[Keith] I've read excerpts from Kurzweil's latest book *The Singularity Is Near*, in which he builds on Verner Vinge's idea of a "singularity" or discontinuity in history beyond which we cannot "see"/predict future events (like the event horizon of a black hole, ergo the name). Kurzweil argues that the acceleration of the rate of change in society in this century will lead to the equivalent of 20,000 years of progress in the space of 100 years due to the repeated doublings in technological price/performance across information-, bio-, and nano-technologies.
[Krimel] I am a big fan of Vinge, too. I am reading his latest novel now. His short story True Names is perhaps the 1st cyberpunk story. Actually more proto-cyberpunk; light in the punk part. His ex-wife Joan writes a mean novel too. I thought Kurzweil's application of Moore's law to other technologies was really good. I have heard him talking about his new book too. Seem like he is just extending his ideas with it. I look forward to checking it out. I have a very good friend who is involved in the kind of health related research he sees converging with computer technology. Genetic researchers really are thinking of molecular biology in terms of code and programming. Database programmers who set up search engines and info on the DNA sequence are a valuable part of current biological research. Did you know there is a project going on to sequence Neanderthal DNA? I would imagine that the whole idea of reverse engineering the brain would strike a really sour note with many here. I don't see it meshing well with Wilber's retro thinking about higher levels of consciousness either. [Keith] The seeming inevitability of augmented human intelligence and apparent likelihood of artificial intelligence raises panoply of interesting philosophical questions regarding identity and ethics. [Krimel] I already feel augmented every time I do a Google search. [Keith] I think the MOQ would argue that intelligence is a pattern, so there's no a priori reason it can't be instantiated in silicon rather than neurons. Let's just hope if that view is correct, that any artificial intelligence won't need to recapitulate the phases of our own developmental evolution (as Wilber speculates in *Boomeritis*) and that, if it's possible, we can start it off at a level of rationality rather than going through a bloody, bad sci-fi, evil conscious computer stage. [Krimel] I think you are right about the patterns business but there is a school of thought that holds that some patterns are special. The way Kurzweil spells it out, the period of symbiotic relationship would help machine intelligence avoid the Mr. Spock syndrome of pure logic and no feeling. But I wonder if all the emotional evolutionary baggage we carry would not be just as well left behind. Roddenberry certainly didn't think so. But the truth is it is not religion or politics or economics that fuels war and cruelty so much as emotion. [Keith] While I'm definitely a technological optimist and would go so far as to remain open to the some of the tenets of transhumanism and extropianism, I still don't know what to think of these possibilities other than it sure is an interesting time to be alive. [Krimel] I would like to be optimistic too and most of the time I am, but the realist in me certainly is not. The only law that seems to be more unshakable than thermodynamics is Murphy's. Still, I hope you are right. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
