[ExI] invisible singularity and SU

[Keith Henson]

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 4:27 PM,  Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:

snip (generally good stuff)

Por favor, use double spacing between paragraphs.  Indents help a lot,
but there is nothing like white space to make a wall of text easier to
read.

Re Sigularity Utopia, our big objection seems to be that she (female
47) is not rooted in physical reality.

Well, she isn't the only one.

Couple of weeks ago I went to the graduation of the Singularity University.

Oy Vey!  talk about disconnected from reality.

Not *one* of the presentations would have stood up to a physics based
reality check.

The one on food, for example, didn't even have a clue about the number
of square meters it takes to grow food for one person.  For a human
density like that found in cities it is *impossible* to grow enough
food for the people who live there.

The closest to reality was a microwave powered space vehicle.  But
even there they made the fundamental error that you could fly in
circles around a tracking microwave transmitter till reaching escape
velocity.  If you are low enough to get lift up to the task of turning
a vehicle, you are low enough to burn up at anything close to orbital
speeds.

I asked and only about 15% of the people in that class were engineers
or people who could run the numbers to see if it was within reason.
They need to seed the classes with more engineers or sort out the
candidates to be more aggressive in the physics analysis.

Sorry to be a party pooper, but until we disconnect from the physical
universe, we are bound by the rules.

Keith