The Social Implications Of "The Singularity Moment"

Half of the difficulty you have in these exchanges, Theodoric, is that you don't read closely and thus don't understand what I'm saying to you.I'm the one taking the position that the effect of technology on society will become increasingly unpredictable. That's my position.Your position, which you adopt when you disagree with mine, is that technology's impact on society will always be predictable, forever, because the singularity will never occur.Which is fine. You're entitled to hold that position.What is your evidence for it? Be specific.

Obviously I did, and have never claimed otherwise.Again - you need to slow down, calm down (because you're clearly very upset) and learn to read for comprehension, not for words of mine that you can quote out of context and misrepresent.

You haven't gotten one from me. I've explained my position throughout, most recently in Message 61 and Message 67. That, of course, has not stopped you from lying about my participation in this thread.Surely you're one of the least honest individuals posting at EvC these days.

Well, right. That's kind of the near term lower limit for the singularity - humans are still the ones who invent technology, so the technology we invent has to be something we can use and absorb. (That still might leave a lot of humans and cultures behind, like the way seniors have been so left behind in the information age.)When we invent technology for inventing technology, though, that allows for the singularity. I suspect that's what leads Kurzweil to assume that the singularity is coincident with the dawn of Artificial General Intelligence. If AI is possible, it's inevitable. Apropos of nothing: Watson did pretty well on Jeopardy tonight!

And that's bad how, exactly? People are supposed to have leisure, not work all the time. And you don't even begin to grasp how "play" activities actually get a substantial amount of work done, these days. Ever play FoldIt?

Well, primarily affluent white males with technical backgrounds. Are we really saying that the small number of affluent white males with tech backgrounds are synonymous with "society"? That seems ill-considered to say the least.I mean, sure, you're on Facebook. I'm on Facebook. Everybody you know is on Facebook. But, that's what I'm talking about in terms of "absorption": everybody you know is on Facebook. But nobody this guy knows:is on Facebook, or even knows what it is. Or even knows what the Internet is. Or has even seen a computer. Or a toilet that can be located inside your house because it flushes into a network of sealed sewer pipes. And this guy is a lot more representative of the average human being than you or I are.Has Facebook been "absorbed" by our society? I don't know - I'm not smart enough to offer a rigorous definition of what it means to be "absorbed" - but my intuition is that, given that 998 out of every 1000 human beings is not a Facebook user, the answer is "no." (Probably 700 out of those 998 people or more simply cannot be Facebook users because of a lack of access to the requisite technologies and infrastructure.) I don't see how an invention accessible to such an enormously small fraction of human beings could possibly be said to have been absorbed by human society. Your culture and my culture have done that. Has your grandmother's? Does she own an iPhone? Is she on Facebook? Does she do Twitter?As the rate of technological change increases, a lot more people are going to have your grandmother's relationship to technology than your relationship to it or mine. Including us, someday. That's the singularity. I don't see how it can not be true.

You must be operating under a different definition of "primarily." Or "males", for that matter! No, I'm not saying that. Was there some confusion about what I said? I said that iPhones are primarily marketed to affluent, white males with a technical background. I don't recall at any point saying that blacks or hispanics don't own iPhones. My sister has an iPhone; I don't.So what? Probably a bunch! Did you miss the part where it's not about how everybody you know is on Facebook?I mean, no shit, dude. You're one of the 2 in 1000 human beings who uses Facebook. It's really more like 99/100ths. I mean you and I are talking to each other on the Internet, on our own personal computers, an act that puts us well into the 99th percentile of technological "haves."So what? Not a lot. If it's as high as one-half of one percent of the non-users, I would be very, very surprised. Great, but so what? Based on what? Your math fail? 250 million people is only 3 percent of human beings. I don't consider that "high."Nothing in those numbers gives any indication that a "high percentage of human beings" has heard of Facebook. Look, it's popular among people who use the Internet. That's not a lot of people! Ok, but would your grandmother have known what Facebook is? Besides "a website"? Mine wouldn't have. My dad has a fan page on Facebook and still doesn't understand what it is. How can a technology accessible by such a small percentage of human beings be considered "absorbed by human society"? How can technologies we're still killing people over - like birth control - be considered absorbed by society? Can we consider the firearm "absorbed" by 20th century society when the highest-bodycount military weapon in that century was the hand machete?Shouldn't "absorb" mean something akin to "widely used"? Obviously, many more technologies are absorbed by the subset of society with considerable wealth, affluence, access, and technical skill - people like you and I - than by the less affluent and less technical. But, I guess you, in your relentless anti-Crashfrog contrarianism, are going to insist that there's absolutely no difference in technological proficiency between 30-something males on the Internet and 80-something seniors in nursing homes.

Jesus, Theodoric, I've only explained it half a dozen times: Message 31Message 67Message 83Message 106Message 109We're actually having an interesting discussion. Maybe you'd like to read in and be a part of it, Theodoric? The terms being used here aren't in any way mysterious and they've been explained to you over and over again.

