Is It Singularity Yet?

[jeff_duntemann]

Every once in a while, I look around to see if the Singularity guys are still out there making noise, and shucky darns, they still are. I won't recap the whole Singularity thing, nor my primary objections; see my entry for August 28, 2004. But every couple of years, I feel obliged to demand

Comments

[regek]

My understanding of "the singularity" as discussed by Ray Kurzweil has always been that there are certain unpredictable scientific developments that totally change predictions of things in the future. For example, the discovery of the transistor was a singularity. Before that effect was found, nobody could seriously imagine (i.e., without saying "A wizard did it.") a "better vacuum tube" that would be small enough that a modern cell phone has more processing power than ENIAC and uses a tiny fraction of the electricity. There were simply too many physical limitations to the technology

[regek]

And actually, speaking of transistors, when did bipolar transistors come into widespread use? That's right! The 1950s!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there was a major singularity between 1900 and the 1950s. There have been several since then, but they don't seem nearly as important just now as that one was.

[baron_waste]

Guys, show me any evidence at all of exponential progress.

The number of lawyers in the US. The Federal budget.

… Oh, you said progress.

Well, see, the Interocitor that will make these things possible has not been invented yet, that's all. Once we learn to generate delta rays, the sky will be the limit!

[chris_gerrib]

I largely agree with your thoughts on singularity. I do have a quibble after reading your 2004 entry.

The cult of progress ran swimmingly until 1914. World War I put a big dent in it. So big a dent that Fascism was born, Communism went from theory to practice, and Islamist fundamentalism started coming to the fore. All these were in part ways to manage progress, and (to varying degrees) slow it down.

WWII put another big dent in the cult of progress, but you're right in saying the 1960s killed it.

BTW, do you have a good link to the Millerites? Sounds like an interesting group.

[jeff_duntemann]

The Millerites are covered tolerably well on Wikipedia, and I learned about them in bits and snatches from print books like Clark's The Small Sects in America. Harold Bloom comments usefully on them in The American Religion, which is worth reading for other reasons. (Keep in mind that they do not exist as a religious sect any longer.)

The Millerite movement was one of the foundations of Adventism. It has spawned a great deal of peculiar religious activity of a charismatic sort, culminating in today's Rapture gang, who have gone so far afield from the Protestant tradition that I hold them to be only marginally Christian.

[apostle_of_eris]

Somewhat tangentially, I think that one of the Big Questions of our time is, Is consciousness computable? (That's "computable" in the technical sense.)
It seems to me that if it is, then we really are some sort of molecular meat puppets, which is problematic, and if it isn't then there's something else . . . which is scientifically problematic. (I think that's what inspires Penrose to go quantum.)

[jeff_duntemann]

Nothing is ever "scientifically problematic" if there's any evidence at all to be explored. The problem with deciding whether or not consciousness is computable is just making the decision: How would we know? (I am by no means satisfied that we have even defined "consciousness" yet.)

The great challenge to 21st century science is simply to admit to the degree of our ignorance, which in many areas (especially biology) is immense.

[gmcdavid]

Sometime back--I can't find the exact link--mdlbear wrote something like: "Instead of 'L-5 in 95' we got Windows 95."