[ExI] RIP Singularitarianism
A B
austriaaugust at yahoo.com
Wed Jun 20 14:20:38 UTC 2007
Eugen Leitl wrote:
> "People who make actual progress don't have time to
> read this list.
> I mean this literally, if you're on a project, you
> just don't have time
> and focus for this."
Fa Sho! I would really like to individually contribute
to saving the world, but I don't have the skills or
position to do much of anything by myself, in that
regard. That's why I contribute to SIAI, and will
continue to do so. But I do think that there is some
value in having these discussions. Sure, 9 out of 10
suggested strategies for avoiding disaster won't be
helpful at all. But if it wasn't for the
transhumanists making suggestions and offering ideas,
who else would be doing it?
**As an aside, I apologize for calling John Clark a
coward. That was inappropriate, and I regret saying
it.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Herrlich
--- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 08:23:05AM +0100, Russell
> Wallace wrote:
>
> > I was once a Singularitarian. I will not again
> go into the factual
>
> There seems to have been a definition drift (looks
> like SL4 folks did a little
> Wikipedia editing):
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularitarianism
>
> ...
>
> ''Originally the term singularitarian was defined in
> 1991 by Extropian Mark Plus
> to mean "one who believes the concept of a
> Singularity", this term has since
> been redefined to mean "Singularity activist" or
> "friend of the Singularity";
> that is, one who acts so as to bring about the
> Singularity.''
>
> ...
>
> I'm certainly a singularitarian in the sense of the
> original definition.
> I don't completely subscribe to Vingean reality
> models, but a lot of it
> is really down-to-earth and plausible.
>
> > truths and falsehoods associated with this
> belief system (those
> > arguments have been had many a time and oft),
> merely note that I once
> > adhered to it as a system.
>
> Which system exactly? You don't say.
>
> > Why did I change? For factual reasons, by
> turning around and
> > reexamining my inventory of beliefs and
> discarding those that were not
> > supported by material reality, to be sure.
>
> What is not supported by material reality? Your
> hints are very
> difficult to read.
>
> > But also - and to the point - for moral
> reasons. Singularitarianism
> > was once a beacon of hope, to which a good man
> would be proud to
> > subscribe.
>
> Hmm, never subscribed to that particular notion. I
> think any hard
> takeoff (the kind that makes the world outside
> incomprehensible
> over the course of a year, or less) could mean
> wrecking the biosphere,
> and death of a lot of people, or a complete
> extinction.
>
> > What went wrong? Well, it's late in the day.
> The meme pool is
> > poisoned, parasite-ridden. Fear and paranoia
> contaminate it on all
> > sides.
>
> Dunno, looks like a minor storm in a waterglass to
> me.
>
> > And at the end of the day, what drove me to
> unsubscribe from the
> > Singularity list was that the most vocal
> contributors were and
> > remained in a sphexish loop that computers will
> spring out of
> > basements and start devouring human flesh and
> conquering the world.
>
> You must have been on some other singularity list
> than me. The vocal
> contributors have been discussing the issues of
> space delivery, which
> is, admittedly, borderline offtopic for the list.
> The list has been
> really quiet, too.
>
> > Over and over again, I don't mind arguing
> against that nonsense once
> > or twice, but when transmission volume is
> directly proportional to
> > fear and paranoia even - especially - among
> those who claim to be
> > technophiles, who should be forward drivers,
> when it is so tireless
> > that one wonders whether the primary
> contributors live under a bridge,
> > that they have no purpose in life than
> transmitting their parasitic
> > meme complexes... then one must bow out.
>
> Who is precisely the vocal pusher of those
> 'parasitic memes'?
>
> > We may live, break the bounds of time and
> space, become the seed for
> > sentience in this Hubble volume. Or we may die,
> strangled by our own
>
> Hey, we will. (Minus the unknown probability we and
> our technology get
> wiped out by one of them pesky existential threats).
>
> > fear until real death comes for us. Either way,
> explicit
>
> Death will come quite certainly to most to all of
> these who read these
> message, the question however is, who's going to
> come back, if at all?
> (Meaning, do you have a contract, and does cryonics
> work out in the end?)
>
> > Singularitarian work is already dead, cf: SIAI,
> Novamente. All I can
> > do is get on with my own (non-Singularity)
> work.
>
> I don't see particular reasons to limit AI research
> to commercial,
> closed-source efforts. If it's any good, it will
> thrive as an open source
> project. You certainly can continue with what you
> were doing as
> a single guy in your spare time. Progress will be
> slower, but if you
> think it's doomed, I don't see how you expected to
> succeed as part
> of a team.
>
> > My point, though, is that there's a gap in meme
> space: anyone want to
> > coin a philosophy that means making actual
> progress, _no_ parasite
> > memes admitted?
>
> People who make actual progress don't have time to
> read this list.
> I mean this literally, if you're on a project, you
> just don't have time
> and focus for this.
>
> --
> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
> http://leitl.org
>
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