The Social Implications Of "The Singularity Moment"

And again you do not address the specifics my post at all.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Having addressed them, I feel no need to do so again. You're simply not going to read any post that attempts to do so, so why bother?There's no further point in talking to you - reasonable, honest debate is something that eludes you.

Since you refuse to answer a few basic questions I have, I will take it as your concession that you can not answer them.
Looking back through the thread anyone can see you have not answered the questions or presented the evidence for certain claims.First
You have shown nothing that shows that humans ability to "absorb" technology is linear. How would that be determined?I would like to know how you determined humans ability to "absorb" technology is linear.This is my biggest problem with your premise. If you could show some support for this you may convince me, but as of yet all you have said is that it is obvious. Obviously it is not obvious. Looking over the last few years I think a strong argument can be made that it is not linear. But it would be silly for me waste my time to present an argument for that if you have no argument for your original premise.Second
Still waiting for evidence that prior to 1800 people predicted the technological changes that would happen by 1820. Your original statement. Yet you have provided no sources to show this is in fact true. What were the predictions that were made? just one example is all I am asking for.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

You only reveal your intent to interpret whatever I say in the most dishonest way possible. It's actually you making the concession - that you're not someone who can honesty grapple with the arguments of his opponents, but rather someone who must misrepresent his opponents in order to have arguments he's capable of addressing. Asked and answered. And answered again. Answers linked to, repeatedly. All ignored and lied about by you.Why would I talk to you about anything, Theodoric? You can't be relied upon to respond in good faith. You've already admitted that this is part of a personal vendetta against me:

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Crash I actually have much more respect for creationists than you.

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Did you write those words or not? Given your admission of a deep and abiding animus towards me, why should anyone believe you're capable of discussing with me in good faith?

crashfrog responds to me:

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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?

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Because that isn't sufficient. It's why we still haven't managed to come up with a really good weather simulator. There are too many variables involved, especially when the very code you use to generate the object (your genes) gets to change as the process runs. Genes get turned on, they get turned off, physical changes happen to your brain that cannot be "simulated" as such.

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Isn't it only a copy if there's two?

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No. That is, both instances do not need to both be extant. If something is created and is then copied, the destruction of the original does not make the copy something other than a copy.Again, I am not denying the possibility of being able to copy your brain (be it into a cloned body or a cybernetic support system). But a copy is not the original. The copy may very well think it is the original, since it would have all the memory and experience of the original and thus from the moment it came into being, there would be no way to distinguish it from the original just based upon the information content.But there is more to it than just information. If I set myself into the duplicator (which is the transmogrifier box turned on its side and goes "Boink!")Then at the end of the process I will still be in my own body.

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It may be a perfect facsimile of you with all of your knowledge and experience in there, but it isn't you.

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Why not?

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Because it's the counterpart of "a difference that makes no difference is no difference." That is, similarity that isn't the same isn't a similarity. Let's take a look at this from a purely practical matter. I get into the cardboard box and am duplicated. Well, I'm still in the same physical location that I was in. My duplicate, however, is going to be in a different physical location (since two objects cannot occupy the same space). Thus, right from the get-go, I am going to know that I am still in my body and my duplicate is going to immediately know that he's the copy. Despite the fact that our memories are identical up to the moment of duplication, there is a physical shift that has taken place for the copy but not the original.This is different from the existential question regarding division: When a cell divides, which one is the "original" and which is the "offspring"? Well, neither. The physical process of duplication creates two distinct cells. All the molecules of the two daughter cells used to exist in the original, but neither of the daughters is the original.

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I'm the same person even if all my molecules changed into other equivalent molecules, we agreed on that.

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No, we didn't. Not the way you're playing with it.

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Why wouldn't I be the same person if all my molecules changed into equivalent virtual molecules inside a chemistry simulation program?

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Because "you" are a biological construct, not an electronic one.

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As long as the simulation accurately models the behavior of real-world molecules

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Which can't be done.

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there's no reason the chemical system being simulated couldn't be "Crashfrog."

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Except that it's a copy, not the original. Assuming we could trick it into not detecting the physical location shift when it comes online (and there's a huge hint as to why it is not you in that fact), then it would certainly think it was you. But since it is a copy of you and not the original you, it isn't you. A similarity that isn't the same isn't a similarity.

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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.

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Because a copy isn't the original. Your molecules were replaced in such a way that there was never a duplicate but only an original. If I take out a brick out of your house and replace it with another brick, the brick I took out doesn't become a house in and of itself.

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Really, Rrhain, all you're doing is asserting that I'm not myself. But I'm pretty sure I am.

