Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Grant Holland wrote at 05/17/2013 03:28 PM: > Does Steve's position also get included under the right conditions? I think so. If the first mode were sharp enough 1/(1+e^(-t*(h-h_o))), where t >> 1 ("t" for threshold), then when h is just below h_o, the perceived acceleration of tech would see

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Glen, Thanks for that. That makes your p(h) function very much more interesting than what I had surmised. Depending on the value of h, acceleration can be either positive or negative - as can be inferred from your derivatives. So both cases get covered. Does Steve's position also get included

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Damn it Grant. Why do responses to you not go to the list by default? ;-) Grant Holland wrote at 05/17/2013 02:41 PM: > Looks like to me that your p(h) function's sensitivity to human > population size is well-considered. If I understand your parameter > constants h_o and h_f correctly, then I b

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

[Edit: ninja'd by Glen & Grant since I got distracted by explaining the Zooniverse to my science teacher] I think the distinction between singularists and technologists more generally is how their function curves; the singularity being a cultural asymptote, requiring a

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Glen, That's very good! And it captures the kind of hypolinearity that you I think you have been suggesting. Looks like to me that your p(h) function's sensitivity to human population size is well-considered. If I understand your parameter constants h_o and h_f correctly, then I believe the

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Great idea! I actually think an accurate approximation would involve an impredicative hierarchical model. I don't think one can isolate technology from the humans that create it. But absent the time to put that together, I'll go with something like: { 1/(1+e^-(h-h_o)), h near h_o p(

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Glen, Steve, Glen's latest retort on this thread (see below) gave me this thought: It would be interesting if you guys could offer an (admittedly oversimplified) analytical model of your best guesses on what the productivity function and the acceleration function (2nd derivative of the produc

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Steve Smith wrote at 05/16/2013 04:40 PM: > What I'm talking about is the (as yet to be identified in quality?) > human experience of accelerated technology. [...] The (much) softer > version involves "who do we become as we assimilate or become > assimilated by these new technologies?". Interest

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Glen - All good fun, meat, empty calories and silly talk alike... I realized near the end of your last post that we are not even really talking about the same thing. I discounted machine intelligence and the transference of the human mind (if not soul??? whatever that wold mean) into hardwar

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Steve Smith wrote at 05/16/2013 02:45 PM: > We are on (yet another) cusp... are you denying the cusp? I am denying the evidence for the cusp (though not necessarily the cusp, itself). I'm a skeptic, which means I'm interested in whatever evidence you think you have. As such, you rightly focus on

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Aha! In spite of your attempts to change the subject, you couldn't help but say something on topic! And I was lucky enough to catch it. ;-) I am often known as "The last of the threadbenders" for sure. And here I go contributing to the "Silly Talk" quotient again (at least Doug's sensitive ea

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Steve Smith wrote at 05/16/2013 11:53 AM: > I understand that the natural myopic perspective across history has our > "recent" events seeming more important or auspicious than perhaps the > older ones, but even factoring that out, I believe there IS some > significant acceleration in technological

Re: [FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Glen - It probably means nothing more than that I should go find (and clean) my reading glasses, but my first read of your subject line gave me "Fidel-istic" as in Castro. And applying cold-war rhetoric, it is easy to think of our man Fidel as having operated his entire "career" as a Fideis

[FRIAM] Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

Given our conversations on the meaning of "faith" and various attempts to discuss the singularity hypothesis, I thought this might be interesting. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-32560-1_19 Selmer Bringsjord, Alexander Bringsjord and Paul Bello > Abstract We deploy a framework