Why wouldn't a simulation of my brain inside an environment that simulated, to angstrom accuracy, the behavior of neurotransmitters in saline, be my brain? Especially if my original brain was no longer around. Isn't it only a copy if there's two? If "Crashfrog" is just an appellation for what is basically a moving target - a system of organization, not specific molecules - then there's no reason "Crashfrog" can't be the appellation for that same system of organization represented in something besides a meatbag.Moby Dick is Moby Dick whether I'm reading it as letters on the page or as simulated letters on a Kindle. Why not? I'm the same person even if all my molecules changed into other equivalent molecules, we agreed on that. Why wouldn't I be the same person if all my molecules changed into equivalent virtual molecules inside a chemistry simulation program? As long as the simulation accurately models the behavior of real-world molecules, there's no reason the chemical system being simulated couldn't be "Crashfrog." So why didn't I stop being "Crashfrog" when all my molecules got replaced? I'm sure it's happened at least once since I started posting here.Really, Rrhain, all you're doing is asserting that I'm not myself. But I'm pretty sure I am.

I feel like I have at least five times already - see my message to Theodoric - but again, the difference between absorbing technology and not absorbing it is the difference between your relationship with Facebook/Twitter/the Internet/etc and your grandmother's.I continue to remain puzzled about what could possibly be unclear about that. Can any of you elaborate as to precisely how the concept remains mysterious to you? At this point I need much more to respond to than Theodoric's "dur, I still dun get it."

I have, several times - including in the posts you link to and claim to have read.At this point I need more than your gape-mouthed assertions of non-comprehension to respond to. Your relationship to technology is different than your grandmothers - you've absorbed Facebook/iPhones/internet dating/etc but she has not.What precisely is it that confuses you about that concept?

600 million out of 7 billion is roughly 8.5 percent.Why would I consider that "widely used"? How can a technology utterly inaccessible to 92% of human beings be considered "widely used"?

Why does it have to be all or nothing? Clearly it's been absorbed by a specific subset of human society, and completely unabsorbed by an enormous portion of human society.The singularity would be when that subset of society able to absorb the most recent technological changes shrinks and shrinks until it is zero. Given historical trends this seems obviously true. What possible reason is there to believe that it won't?You claimed that historical trends can't induce an ahistorical, unique event in the future. But that's nonsense - you're in a plummeting airplane, the altimeter is spinning down like a desk fan, and you're claiming that while it's true that historically the altitude of this plane is clearly in a trend of decline, it's never crashed in the past, therefore we can't use history to prove that it's going to. Nothing to worry about!

Why? Surely "widely used" isn't synonymous with "used by a very narrow subset of everybody." That's like saying that indie pop bad "Florence and the Machine" is "widely listened to", where by "widely listened to" you mean "everybody who likes 'Florence and the Machine' listens to 'Florence and the Machine."Look, I'm not disputing Facebook's popularity. But it's an almost textbook demonstration of the difference between the technological "haves" and the "have-nots." For the "haves", Facebook has revolutionized almost every aspect of our online lives; it's now the authentication mechanism for tens of thousands of other websites, it's integrated to almost every consumer electronic - I can check status updates on my Xbox, for god's sake - it has wide-reaching consequences in almost every field of human endeavor for people like us. Potential dates are checking it. Potential employers are checking it.But for 92 out of 100 human beings on planet Earth, Facebook has absolutely no relevance at all. Most of those 92 people have never even heard of it. They don't know anybody who uses it. They're not able to use it, even if they wanted.Can you explain to me how that kind of usage pattern - almost nobody uses it, but among the people who do, they use it a lot - is consistent with the description "widely used"? If that's just a function of us having utterly different definitions for words, then I'll try to pick a different word. It's just an example of a technology that, to me, hasn't really been absorbed by society except by us, us who are using our own personal computers to talk on the Internet. Which, an intelligent person like yourself should understand is a really weird and unique thing to be doing. Our tastes and habits really don't represent the vast majority of human beings. Well, that's reasonable. But maybe the designers of technology will simply be mistaken about what society will be able to absorb. Or perhaps they will have abdicated the design of technology to some other technology with its own notions of what products should be designed.I couldn't say. I view the notion of the singularity as a shrinking predictability horizon on the effects of technology on human society. (Don't tell me you can't figure out what that means, it's perfectly clear.) In 1800, predictions could be (and were) reliably made about the state and impact of technology on the society of 1820. In 2011 I think it's utterly impossible to predict the impact of technology on the society of 2031. If the trend continues, mathematically it becomes impossible on some future Tuesday to predict the state and impact of technology on Wednesday. I've defended the assumptions as justified. Well, I would hope so. I'd like to see the technology "haves" increase, not decrease. Some technologies seem to be having that effect - cell phones, for instance.

I told you what it means, and your response was utter, dunder-headed confusion about the concept. Then I tried to provide illustrative examples, and now you're complaining that I've given you examples instead of telling you what I mean.Theodoric, addressing your intellectual deficiencies aren't something I'm able to do. If you're unable to connect an example to an explanation - both of which I've already provided - because of the personal vendetta against me you've already admitted to, it's simply time for you to drop the pretense that you're interested in discussion. Now I see you're quibbling with the idea that the difference in society between 1800 and 1820 is less than the difference between 2011 and 2031 (or, for that matter, 1980 and 2000.) Are you actually interested in discussion, or in simply contradicting me at every point?You're not the first to play that tiresome game. Holmes beat you to it long ago, and was much better at it. At least his posts contained something besides relentless contrarianism. Oni does it too, but at least he's funny. You're just a tiresome troll. Think hard! I'm sure you'll figure it out. Here's a hint - today's technology is based on the technology of the past, and forms the basis for the future's technological change, not the other way around.