity is that technology types
>continue to be right for another few decades.
"All that is required for the Triumph of Evil is for good men to do
nothing."
:)
--
Ross Presser
ross_p...@imtek.com
"And if you're the kind of person who parties with a bathtub full of
pasta, I suspect you don't care much about cholesterol anyway."
Dave O'Neill
John Schilling <schi...@spock.usc.edu> wrote in message
news:86aj23$rbh$1...@spock.usc.edu...
> d...@pearl.tao.co.uk (David Given) writes:
>
> >In article <Pine.GS4.4.10.100012...@condor.depaul.edu>,
> > Ian Sutherland <isut...@condor.depaul.edu> writes:
> >Everything. Storage density, processing speed, bandwidths, etc. And
before
> >you start talking about silicon limits --- optical and quantum switches
> >have already been demonstrated and the big companies are pouring
grotesque
> >amounts of money in...
>
> Stop right there.
>
> You just tried to skip over a rather important part - quite clearly
> included in the "everything" subject to Moore's law, once you bother
> to look - *is* the grotesque ammount of money being poured in to fuel
> the doubling of everything else. Not the cost per unit of the end
> product, but the R&D and capitalization costs of setting up to produce
> that product. As someone else here pointed out, we're already at the
> level of running Manhattan- or Apollo-style megaprojects to get one
> more level of doubling.
I am interested by the thrust of your post, however, I have one little
problem. Where is the supporting data?
Are the costs to develop the next generation 1 Gig processors double that to
develop the 500 MHz? I find it hard to believe that they are, in fact, I
would expect them to be fairly constant.
Now, maybe once we reach the theorectical limits of silicon (still a way off
yet) we have other technologies, but again, I see nothing to suggest that
the levels of spend are of the order of magnitude you propose. Some of the
suggested technologies have *alread* been demonstrated in theorectical form
and there are no barriers we know about.
What suggests these are going to cost the money you suggest?
Mark Atwood
> alt.distin...@pobox.com (Mark Atwood).wrote.posted.offered:
>
> >All it takes for a Vingean Singularity is that technology types
> >continue to be right for another few decades.
>
> "All that is required for the Triumph of Evil is for good men to do
> nothing."
So is the Singularity a Triumph Of Evil?
Bertil Jonell
Dave O'Neill <david.o'nei...@vXrgXn.net> wrote:
>I am interested by the thrust of your post, however, I have one little
>problem. Where is the supporting data?
I read the same things in my computer design books: The cost of a
semi-conductor factory doubles with each generation.
>Are the costs to develop the next generation 1 Gig processors double that to
>develop the 500 MHz? I find it hard to believe that they are, in fact, I
>would expect them to be fairly constant.
The generations we talk about are packing density, the number of
transistors per square centimeter.
>Dave
-bertil-
--
"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or
strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an
exercise for your kill-file."
Ross Presser
>rpre...@NOSPAMimtek.com.invalid (Ross Presser) writes:
>
>> alt.distin...@pobox.com (Mark Atwood).wrote.posted.offered:
>>
>> >All it takes for a Vingean Singularity is that technology types
>> >continue to be right for another few decades.
>>
>> "All that is required for the Triumph of Evil is for good men to do
>> nothing."
>
>So is the Singularity a Triumph Of Evil?
Depends on who you ask, of course. I was just being (trying to be)
funny by noting the similarity of your statement to the well-known
aphorism.
Personally, I can't wait for it to get here. I have very little
opinion on whether it's a good or evil thing.
Dave O'Neill
Bertil Jonell <d9be...@dtek.chalmers.se> wrote in message
news:86angg$112$1...@nyheter.chalmers.se...
> In article <86alah$5bp$1...@nclient15-gui.server.virgin.net>,
> Dave O'Neill <david.o'nei...@vXrgXn.net> wrote:
> >I am interested by the thrust of your post, however, I have one little
> >problem. Where is the supporting data?
