[ExI] Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, Singularitarian Principles. Update?

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Sun Nov 14 17:03:43 UTC 2010


On 14 November 2010 02:22, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> Extrope Dan Clemmensen posted here around 15 years ago his conviction that
> the Singularity would happen "before 1 May, 2006" (the net would "wake up").
> Bad luck.

I still believe that seeing the Singularity as an "event" taking place
at a given time betrays a basic misunderstanding of the metaphor, ony
too open to the sarcasm of people such as Carrico.

If we go for the original meaning of "the point in the future where
the predictive ability of our current forecast models and
extrapolations obviously collapse", it would seem obvious that the
singularity is more of the nature of an horizon, moving forward with
the perspective of the observer, than of a punctual event.

The Singularity as an incumbent rapture - or
doom-to-be-avoided-by-listening-to-prophets, as it seems cooler to
many to present it these days - can on the other hand easily
deconstructed as a secularisation of millennarist myths which have
plagued western culture since the advent of monotheism.

As such, it should perhaps concern historian of religions and cultural
anthropologists more than transhumanists or researchers.

-- 
Stefano Vaj



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