Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
2 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,806 Year: 3,063/9,624 Month: 908/1,588 Week: 91/223 Day: 2/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   The Social Implications Of "The Singularity Moment"
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 37 of 169 (604676)
02-14-2011 9:51 AM
Reply to: Message 36 by Theodoric
02-14-2011 9:14 AM


"Absorb Technological Change" - Huh?
What does it even mean for "society to absorb technological change"?
How do we assess "society's ability to absorb technological change"?
I have to admit that I am lost as to what is even being discussed here.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 36 by Theodoric, posted 02-14-2011 9:14 AM Theodoric has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 39 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-14-2011 11:22 AM Straggler has replied
 Message 43 by Theodoric, posted 02-14-2011 11:47 AM Straggler has not replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 40 of 169 (604684)
02-14-2011 11:28 AM
Reply to: Message 39 by New Cat's Eye
02-14-2011 11:22 AM


Re: "Absorb Technological Change" - Huh?
Cheers for trying!! Your quote says:
CS's quote from elsewhere writes:
Technology is said to be absorbed if it is fully understood, so that the transferee is able to further optimize, upgrade, and modify the technology on its own.
So if a culture has absorbed a technological change it has reached a point where it can "optimize, upgrade and modify" that technology on it's own.
It would seem that on this basis there are plenty of technologies that are restricted to a relatively few specialists and which cannot be said to have been "absorbed" by wider human culture yet.
I am still confused as to what Crash is saying (and to what those disagreeing with him are disagreeing about)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 39 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-14-2011 11:22 AM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 41 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-14-2011 11:33 AM Straggler has replied
 Message 61 by crashfrog, posted 02-14-2011 3:29 PM Straggler has replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 42 of 169 (604690)
02-14-2011 11:40 AM
Reply to: Message 41 by New Cat's Eye
02-14-2011 11:33 AM


Re: "Absorb Technological Change" - Huh?
CS writes:
Well, the rate of technological advancement is increasing, so it seems obvious, to me at least, that the advancement will outgrow the absorption.
On the basis given in your link you could argue it already has. Who but a few specialists understand genetics, particle accelerators or super-computers?
In fact how many of us really understand the internal combustion engine or the humble PC to the extent that we can "optimize, upgrade and modify" one? Probably enough to say that these have been "absorbed" into culture I guess but not much beyond that.
I am guessin that this isn't what Crash et al are talking about. So I am gonna hold off and see if they revela what on Earth they are talking about before commenting further.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 41 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-14-2011 11:33 AM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 44 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-14-2011 11:49 AM Straggler has replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 46 of 169 (604694)
02-14-2011 11:57 AM
Reply to: Message 44 by New Cat's Eye
02-14-2011 11:49 AM


Re: "Absorb Technological Change" - Huh?
CS writes:
Every American does not have to understad how they work, to say that America absorbed atomic bombs.
Yeah obviously.
So to what extent or what aspects of the culture do need to understand it for it to qualify as "absorbed"?
This seems very vague.
CS writes:
Its about mainstream utilization of the technology rather than it simply having been invented but just sitting on a shelf (so to speak).
In that case it seems Betamax was a step too far

This message is a reply to:
 Message 44 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-14-2011 11:49 AM New Cat's Eye has not replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 89 of 169 (604814)
02-15-2011 5:48 AM
Reply to: Message 61 by crashfrog
02-14-2011 3:29 PM


Re: "Absorb Technological Change" - Huh?
I still don't get it.
Crash writes:
Well, I feel like I've only said it five times or so, but for the sixth time: the notion of the "singularity" is that the rate of technological change is increasing and has only ever increased;
OK. Is there a limit at some point where this might no longer be the case?
Crash writes:
but there's no evidence that the rate at which humans can grapple with technological change is increasing, or increasing at a comparable rate.
This is the bit I am not getting. What do you mean by "grapple with"?
What constitutes "grappling" with technological change? What indicates an inability to "grapple" with a particular technology when we are talking about human culture as a whole? This is the bit I think needs clarification.
Crash writes:
Thus, technology will eventually begin to change faster than humans can keep up the change. This is obvious and must, mathematically, come to pass.
Unless the human ability to create the technological changes imposes a limit on the changes themselves? Or some other possible limiting factor that we haven't taken into account? Is it reasonable to think the rate of technological change will just keep getting faster and faster and faster? I can think of two things that might cause it not to:
1) We use our technological advancement to create a weapon that we use to largely wipe ourselves out and have to start again to some extent.
2) We reach the point where technology satisfies all our human needs and we just cannot be arsed anymore. WE effectively exist in our virtual worlds doing the super-advanced equivalent of playing X-Box all day.
Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 61 by crashfrog, posted 02-14-2011 3:29 PM crashfrog has not replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 90 of 169 (604817)
02-15-2011 8:25 AM