>
> I read the same things in my computer design books: The cost of a
> semi-conductor factory doubles with each generation.
I'd be interested in a reference. As I understood a lot of the technology
until we radically have to change things we can use much of the same
infrastructure.
>
> >Are the costs to develop the next generation 1 Gig processors double that
to
> >develop the 500 MHz? I find it hard to believe that they are, in fact, I
> >would expect them to be fairly constant.
>
> The generations we talk about are packing density, the number of
> transistors per square centimeter.
But the argument is over the doubling of power, ok the packing density
affects that, but it is not the only part of the equation.
Dave
Robert Shaw
Bertil Jonell <d9be...@dtek.chalmers.se> wrote
> In article <86alah$5bp$1...@nclient15-gui.server.virgin.net>,
> Dave O'Neill <david.o'nei...@vXrgXn.net> wrote:
> >I am interested by the thrust of your post, however, I have one little
> >problem. Where is the supporting data?
>
> I read the same things in my computer design books: The cost of a
> semi-conductor factory doubles with each generation.
>
to
> >develop the 500 MHz? I find it hard to believe that they are, in fact, I
> >would expect them to be fairly constant.
>
> The generations we talk about are packing density, the number of
> transistors per square centimeter.
>
How long do those generations last. The typical long term growth
rate of the world economy is a few percent, implying a doubling
time on the order of 10-20 years. Also each technological generation
can cover a wide performance range as people learn to better
optimise it, allowing some doublings each generation.
At that rate computers will still reach human equivalence in the
near future, assuming AI is possible. At that point things may start
to grow strange.
--
'It is a wise crow that knows which way the camel points' - Pratchett
Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw
Greg Dougherty <gr...@molecularsoftware.com> wrote
>
> How long until we sequence DNA and proteins by putting a single
> strand into a device that reads the atoms on the chain (using
> something similar to the items above)? Get your complete DNA
> sequence, in the privacy of your own home. Then talk to the gene
> engineers about correcting your particular problems.
>
described a device working just that way.
Basically it would unzip the DNA and feed one strand through
a small hole. As the different bases pass through the hole
their differing shapes would send signals letting the DNA
be read. I don't have the article handy so I can't give
any more details, but it should be on the market within
a few years and much faster than any current method
Mark Atwood
>
> How long do those generations last. The typical long term growth
> rate of the world economy is a few percent, implying a doubling
> time on the order of 10-20 years.
From the rest of your post, we are probably in violent agreement, but
I have to jump in on this one. Your sentence puts the "cart before the
horse". The growth in the WDP doesnt cause improvments, improvments
cause the growth in the WDP.
Every dollar/yen/euro spinning thru the world's economy is because of
someone doing "useful stuff", and every increase is due a combination
of more people "doing stuff", people working harder at it, and (most
powerful), people thinking of ways to make "doing stuff" easier.
Ian Sutherland
> The typical long term growth
> rate of the world economy is a few percent, implying a doubling
> can cover a wide performance range as people learn to better
> optimise it, allowing some doublings each generation.
> At that rate computers will still reach human equivalence in the
> near future, assuming AI is possible.
Please enlighten me if I'm misinterpreting you, but you seem to be
saying that there's some purely resource-related level that computers
have to reach in order to be equivalent to humans. Is it clear that
there's some sort of "brute force AI", even if all you want to do is
pass the Turing test, that could be programmed today if we only had
enough resources?
--
Ian Sutherland email: ia...@cs.depaul.edu
DePaul University
Sans Peur
Shaad M. Ahmad
<m3k8l3x...@flash.localdomain>:
>It's not so much a real mathematical asymptote, as a "key threshold".
>If Moore's Law continues, at about 2015-2020 or so, it will be
>feasable to build a computer with the "equivalent processing power" of
>a human brain...
"Equivalent processing power of a human brain" is fine, but
I must be being totally obtuse; for I fail to see why this by itself
is that impressive. Now, if you had a brain analogue, one that say,
was able to upload "cultural software" the way we do, and was
similarly conscious and self-aware, I would certainly be excited.