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Well, on an existential level, you're not. You are not the same person you were eight years ago. You may have experienced the continuity of those eight years, but they changed you. Physically. It's why you remember different things now than you did then and have forgotten things you used to know. Since your biological existence doesn't leave you the same from moment to moment, why on earth would a duplication of that not have the same effect?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

"Bones" McCoy has already been there, done that.AND I AGREE WITH HIM! And Rrhain for this flavor of it.Rrhain: Imagine a future where you get brain tissue transplanted into you brain and it sits there for awhile. doing nothing, but after a while has taken on some of the brain's duties, including *memory*. *This has already been documented*! It can be googled now.Imagine the next step whereby an interface has been created to open up a conduit between the brain and an embedded flash drive (or whatever it is when this occurs). Imagine now that the embedded storage area is taking on data. Imagine that, VIA DREAMING, which may be a way of repacking all we experience, a rezipping of the zipfile, some of the data is stored on this embedded device in some local format that nobody could guess. Or other ways of offloading the very you-ness of you onto this peripheral device embedded inside your head as a storage device originally. Years go by and the technology improves the bandwidth, but mostly addresses consumer comments. Then, is it too much of a step to think that the "self-awareness-consciousness" might also leak into this device? Things have a habit of leaking. Now jump ahead many years and we may have a situation whereby a dying body can complete the transference, a sort of pouring of the you-ness of you from where it was to where it is now.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

Well, this is just the fallacy of "argument by changing the terms of my analogy to suit your ends." Whatever that's really called.In principle we could simulate the weather with sufficient knowledge about the state of the molecules on Earth and a simulation sufficiently robust to simulate the interaction of all those molecules. The Earth's weather is on a scale much, much larger than the limit where the uncerrtainty principle would matter.Now, it's true that what we have not been able to do is produce a simulation of the weather sufficiently simplified as to be computable, but that's not at all the same thing. And it's true that a simplified simulation of my brain wouldn't be the same as me.But simulation doesn't have to mean simplification. In principle, a sufficiently complex simulation could accurately model real-world things like brains or weather by being equally complex as the phenomenon they simulate. I guess that leads to weird ideas like the idea that this universe is being simulated on some kind of OmniVax, but if that were true we couldn't really know, anyway. What? Why on Earth do you think we can't simulate changes in a gene? I can do it easily. Genes get methylated? I add a field to the Gene object class called "methylated" that takes a boolean value. A repressor binds to a promoter? Another field in the Gene object class for repressor binding.In the lac operon, a combination of negative repression by lactose and positive repression by glucose results in the complex regulation of beta-galactosidease, such that:

Glucose    |  Lactose     |  B-Gal
    yes    |    yes       | none
    yes    |     no       | none
    no     |     yes      | high
    no     |     no       | none

As biochemists, we call this "metabolic logic", for two reasons: one is that we can easily represent the behavior with truth tables, as I've just done; and two, because this behavior evolved because it's the logical metabolic response to the situation - glucose is easier to metabolize than lactose, but when lactose is what's available it makes sense to use it. Well, but again - if there's a perfect copy of me, perfect in every detail, and then suddenly the "original" me disappears in a flash an instant after the copy is made, that would seem to represent a singular, consistent existence of myself discontinuous in space - teleportation, in other words. It's no more discontinuous than the eight hours every night that I utterly lack any experience of the world around me. It's no more discontinuous than people who experience comas, or brain injuries or diseases that cause tremendous changes in attitude and temperament. It's certainly no more discontinuous than when your young cousin ages from 10 to 15 in the years between your visits and he seems to be a new and unique individual every time you see him.The truth is that the notion of the continuous human being is a bit of a fiction, and I see no reason why "cp/rm" teleportation (to use the Unix lingo, and as opposed to "mv" teleportation) introduces any more of a discontinuity than any one of a dozen situations where humans experience a substantial discontinuity in their consciousness or nature but are yet considered the exact same person. The individual is a moving target and always has been. Well, yeah. There's two of you. There's a pretty limited period of time before you and your clone accumulate so much divergent experience that, indeed, we have to consider you two separate people - one of you grows the beard, perhaps, and decides to go by his middle name, instead:But we can easily remedy this problem by killing one of you as soon as possible. Ideally at the very instant that we create the clone, or even slightly before. That way there's not two individuals both claiming to be "Rrhain" experiencing different things. That way, there's only one of you experiencing a single physical location - just like you did the entire rest of your life. Well, I know you don't agree with the conclusion; what I'm trying to show you is that my position is inescapably logical, and yours is just "well, it's not you because I say it's not." But I'd be a biological construct simulated electronically, instead of simulated biologically.I think maybe you don't understand how simulations work. You're saying that if I fall asleep on an airplane, I'm a different person when I get off? Obviously untrue. Again - unconscious, unexperienced shifts in physical location are a discontinuity in experience that we nonetheless have no difficulty reconciling with our fiction of the continuous person. Similarly, we have no trouble reconciling the discontinuity in physical composition we're always experiencing with our fiction of the continuous person.So, I contend that the shift in physical composition from physical atoms to simulated atoms, and/or the sudden shift in location from over here to over there, are things we could just as easily reconcile with our fiction of the continuous person. Your notion that "cp/rm" teleportation isn't the same person, but "mv" teleportation actually is only makes sense if you privilege the stuff out of which you are currently constituted, but we've already both agreed that that stuff is transient anyway, and really has nothing to do with your continuity as a person. Your continuity is just a function of how many people there are with memory of your experiences and your personality at any one time, and "cp/rm" teleportation solves that problem and preserves continuity by only allowing no more than one of you to be alive at any one time.