The XBox Challenge
This is the sort of thing I was talking about at the end of my post above.
GEOFFREY MILLER: Evolutionary Psychologist, University of New Mexico; Author, The Mating Mind
Link writes:
I suggest a different, even darker solution to Fermi's Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens don't blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they're too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don't need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today.
The fundamental problem is that any evolved mind must pay attention to indirect cues of biological fitness, rather than tracking fitness itself. We don't seek reproductive success directly; we seek tasty foods that tended to promote survival and luscious mates who tended to produce bright, healthy babies. Modern results: fast food and pornography. Technology is fairly good at controlling external reality to promote our real biological fitness, but it's even better at delivering fake fitness subjective cues of survival and reproduction, without the real-world effects. Fresh organic fruit juice costs so much more than nutrition-free soda. Having real friends is so much more effort than watching Friends on TV. Actually colonizing the galaxy would be so much harder than pretending to have done it when filming Star Wars or Serenity.
Fitness-faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our psychological resistance to it. The printing press is invented; people read more novels and have fewer kids; only a few curmudgeons lament this. The Xbox 360 is invented; people would rather play a high-resolution virtual ape in Peter Jackson's King Kong than be a perfect-resolution real human. Teens today must find their way through a carnival of addictively fitness-faking entertainment products: MP3, DVD, TiVo, XM radio, Verizon cellphones, Spice cable, EverQuest online, instant messaging, Ecstasy, BC Bud. The traditional staples of physical, mental, and social development (athletics, homework, dating) are neglected. The few young people with the self-control to pursue the meritocratic path often get distracted at the last minute the MIT graduates apply to do computer game design for Electronics Arts, rather than rocket science for NASA.
Around 1900, most inventions concerned physical reality: cars, airplanes, zeppelins, electric lights, vacuum cleaners, air conditioners, bras, zippers. In 2005, most inventions concern virtual entertainment the top 10 patent-recipients are usually IBM, Matsushita, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Micron Technology, Samsung, Intel, Hitachi, Toshiba, and Sony not Boeing, Toyota, or Wonderbra. We have already shifted from a reality economy to a virtual economy, from physics to psychology as the value-driver and resource-allocator. We are already disappearing up our own brainstems. Freud's pleasure principle triumphs over the reality principle. We narrow-cast human-interest stories to each other, rather than broad-casting messages of universal peace and progress to other star systems.
Maybe the bright aliens did the same. I suspect that a certain period of fitness-faking narcissism is inevitable after any intelligent life evolves. This is the Great Temptation for any technological species to shape their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and reproductive success without the substance. Most bright alien species probably go extinct gradually, allocating more time and resources to their pleasures, and less to their children.
Heritable variation in personality might allow some lineages to resist the Great Temptation and last longer. Those who persist will evolve more self-control, conscientiousness, and pragmatism. They will evolve a horror of virtual entertainment, psychoactive drugs, and contraception. They will stress the values of hard work, delayed gratification, child-rearing, and environmental stewardship. They will combine the family values of the Religious Right with the sustainability values of the Greenpeace Left.
My dangerous idea-within-an-idea is that this, too, is already happening. Christian and Muslim fundamentalists, and anti-consumerism activists, already understand exactly what the Great Temptation is, and how to avoid it. They insulate themselves from our Creative-Class dream-worlds and our EverQuest economics. They wait patiently for our fitness-faking narcissism to go extinct. Those practical-minded breeders will inherit the earth, as like-minded aliens may have inherited a few other planets. When they finally achieve Contact, it will not be a meeting of novel-readers and game-players. It will be a meeting of dead-serious super-parents who congratulate each other on surviving not just the Bomb, but the Xbox. They will toast each other not in a soft-porn Holodeck, but in a sacred nursery.