Regards.
sh...@leland.stanford.edu - Shaad -
http://cmgm.stanford.edu/~ahmad/
the deviant biologist
"Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of
dead religions."
-- Oscar Wilde
Mark Atwood
>
> I wouldn't be surprised if we someday manage to build simulations of
> such complexity that entities within them _evolve_ intelligence. I'd be
> terribly surprised if we were ever to manage to _design_ intelligence.
> I'd even be surprised if having watched an intelligence evolved taught
> us much about how it all works.
So we'll go with uploading instead.
Eli Brandt
John Schilling <schi...@spock.usc.edu> wrote:
>You just tried to skip over a rather important part - quite clearly
>included in the "everything" subject to Moore's law, once you bother
>to look - *is* the grotesque ammount of money being poured in to fuel
>the doubling of everything else. Not the cost per unit of the end
>product, but the R&D and capitalization costs of setting up to produce
>that product. As someone else here pointed out, we're already at the
>level of running Manhattan- or Apollo-style megaprojects to get one
>more level of doubling.
>
>of doubling, and the money available isn't doubling every two years,
>either. Or scientists, engineers, programmers, lab technicians, lab
>space, construction workers to build more lab space, etc, if you have
>trouble thinking in monetary terms.
A good point. If there's an input whose doubling time is close to
that of transistor density, it suggests that this input is a
bottleneck and progress will top out when our entire economy has been
diverted to it. If not, exponential growth could continue, though
more slowly. You said that "costs" double each generation; can you be
more specific?
OES data says there were about 600,000 computer and electrical
engineers in the U.S. in 1998. There were more than 600 in 1983, for
a doubling time substantially longer than 18 months.
http://stats.bls.gov/oes/national/oes_prof.htm
A bleeding-edge megacapacity fab costs about $1 billion now; did it
cost more or less than $1 million in 1985? I'd guess more, giving fab
cost a longer doubling time, but I don't know. (And I don't know how
to match up old and new fabs, and I haven't checked how good "18
months" is for silicon these days.)
--
Eli Brandt | el...@cs.cmu.edu | http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/
Eli Brandt
Joe Slater <joeDEL...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au> wrote:
>On the other hand, apart from the language barrier I think I'd have no
>real difficulty operating in Hammurabi's era. In fact, I think
>Hammurabi would adjust to the twentieth century reasonably well.
It seems to me that some people look at history and conclude that human
natura and ways of thought are pretty similar throughout, and others
that they have changed fundamentally. Anthropologists and historians of
ideas, for example, may tend towards the latter view. I lean that way
myself, mostly just because I think we tend to err the other way through
projection. So I feel that while Hammurabi might function in our
society (it's not that hard to get by), he also might never live in it
in the same way that we do.
Somebody earlier might be a sharper example: on the pre-modern side of
agriculture and writing, the most important recent developments. If
language and representational art postdate H. sap sap, they would form
an even more striking divide.
Paired reading: _Marooned in Realtime_ and _AEgypt_.
Ian A. York
Ernest Tomlinson <hyaci...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On 19 Jan 2000 13:40:49 GMT, iay...@panix.com (Ian A. York) wrote:
>
>>>Increasingly, I'm not. If I step back and consider all of the
>>>"speculative fiction" writers (comprising both fantasy and SF) who
>>>really, _truly_ spoke to me in some way...they've all been fantasy
>>>authors, with the sole exception, perhaps, of C. J. Cherryh.
>>
>>Interestingly, that's approximately what I said on my first post to
>>r.a.sf.w. (though I didn't except Cherryh).
>
>That _is_ interesting. I take it that you don't find this any longer
>true?
Actually, I do. Here's what I said (it wasn't actually my first post, but
it was within my first month, I think--but maybe I predate DejaNews
archiving of rasfw):
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Re: Female SF authors
Date: 1996/01/17
I used to be happy if a book had interesting ideas. That's no longer
enough; when I want interesting ideas, I'll read Nature, Cell, or Stephen
Jay Gould. Now I'm more interested in good writing, and especially
character. I'll forgive almost anything if there are believable
characters; I'll forgive anything if there are believeable and likeable
characters.
