[ExI] cyprus banks

Tomasz Rola rtomek at ceti.pl
Wed Mar 20 16:52:28 UTC 2013


On Tue, 19 Mar 2013, Eugen Leitl wrote:

[...]
> http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/WER2.html
> 
> "Progress in hardware has followed an amazingly steady curve in the last 
> few decades. Based on this trend, I believe that the creation of 
> greater-than-human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. 
> (Charles Platt has pointed out that AI enthusiasts have been making 
> claims like this for thirty years. Just so I'm not guilty of a 
> relative-time ambiguity, let me be more specific: I'll be surprised if 
> this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.) Now in 2003, I still think 
> this time range statement is reasonable."
> 
> A decade later, less than 17 years remains from that
> point. Wonder whether his assessment hasn't changed 
> meanwhile. 

Oh. I think hardware was a king in 1940-s, after that software became a 
king. I mean, doing new functionality was relegated to software, and 
hardware was more and more expected to just execute software fast(er) and 
reliable(r).

Therefore exciting oneself with great developments in hardware domain 
(true, there is amazing amount of Nobel-level thinking, I admit) is kind 
of like boasting about faster and faster cars, not telling there is not so 
many places to drive them to.

When one looks at software, I might be biased but if there is any kind of 
amazingly steady curve, I wouldn't say it is upwards.

So unless you, predictators reading my words :-), want to build 
Singularity out of transistors (doomed by design, too many elements, 
requires higher level Singularity to build it), you should rather think of 
other ways. Just MHO.

For a start, few words from Niklaus Wirth:

- "Reliable and transparent programs are usually not in the interest of 
  the designer."

- "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster."

[

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth

]

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **



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