Excerpts from Farlops Industries : Mr. F drops a little science

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Excerpts from Farlops Industries

Mr. F drops a little science

This is the first of what is to be small number of blog posts here. The reason they are going to be rare is because I have my own site with its own blog and, frankly I can only generate a tiny number of novel thoughts on any given day. Sorry, my site gets most of them.

I am upgrading my site blog tool however, and my live site is currently in stasis so, I'll put something here. That said, on to my first rant.

My understanding of Vinge's singularity idea leads me to think that we've already passed through several similar inflection points already. The society we live in now would only be vaguely conceivable to people living in medieval Eurasia. Our present is a future they never would have imagined. Our world is their vingian singularity. Medieval society is the vingian singularity to tribal people. Human tribal culture is the vingian singularity to other apes.

Does that seem like a valid analogy to draw?

If it is, take a look around. It's not exactly paradise is it?

Our world has a lot of fun bits and some depressing and frustrating bits. It's a ball of confusion, in the immortal words of the Temptations. We've conquered old problems so completely nobody even thinks about them anymore and yet we've opened up new problems nobody a century ago would have dreamed of. Would visionaries like Verne or Wells have imagined something as trivially annoying as e-mail spam?

So I ask, why do we assume the inflection points, the intelligence augmentations to come will bring paradise? Isn't it possible that it will just bring a new muddle that is superhumanly complex and contradictory?

Please understand that I am not saying that Vinge's singularity idea is invalid. The logic of the idea seems pretty tight to me. I am not saying the future is going to be some sort of horrible dystopia either. There's probably going to be many wondrous things accomplished and many wondrous things done but, usually what happens when the miraculous becomes commonplace is that it stops being remarkable.

I'm just saying it's going to be a mixed bag.

Cross-posted from Farlops Industries!

Published Thursday, December 15, 2005 11:20 PM by Mr. Farlops

Tags: Musings, Opinion, The Singularity

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	azalynn wrote on December 16, 2005 1:36 AM Your musings sound as valid as anything, perhaps more than some. I actually often use the analogy of the present compared to the past when discussing the notion of transhumanism / futurism: that is, when people insist to me that a given thing is impossible (such as radical life extension or deep space exploration), I ask them to consider the distant past and wonder at what the denizens of long ago would have thought of a cellular phone, a hologram, virtual reality, or even a refrigerator. So much of what we do today and consider mundane is part of the Magical Future of our ancestors.
	jacobsmall wrote on December 16, 2005 7:07 AM You're exactly right about both points. People spend so much time talking about the coming singularity, and I don't doubt that a particular point in time may give a significant boost to technological advancement via AI. And of course we'll still have problems and issues; we'll have problems and issues that fit with the times. And who would have it otherwise? I mean eustress (positive stress) is helpful in keeping us balanced. And while all stressful situatios aren't bound to positive in the future, conflict is important to us. What would we do with no concerns to drive our progress. How would we progress against the backdrop of a perfect world? Isn't progress in a perfect world somewhat of an oxymoron. I submit that the world will never be perfect. We will, and should, always have issues and problems to tackle, so that we can continue to evolve. My hope is that the nature of many of these problems is less and less life and death and more and more artistic, explorative, political, musical, creative, and technological. I want less death and more innovation. What's the point otherwise?
	Acrinoe wrote on December 17, 2005 10:48 AM Mr. Farlops, I would agree wholeheartedly with your views regarding increasing complexification, which may eliminate some current problems but will also introduce new ones. My only comment to add would be that I don't believe any of Vinge's Singularity writings expoused that the Singularity would result in a Utopia. I've seen advocates to both Utopian and Distopian futures here at Betterhumans. I have never been able to come to agreement with either radical view. I suspect the future will be much like today.....only faster and more complex in every regard. Better? That depends on how well you can ride the wave of innovative disruption.
	dagon wrote on December 17, 2005 2:26 PM Ofcourse it is. I have said it on and on, despite of the explosive optimism of dick. Mister Singularity will be hellish to some, heavenly to others and incomprehensible to most. However it will be different. I have used the term "phase shift" and I would emphasize that. It will be as fundamental a break with the old as the (comparably) sudden onset of tool-use, spoken language, fire and agriculture were. Those changed everything in, what?, a zap. In less than a few hundred thousand years. The next zap will be faster and will change the rules even more fundamentally - (as judged from our limited perspective). And that is precisely the point, obviously.
	Mr. Farlops wrote on December 17, 2005 3:14 PM Acrinoe is right. What I've read of Vinge's stuff, in particular Fire Upon The Deep, his post singularity society seemed just as confusing and multifaceted as our world. Many old problems had been solved and yet new problems had emerged. Bank's Culture books also seem pretty chaotic. I guess what prompted me to write this entry was just my frustration with certain depictions of the future. All the handwaving bothers me for a start. And some of the passivity--the passivity that prompts some people to say, "Oh don't worry about doing anything about global warming, the nanobots will take care of that in 20 years anyway." Maybe they will. In fact I'm pretty certain they will but that's no excuse to sit on our collective rears. There is plent of conventional, prosaic, boring things we can do to make the world a better place right now. Maybe I'm projecting. I must admit there is certain passivity in my own life. (Not on the enviromental responsibility front. I got that covered pretty well.) Hmm. Now thinking about Dagon's terms for it. Singularity has become loaded with some baggage of late, at least in my own mind. Perhaps we should revive some old phrases? Turning point? Cultural inflection point? I don't know. The future is a gonna be a weird place. I read in the NYT a week or so ago that there are boiler rooms in China where people sell built-up MMORG characters for real money. They game for profit. I also read a rather disturbing blog page about using 3D printers and fabricators to mill zip guns. Weird indeed.
	Mr. Farlops wrote on December 17, 2005 3:17 PM I'm humbled and a little disconcerted. Does this post really rate a 4? Thanks though!

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About Mr. Farlops

Pace Arko is the humble secretary to and occasional stand-in for Mr. Farlops, who is a secretive mastermind with mysterious allies and even more mysterious enemies. Pace keeps his base of operations in Seattle and poses as a freelance web developer so as to not alarm the public. You can read more about him on his site: www.farlops.com

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The posts here will be cross-posted from some relevent, original posts on my own site. My own site (www.farlops.com) will often discuss other things aside from transhumanism--mostly web development and accessibility issues, gaming, music and other boring, self-indulgent burblings. I won't bore you with that here. If you want to contact me, use BH's private message function or go to my site and use my contact page.