Hard SF has never had characterization as a priority. Whether it's
coincidence or not, I find that the most interesting characters appear in
fantasy books. (Not to say that there aren't plenty of cardboard
characters in fantasy as well - authors' names not inserted here because I
don't want to trigger any flamewars. Both male and female examples leap
to mind, though.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Since then, if anything, I've become fussier.
Having said that (and started to write an explanation) I'll partially
retract it. Considering only authors I specifically look for, it seems to
be about 50:50 fantasy and science fiction. On the science side are Louis
McMaster Bujold, Vernor Vinge, Iain Banks, and Neal Stephenson. On the
fantasy side, Stephen Brust, Guy Gavriel Kay, Glen Cook, the late Jo
Clayton. Gene Wolfe is a special case who could go in either
category.
So it seems that on my "buy in hardcover" list, it's about even. The
difference comes in the second tier, of authors who I don't rabidly seek
out; books I'll spot on the shelves and pick up out of curiousity, or
an author whose work I find good enough to pick up, but I don't mind
waiting a year or so until it's a few dollars cheaper. On that list, it's
probably 90% fantasy.
Is the difference solely the strength of the characterization? Looking at
the A-list for the science fiction writers, I'd tentatively say that only
Bujold is really known for her characterization; the others are Big Idea
people, who also happen to be pretty good writers. You don't walk away
from a Stephenson or Banks novel thinking of the characters; you walk away
thinking of the ideas. Bujold, it's the reverse (obviously I'm
generalizing here); for all the writers on the fantasy list, I think they
tend to be more character-driven, but I don't know that the difference is
that spectacular between the two lists.
I still think that the run-of-the-mill fantasy tends to be stronger on
character than the run-of-the-mill science fiction, but I feel less
confident than when I started writing this. I was going to make a big
sweeping conclusion, but until I feel more sure of my premise I think I'll
put that on hold.
One other thing I said in one of my early posts to rasfw that remains
true, by the way--I still read more "mainstream" fiction and non-fiction
than I read fantasy and science fiction combined.
Ian
--
Ian York (iay...@panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England
Ian
There are two issues to AI, hardware and software.
The software bit is not solved. The hardware bit is also not solved. It
seems reasonable to expect, however, that the software problem would be
solvable (if not necessarily _easily_ solvable) if hardware roughly as
powerful as the human brain was available. It also seems reasonable that
we couldn't make a human-level AI without roughly the amount of computing
power the brain has.
Ian
>> Exponential curves have no asymptote, vertical or otherwise. Are they
>> saying they've spotted a relationship which is different from Moore's
>> Law, and if so, what is it?
>
>It's not so much a real mathematical asymptote, as a "key threshold".
>If Moore's Law continues, at about 2015-2020 or so, it will be
>feasable to build a computer with the "equivalent processing power" of
>a human brain...
When I calculated it last month I came up with more like 35 years required.
I may have been using a more direct estimate of brain-emulating power
(neuron updates per second in an artificial neural net).
Ian
>On 20 Jan 2000 18:12:29 -0800, Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>Either the technology curve is going to continue to be exponential
>>(the curve is driven by more better educated brains talking to each
>>other more easily, and all 3 variables are in a positive feedback
>>loop), *or* it's going to stop, and either one will be a great shock
>>to "western technological society".
>
>More likely just slow down. There seem to be few people that believe
>the law of diminishing marginal returns applies to technological development.
>I believe it does.
Um, the problem is that the law of diminishing marginal returns obviously
does apply to technology, but this is in itself irrelevant.
It requires more and more in terms of resource expenditures to develop
newer technologies. But technological development also dramatically
increases the resources we have access to. Diminishing marginal returns
thus doesn't tell us anything useful. Eventual limits are determined by
physics, not economics.
