[ExI] BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists

Sat May 19 12:53:22 UTC 2007

I'm a big fan of Ray Kurzweil and I've read all his books. I do not agree to
all his points and you are correct that there are not exponential growth in
all areas. That's also not what Ray believes, if I'm not mistaken. I won't
speak on any others behalf, but here is my view on the way technology and
humanity advances:

As you mention, there are no longer exponential growth in the speed of
travel. There was once an exponential growth, but progress slows down as
there is less room for innovation and there are human, social, biological
and physical challenges and limits that has to be overcome first. When we
defeat those limits and we get new technology that replaces the old, we will
again see exponential growth in areas that we thought and might have looked
like there was no exponential growth. But in the short timeline that people
often see, they don't grasp the whole growth.

My grandparents never left Norway. My dad have traveled to New York and
other US cities, been a little bit around Europe and in the UK. I, on the
other hand, are still young and have traveled many times more than my
parents combined. I take flights many times a month, and it's costing me
virtually nothing compared to few years back. This is exponential growth to
me. Airplane tickets are only getting cheaper and the demand is growing and
getting bigger every day.

Still, the speed of travel have now come to an seemingly halt in growth, but
we should just begin to prepare ourselves for the next step in the
evaluation of travel. Space travel, "rocket" planes, underground super
tunnels (building one from Russia to Canada now, aren't they?), pollution
free and smart vehicles, hover pods and flying cars :)

People look at computer processors and see they don't gain much in Ghz any
longer, but they fail to recognize that it took 11 months from Core Duo to
Core 2 Duo, which doubled the CPU speed! NVidia 7000 series GPU was much
faster than 6000, but the 8000 series double the amount of transistors and
double the speed again!

But looking at computers is not all that interesting, they will just
continue to improve at an even more impressive rate. What is interesting, is
looking at the new types of applications and solutions we can build with the
miniaturizing of the computer power.

You mention the time we spend working, this has been pretty much constant.
The Norwegian government is working towards implementing 6 hour work days,
which I'm all for. There are no reason why most people can't accomplish the
same thing they do in 7 hours, in only 6.

But what I can achieve today in my working hours, is exponential compared to
years back. Software developers continues to get new and improved tools that
applies higher and higher levels of abstractions. This makes us many times
more productive, but we still fail to deliver projects on time. Why is this
so? The expectation of customers and users are exponentially increasing. We
(software developers) can deliver quality and functionality in exponentially
shorter times. Software Factories is one of the new concepts which will
further add abstraction and further reduce time and improve quality by
reducing possible faults. With Microsoft .NET 3.5 (beta) I can make
applications on my couch here within an hour, which would have taken 10-20
man many months. Nobody would even consider financing the type of projects
that are easily done today.

Food production have seen exponential growth in some ways too. There was a
time when most of us had to work the fields in food production. Today, this
is handled by a small group of people and a huge array of machinery. It does
look to have somewhat stopped it's exponential growth, but as many other
things, I think it's just deceiving us. There will come (there has to come)
alternative solutions to how we produce food. I'm a vegetarian and I hope
more people will become so too soon. There is no need to kill other living
creatures to survive, but we continue to burn down forests to give room for
livestock. Laboratory and Factory produced food and supplements will
hopefully be enough for everyone, combined with biological modifications to
our bodies.

Longevity? We live longer than ever before and it's not stopping. While it's
up to every individual to ensure their own quality of life, there are more
and more medicine being researched and produced to help people who can't
control their own eating or ways of life. As I mentioned, I'm still young,
but I'm stronger and better than I have ever been before. Thanks to book
"Fantastic Voyage" :) Exponential longevity right now? I can't see it or
feel it, cause it's outside of my own mental comprehension. In 40-50 years
time, I still won't experience the exponential growth in my longevity, but
my doctor will say I have the body of a 30 year old and I'll live until
2600.

Finally I think the field of robotics is something that people have, is and
will continue to underestimate. While there has been slow and steady
progress in this area and we recently celebrated the 50th birthday of this
field, the current outlook is very good. The Darpa Challenge in 2004, none
of the cars completed. They didn't even get close. In 2005, there was 4 or
something that completed, and in a very good time. Next task, is to make the
autonomous cars run in a real environment with other vehicles.

Unification of the robotics platform (software that works with different
hardware platforms) is an important step that Microsoft have done good
contribution with in recent time with their Robotics Studio platform. And
you know, all it takes is one single general purpose robot that can handle
tasks in the same manner as a human being can. When we get there, the
possibilities are endless.

Argh, now I go on writing lots of hard to follow thoughts of mine... Sorry
for that :)

Regards,
Sondre

(We will have all the energy we need when we become better at harvesting the
natural resources like sun, wind and water. With enough energy, we'll have
the means to do anything, like stopping world hunger)

(Quality of education is all up to the individual, I didn't go to school and
I do lack in certain areas, but what I lack I make up in other areas, like
passion and creativity :)

(My income is not exponential, but it's better than my parents)

(I'm tired of writing now, so I won't read through everything I've written
... mistakes have happened before, so be gentle with me)

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl
Sent: 19. mai 2007 13:15
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: Re: [ExI] BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists

On Sat, May 19, 2007 at 12:31:39AM -0400, Amara D. Angelica wrote:
> Lee Corbin said:
> 
> >It's well to remember that 2012 is as close to us as 2002 was.  
> > I don't expect anything significantly more radical 
> > to happen in the next five years than in the past five.

Five wall clock years is not a long time, right now.

> The Law of Accelerating Returns 
> by Ray Kurzweil
> 
> An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change
is
> exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we

Yeah, if you cherry-pick you data, it can make it look that way.
Is everything exponential, or superexponential? No, unfortunately.

> won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be
> more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns," such
as

Early stages of an exponential function are indistinguishable from
a linear function. Guess where we are now.

> chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's
even

How about energy efficiency? How about travel speed? How about time
you spend working? The length of your vacation? The amount of land
you own? Your income? The quality of the education? Longevity?
Food production? Global death from hunger and disease? Perhaps not
so many exponentials there.

> exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few
decades,
> machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The

Within how many decades, that's the point.

> Singularity -- technological change so rapid and profound it represents a
> rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the
merger

Or extinction.

> of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based
> humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the
> universe at the speed of light.

Making it sound like you invented it all: priceless.

> http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0134.html

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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