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


(1)
Message 96 of 169 (604836)
02-15-2011 11:41 AM
Reply to: Message 95 by Rahvin
02-15-2011 11:34 AM


'Singualrity Moment Vs The Great Temptation
You can argue that Fermi's paradox and the question posed here are related. As is done in Message 90
At least in the sense of ‘The Great Temptation’ offering an interesting counter-point-alternative to the inevitability of the ‘Singularity Moment’ under discussion.
Which one of the two do I subscribe to? Probably neither. Maybe a bit of both. I dunno.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 95 by Rahvin, posted 02-15-2011 11:34 AM Rahvin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 97 by Rahvin, posted 02-15-2011 11:53 AM Straggler has replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 98 of 169 (604838)
02-15-2011 12:03 PM
Reply to: Message 97 by Rahvin
02-15-2011 11:53 AM


Re: 'Singualrity Moment Vs The Great Temptation
Dude - Calm down!! I am not saying anything is impossible. 'The Great Temptation' just suggests that we might go up our own technological arses before the point that we get round to achieving AGI. It suggests that our technological efforts might be focussed in directions that run counter to us developing AGI for psychological reasons.
The Fermi paradox bit comes in when it is suggested that any evolved intelligent species would also be susceptible to this same failing.
Like I said - I'm not even really agreeing with it. But it definitely does provide a counter-view to the inevitability of the 'Singularity Moment' doesn't it?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 97 by Rahvin, posted 02-15-2011 11:53 AM Rahvin has not replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 113 of 169 (605125)
02-17-2011 5:57 AM
Reply to: Message 111 by crashfrog
02-16-2011 7:46 PM


Re: Please define this phrase
Hi Crash. I'm not being an arsehole here but I too remain confounded by what you mean by "absorb technological change". You replied to me in Message 89 and simply changed this to "grapple with technological change". But that wasn't really any more enlightening. These statements regarding culture's ability to "absorb" or "grapple with" technological change seem rather central to your argument here. So could you tell us definitively what you mean by this?
Crash writes:
Thus, technology will eventually begin to change faster than humans can keep up the change. This is obvious and must, mathematically, come to pass.
I also strongly dispute your argument that this 'Singularity Moment' is somehow mathematically inevitable. Your argument that the pace of technological progress will continue to rise on the basis that it always has done is an inductive argument. Fair enough in and of itself. But then you assert that it is some sort of mathematically deduced certainty that this ‘Singularity Moment’ will inevitably occur. This conclusion obviously isn’t justified on the inductive basis on which you started.
If there is a limiting factor that we haven't yet reached then there would be no reason to expect past history to provide any experience of this limit would there?
Were you talking figuratively? If so this was far from clear.
Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 111 by crashfrog, posted 02-16-2011 7:46 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 117 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2011 12:10 PM Straggler has not replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 115 of 169 (605136)
02-17-2011 8:15 AM
Reply to: Message 109 by crashfrog
02-16-2011 6:13 PM


"Widely Used" Technologies
Facebook apparently has a "Global Audience" of 624,682,160
Link
Does that qualify as "widely used"? Is "widely used" the same as being "absorbed" or "grappled with" as you have been talking about previously?
Has nuclear power technology been "absorbed" by human society as a whole? Has mobile phone technology? The internet? Chemical pesticides? Teflon? Sewage treatment?
I am still bemused as to exactly what you mean by "absorbed" and how we know when a particular technology can be said to have been "absorbed" by human society.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 109 by crashfrog, posted 02-16-2011 6:13 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 119 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2011 12:15 PM Straggler has replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 120 of 169 (605175)
02-17-2011 12:24 PM
Reply to: Message 119 by crashfrog
02-17-2011 12:15 PM


Re: "Widely Used" Technologies
OK. So we now know that you don't consider Facebook to be "widely used". Does that mean that it hasn't been "absorbed" or "grappled with" by human society as whole? If all you meant by "absorbed by society" was to be "widely used" by people as a percentage of world population then you could have saved a lot of time by simply saying that instead.
Has nuclear power technology been "absorbed" by human society as a whole? Has mobile phone technology? The internet? Chemical pesticides? Teflon? Sewage treatment?
How do we know when a particular technology can be said to have been "absorbed" by human society?
Would it broadly require over 50% of the worlds population to be using it? If that is the case I suspect we hit this "Singularity Moment" decades ago as the affluent few shot off out of sight of the vast majority of the world.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 119 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2011 12:15 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 121 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2011 12:30 PM Straggler has replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 122 of 169 (605179)
02-17-2011 12:56 PM
Reply to: Message 121 by crashfrog
02-17-2011 12:30 PM