>We shall see. It could be that the last 150 through the
>next say, 25-50 years were simply humanity scoring all the "easy wins",
>and future gains will be much harder.
This would certainly be contrary to the established pattern of generally
accelerating technological development that has been present throughout
human history.
>Also note that history has examples of "high tech" societies that completely
>collapsed to barbarism. The best example being the Roman Empire, many
>of whose engineering feats weren't replicated until the 19th century.
First, there actually aren't such examples for industrial-era, let alone
post-industrial societies.
Second, Rome didn't "completely collapse into barbarism". The Eastern
Roman Empire lived on, and the Western empire lost political institutions,
unity, and large engineering projects... but the life of the average
citizen didn't change all that much. And Rome was not a particularly
innovative or quickly developing society to begin with. Technical
advancement in the middle ages and even the "dark ages" seems to have
proceeded just as quickly.
Third, while many Roman engineering feats weren't replicated until the 19th
century, post-Roman times developed a huge array of useful technologies
that Rome never dreamed of, even in what have been called the "dark ages".
Wayne Throop
::: "[t]he computer industry" and "computers" "doubling"?
:: Everything. Storage density, processing speed, bandwidths, etc. And
:: before you start talking about silicon limits --- optical and quantum
:: switches have already been demonstrated and the big companies are
:: pouring grotesque amounts of money in...
Well, no; not "everything". The elements of the human interface
haven't changed all that much since a respectable workstation had
1 megapixel, 1 MIPS, and 1 megabyte. Something like a decade ago.
: schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling)
: You just tried to skip over a rather important part - quite clearly
: included in the "everything" subject to Moore's law, once you bother
: to look - *is* the grotesque ammount of money being poured in to fuel
: the doubling of everything else. Not the cost per unit of the end
: product, but the R&D and capitalization costs of setting up to produce
: that product. As someone else here pointed out, we're already at the
: level of running Manhattan- or Apollo-style megaprojects to get one
: more level of doubling.
:
: There isn't enough money in the world to finance another ten
: generations of doubling, [...]
:
: Awe and wonder at what we theoretically could do with infinite
: resources, needs to be tempered with an appreciation of what we can
: actually afford to do.
Well, as with "infinite loops" (as in "one programmer says to the other,
``looks like you got an infinite loop there'', and the other replies ``I
dunno if it's infinite... but it sure is persistant...''"), or with
zeno limitations (as in the physicist saying to the engineer ``"sure
there's a beautiful woman at the end of the hallway, but you can only go
half the remaining distance every ten seconds: it's an infinite series
and you'll never get there!'' and the engineer replies ``yes, of course,
but pretty soon, I'll be close engh!''"), you don't need infinite resources
to get an excellent approximation of a singularity, from "our" perspective.
Yes, in the strongest terms, a Vinge Singularity is when technological
progress "goes asymptotic"; but the basic concept as I've understood
Vinge's essays and stories over the years, is not so much *infinite*
capabilities and resources, but enough to result in a society-or-whatever
that is largely incomprehensible to humans of our sort, in about the way
that human society is incomprehensible to an earthworm.
Now, granted, I expect that takes more than 10 doublings. I think I've
heard estimates between 20 and 100 before superhuman intelligence is
reasonably expected. But the "manhattan/apollo style megaprojects" are
the last gasp of the current s-curve; if there are other technologies at
the start of their s-curve, we may yet squeeze 20 doublings. And once
the brainpower behind decisions is transhuman, motives and actions
will become incomprehensible to humans.
And to me, THAT's the significant part of the singularity.
Which doesn't seem to me to require "infinite" resources; not even
close; and yet is still pretty awesome and wonderful.
Are we skirting the edge of a technological singularity?
I dunno. But it makes for some interesting stories.
Colossus/Guardian: "Soon you will view me with awe... and love."
Forbin: "NEVER!"
(I may have misremembered Colossus' line...)
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw