[ExI] what if... the singularity isn't near?

[Brent Allsop]

Yes, that is what I consider my purpose in life.
How many people die, on earth, today?
If we can move the singularity (definition: when the last person dies) up,
think of how many eternal lives you will save.
That much pressure is quite troubling, when you think about it.  It
certainly causes me a lot of stress and guilt, when I'm not working on this
as hard as I can.



On Tue, Nov 4, 2025 at 8:36 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Consider: what if it is still a few decades off, so what we do today still
> matters.  What can we do today to make it more likely that it will
> eventually come about, and that it will do so in a way that we benefit from?
>
> On Tue, Nov 4, 2025, 9:33 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> OK sure, this site is all about the singularity being near, and OK sure,
>> I am a big heretic for even entertaining the notion it might not be.
>>
>>
>>
>> But what if… the Singularity is a coupla decades off still, and Kurzweil
>> was mostly right, but off a little, and the Singularity is still coming but
>> not right away?
>>
>>
>>
>> Then what?  Do I get to sell Singularity insurance?
>>
>>
>>
>> Because it appears to me that what we are calling AI might be a kind of
>> false alarm: a big advance in smart search might make us think the
>> Singularity is nearer than it really is.
>>
>>
>>
>> Then what?  What if… intelligence really is substrate dependent for
>> reasons we don’t currently understand, or the Singularity depends on
>> technology we don’t yet have.
>>
>>
>>
>> Then we would predict the Singularity sooner than it is, ja?
>>
>>
>>
>> Singularity thinkers come on, help me Obi wans, alla yas: might we be in
>> a situation where we are fooling ourselves?  OK then what please?
>>
>>
>>
>> spike
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