[extropy-chat] Futures Past

[Daniel Assange]

   "The way to enlightenment is not to admit that
    you know nothing, but to admit that you
    can never know enough."

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Russell Wallace wrote:

> Actually I'm inclined to agree with all this; I'm not a believer in the
> "superintelligent AI pops out of someone's basement into a world that
> otherwise looks mostly like today" scenario, and I was never a great fan of
> Singularity definitions based on unpredictability (then we've had zillions
> of them) or incomprehensibility (I don't believe anything in this universe
> is fundamentally incomprehensible to a sufficiently educated human mind).

That depends upon how you are defining `incomprehensible' and
`human'. There are many concepts, such as the fundamental nature of
quantum mechanics and >3 spatial dimensions, which can only be explained
with mathematical formulae and analogies; imagining such things as they
`truly are' being impossible for the human mind.

> >From a navigation perspective, I think what matters is the event horizon:
> the point at which we can no longer change the outcome, for good or bad; the
> board has been played into either a winning or losing position. That is the
> point which I estimate will come before 2100. (I won't be surprised if it
> comes as early as 2050; I will be surprised if it comes much before that.)
> 
> - Russell
> 

We may well have already passed that event horizon, and are merely not yet
aware of it.

-- Daniel Assange <d.assange at ugrad.unimelb.edu.au>
   "The way to enlightenment is not to admit that you
    know nothing, but to admit that you can never know
    enough."