[ExI] The Higgs Boson *is* the singularity

[Tom Nowell]

Before you skip this message, let me assure you I have never advocated such a thing. Let me tell you how I heard this immortal sentence in my local library.

I became unemployed two weeks ago. After firing off a few online job applications, I like to go to my local library to peruse books and read newspapers. I was reading the Financial Times for the energy news, when I overheard a man say "The Higgs Boson *is* the singularity!" My first reaction was "did he just mention the singularity?" My next reaction was "That doesn't make sense! It's not even wrong!" Perhaps I was being uncharitable - perhaps he meant it in a purely mathematical way and was describing mathematical physics. No, it became clear on listening the white-haired man was telling the younger man a mix of cosmology, theology and technobabble. "Is God matter, dark matter, antimatter? You understand these things, you read." Being British, I was of course far too reserved to interrupt their conversation and point out that a creator deity / great simulator is free to construct their universe as they see fit and can emulate it on whatever substrate
 they feel like. As the conversation runs on, I wonder how the thoughts and jargon got into the older man's head to construct these arguments.

 He tries to get the younger man to look at a website on the library computer - at this point I suddenly get the urge to return the newspaper to the stand and walk past the computer they are looking at. I see in white the word "ZEITGEIST" against a black background and it becomes clear - the old guy has seen the Zeitgeist movement's material, tried to mesh it with his own cosmology and is making a really bad job of explaining it to a stranger in a library. 

Brothers and Sisters and post-gendered relatives in Extropy, I had a failure of nerve and did not take this chance to steer the two men towards a more solidly Transhumanist viewpoint. I have failed in the great commission to evangelise our beliefs. That, and I'm not sure directing them to H+ magazine's website would make an effective quick answer, and I didn't want to spend hours carefully explaining the finer points of philosophy to them, especially when the older guy made me wonder if he was on antipsychotic medication.

I have a feeling that when singularity thinking meets the local eccentric folk, this sort of thing could happen quite often.

Tom
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