Hi Udhay : I have been following this idea of a Technological Singularity for a while (quite a few years), and need absolutely no education on the topic. In fact, I went to a Singularity meetup in Berkeley yesterday (even though I am quite skeptical about the entire concept) and met some of the people interested in this topic. The profile of the "very Berkeley" crowd there did not surprise me. I will say no more about the profile of the people there because, one, that might make me seem biased whereas I am not, and because, two, they seem to be a bunch of earnest people who genuinely seem to think that this is a serious issue and I do not want to get in the way of other people's earnestness. --- In [email protected], Udhay Shankar N <udhay@...> wrote:> > On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 11:15 PM, Anand Manikutty > manikuttyanand@... wrote: > > > There has been a lot of interest around the idea of the technological > > singularity. There is even an operating system by Microsoft carrying that > > name. Anyway, I have been quite skeptical about the whole concept. > > <snip> > > > What I would like to note (perhaps it is a new claim, but it is a rather > > obvious one) is that businesses are not interested in developing > > technologies that could spiral out of control. The potential damage to a > > business is too great. > > You seem to be assuming that businesses (or anyone/anything else, for > that matter) can even know all possible outcomes of a "technology". > This seems obviously mistaken.No, I am not making any such assumption. I am arguing for a consequentialist model of sorts (although I am by no means a consequentialist in philosophy). I am for a dynamic approach to innovation wherein innovation is not regulated simply because of hypothetical scenarios. As I mentioned before, I think this is a reasonable hypothesis to work with, but I am very skeptical about the concept of a Technological Singularity as are many others.> > Have you read the original Singularity paper by Vernor Vinge [1] ? > He's also done a talk on "What if the Singularity does not happen [2]? > where he reiterates his belief that the Singularity is still the most > likely non-catastrophic outcome of current human activity. Yes. I have read the original paper by Vernor Vinge and this follow up talk. > Overall, either I am not understanding something basic in your > position, or it is not fully thought-through. Say more? Technological systems, businesses and social systems work together. Technology is not developed in a vacuum - it needs to be deployed somehow - and it is at the point of deployment of technology that regulation by government kicks in. That sort of regulation seems to be all that is needed, the sort of the system that is already in place. It is true that businesses may not be able to identify all the risks involved in a project because of uncertain outcomes (My analysis does not suffer from the rather obvious shortcoming you point out - in fact, I made a post on the "bounded rationality" concept in a previous post on this topic on my List for those unfamiliar with the idea. ). I would go further than that - businesses may not identify all the risks in a project even if it *is* possible to evaluate the likely scenarios of risk since they may simply not have the time or brainpower to do so. But the consequentialist model of allowing businesses to innovate and to develop new technologies, and then holding them responsible for outcomes has the advantage of greater dynamism. Innovation should not be regulated simply because of hypothetical scenarios. The fact that I could tell them about Noam Chomsky's response to my email did impress the people at the Singularity meetup. Again, the fact that we are both skeptical about the concept having arrived at our conclusions independently should provide indirect evidence that there may not be much to this. I wish the Singularity people luck, but my skepticism has, if anything, been deepened.Anand
> Udhay > > [1] http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/WER2.html > [2] http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/longnow/ > > -- > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) >