The Ever Shrinking Subset
Crash writes:
Why does it have to be all or nothing?
It doesn't. In fact it was me pointing out that there is effectively a two tier system of absorption in place.
Crash writes:
Clearly it's been absorbed by a specific subset of human society, and completely unabsorbed by an enormous portion of human society.
Well if we are going to talk about subsets your relentless assertions that Facebook isn't widely used become meaningless don't they? Facebook is widely used by one subset but not by another.
Crash writes:
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?
Consumer demand and commercial viability? If the subset of people willing and able to purchase a particular technology is so small as to lack commercially viability then who is going to pay to develop it in the first place?
Crash writes:
You claimed that historical trends can't induce an ahistorical, unique event in the future.
No I didn't. I disputed the mathematical certainty of the 'Singularity Moment' that you had been asserting as mathematically inevitable. It isn't mathematically inevitable at all. It is mathematically predicted if you make certain assumptions. That is very different.
CRash writes:
Nothing to worry about!
There is potentially much to worry about. I gave some reasons why there might be a limit to technological progress in Message 89 and Message 90.
Neither were very cheerful.
And I'll leave you with another thought. If a particular communications technology (such as the internet and it's future forms) facilitates the ability for human society as a whole to absorb technology at a greater rate then you might end up with a less tiered and more even distribution of absorption across humanity as a whole rather than the ever shrinking puddle model you predict.
Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 121 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2011 12:30 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 123 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2011 1:39 PM Straggler has replied
 Message 143 by Phat, posted 02-18-2011 3:46 PM Straggler has not replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 126 of 169 (605190)
02-17-2011 2:36 PM
Reply to: Message 123 by crashfrog
02-17-2011 1:39 PM


Granny Power and The Ever Shrinking Subset
The bottom line here is the bottom line. The guy who develops the technology that the whole world wants to buy will end up in the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs stratosphere of wealth. The guy who develops the great technology that nobody wants to buy will have to get a day job to fund his bedsit hobby. As long as we live in a world where such economic factors play a significant role in the development of technology your "ever-shrinking-subset" prediction remains unlikely to come to actuality.
Crash on mathematical inevitability writes:
I've defended the assumptions as justified.
Assumptions, justified as you believe them to be or otherwise, are not a basis for the mathematical inevitability you have been proclaiming.
Crash writes:
I'd like to see the technology "haves" increase, not decrease. Some technologies seem to be having that effect - cell phones, for instance.
You previoulsy asked about my grandmother. The closest I have to a grandmother does her shopping online using an iPad. But the Atari ST I had as a kid was a complete enigma to her. Throw in the rampant scramble to take advantage of the "emerging markets" of the most populous countries and it seems clear that mass appeal and ease of use is the predominant dierction of consumer technology today.
Of course this granny-friendly seperation of usability and knowability means that the white, affluent tech-head subset you have been talking about will be forever doomed to fixing the fucking things for their spouses and mothers and grandmothers when they inevitably go a bit wrong.
But that is just my personal axe to grind

This message is a reply to:
 Message 123 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2011 1:39 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 129 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2011 4:39 PM Straggler has not replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 142 of 169 (605270)
02-18-2011 6:12 AM
Reply to: Message 136 by crashfrog
02-17-2011 6:24 PM


Non-Linear Absorption
I was going to just leave you and Theo to it. But then I saw this and felt compelled to clarify.
Crash writes:
Straggler believes that technology inherently cannot increase beyond the rate at which society can absorb them, so I suppose he believes in a kind of anti-singularity, a point at which technology stops growing exponentially and begins growing linearly.
Not exactly. Instead I dispute the linearity of absorption.
Crash writes:
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? Message 121
Crash writes:
But it seems obvious that it will happen in the future, given the exponential rate of technological increase combined with the linear rate at which technologies are absorbed by society.
In Message 126 I made the case that for economic reasons high absorption (i.e. easy to use mass appeal) technologies, and indeed those technologies that facilitate absorption itself (e.g. communications technologies), are more likely to dominate and prevail. Thus making it unlikely that your shrinking-subset-to-zero prediction will come to pass. This argument suggests a non-linear rate of absorption rather than a leveling off of the rate of technological advance.
As for the exponential rate of technological advance continuing unabated — Well there are all sorts of possible reasons this might not occur. These possibilities are speculative but no more so than the AGI induced ‘Singularity Moment’ scenario proposed by Kurzweil. For an intriguing (if somewhat depressing) example of one of these speculative counter-possibilities see Message 90.
But whatever the case — The argument that there will be no limit to the rate of increase of technological advance purely because we have never previously experienced any such limit seems overly simplistic. Not necessarily wrong. Just not in and of itself an argument that takes into account all of the disparate factors involved.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 136 by crashfrog, posted 02-17-2011 6:24 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 146 by crashfrog, posted 02-18-2011 10:48 PM Straggler has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024