We had an interesting discussion back then, 6 years ago. Now, in a recent article in Futurism Magazine, Kurrzweil predicts the singularity moment will occur by 2045. Kurzweil Claims That the Singularity Will Happen by 2045In the article,10/5/17, Kurzweil says:

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2029 is the consistent date I have predicted for when an AI will pass a valid Turing test and therefore achieve human levels of intelligence. I have set the date 2045 for the ‘Singularity’ which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion fold by merging with the intelligence we have created.

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The article elaborates:

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Kurzweil’s timetable for the singularity is consistent with other predictions,— notably those of Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, who predicts that the dawn of super-intelligent machines will happen by 2047. But for Kurzweil, the process towards this singularity has already begun.

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That leads to computers having human intelligence, our putting them inside our brains, connecting them to the cloud, expanding who we are. Today, that’s not just a future scenario, Kurzweil said. It’s here, in part, and it’s going to accelerate.

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Are we getting closer or farther?

There's a saying in AI that the singularity is always 30 years away.ie we actually have no idea.

Or thirty years ago but we simply can't see it.

Years ago, nanobots were a large part of the supposed singularity (i.e. we would become effective gods over matter). However as nanobots seem to essentially be an impossibility they've been removed.Recently I've seen questions over whether mind-machine uploading is actually possible. Quantum information cannot ever be copied (no cloning theorem) and there are some indications that parts of the brain may be encoded quantum mechanically. That's not to say the brain is a quantum computer, it just may require quantum information, like certain plants do in photosynthesis. Point is mind uploading is not definitely possible.Similarly AI literature seems fairly inconclusive on how we can even measure our progress towards AI, let alone that we have little theoretical understanding of how a "mind" in general works.Some of the discussion around the Singularity seems inspired more by assuming 1970s sci-fi can occur and is close, rather than a sober look at current technical knowledge.Edited by Son Goku, : No reason given.

Michio Kaku says that domestic colleges do not have students smart enough to even apply at where he works. I fear the lack of educated students in the United States is a growing problem, yet I don't see any solutions on the horizon. What do you see from your vantage point?

If this is true, that makes Michio Kaku an arrogant fool who is missing out on opportunities to help him in his own endeavors.
Such thinking only adds blinders to one's own avenues for ideas. Those blinders, although obviously present in what he deems as "lesser education," are not restricted to this singular scope. The same blinders would hamper him in many other issues as well, I'm sure.This isn't to indicate that I don't think he's smart, or even a genius, or much smarter than myself.
It simply indicates that this is a flaw he possesses and he could be doing better than he currently is. This can certainly be true regardless of what Michio Kaku thinks.
Solutions would involve focusing on education - things like putting money there, supporting policies that promote education, possibly even attempting to move towards cheaper (or even free?) education.

Remember that in the US the pre-college portion of basic education is often determined at the lowest level by the individual school boards at the school district level. This is often not even county wide or city wide; plus the US also has more alternative non-public schools than public schools and many if not most of those base their education on a particular local Chapter of Club Christian dogma.There is no National Education policy or curricula.

I can see some pros and cons to this sort of method, as there are also pros and cons to a national-curriculum method.What's the general status of things currently?
Should the US make moves into creating more of a national standard? (Put money into political policies and hopefully a national standard)
Or should the US strengthen it's individual education segments and continue as it is currently? (Put money into individual school boards)My guess is that the individual segments, although theoretically allowing for greater individual student attention, are falling into the possibility of allowing for greater "educational bias" into whoever happens to lead each individual board. By which I mean to imply that many individual boards are focusing on teaching kids ideological/political/religious views of the individual board as opposed to basics/objective facts/critical thinking that will lead to aid them in the advancing technological age.If that's true, I can see two avenues for getting better:1 - Try to reboot the system into creating national standards. National standards are harder to corrupt, but do not allow for the 'best individual student attention' possible. The current benefit of "harder to corrupt" may outweigh any other possible pros for the immediate future.2 - Correct the individual boards and get back to focusing on student's needs. This is much, much more difficult to do as you're attempting to organize a front against many various individual segments in the education system... but also allow them to remain individual so that they have room to attend to student's individual needs as required. Theoretically, if done correctly, this system is best for each student - as no one is ever "held back" by some imposed national standard.Perhaps aiming for some sort of hybrid-solution might work, if the whole system is aimed at for being revamped anyway?
Something with national standards for, say 60-80% of the curriculum to ensure that basics are covered adequately. And then leaving the remaining 20-40% up to the individual school boards to allow room to attend for individual student needs in each unique area?Easy to talk about, anyway