Some argue that the Singularity will not be reached because of economic barriers. As the "easy" scientific and technological advances are reached, the difficult ones will demand more and more sums of money/time/effort to be accomplished, and so at some point it will simply not be financially attractive to invest in innovation anymore.
This argument was one of the many exposed by John Horgan in his "The End of Science" in the 90s. And there is a more recent and highly controversial article that claims it is already happening: http://tinyurl.com/n6zsk On 10/4/06, Joshua Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Could I offer Singularity-list readers this intellectual challenge: Give an argument supporting the thesis "Any sort of Singularity is very unlikely to occur in this century." Even if you don't actually believe the point, consider it a debate-club-style challenge. If there is already something on the web somewhere, could you please point me to it. I've been eager for this piece ever since I learned of the Singularity concept. I know of the "objections" chapter in Kurzweil's Singularity is Near, the relevant parts of Vinge's seminal essay, as well the ideas of Lanier, Huebner, and a few others, but in all the millions of words out there I can't remember seeing a well-reasoned article with the above claim as its major thesis. (Note, I'm looking for "why the Singularity won't happen" rather than "why the Singularity is a bad idea" or "why technology is not accelerating".)
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