[extropy-chat] Singularity econimic tradeoffs (was: MARS: Because it is hard)

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 07:54:47AM -0400, Dan Clemmensen wrote:
> > I cannot make legitimate definite predictions, but I (and many
> others) 
> > can try to
> > make educated guesses based on trends. There is an aphorism in
> marketing:
> 
> The short history seems to show our guesses are perhaps not that
> educated as we like them to be. 

Yes, they are much more wishful.

> 
> > "the only trend you can count on is demographics." Well guess what?
> Moore's
> > law as been as consistent as demographics over at least the last 50
> years.
> 
> Moore's law is about integration density, not computer performance.
> As any exponential process in a finite-resource universe, it's
> bound to start suddenly deviating from reality at some point. 

Quite so. But is the exponential process representative of anything of
any actual utility to the user, or is it just wasted by low quality
software writers, resulting in few perceived changes in computer
performance by the end user? 

Sure, we can process more data, but we are finding that more and more
of the data we process turns out to be crap and Window(tm) dressing.
The biggest beneficiaries of Moore's Law seem to be spammers and
pornographers, who are todays equivalent of the 1980's Apple hippie
wasting his time making fractals rather than writing nobel prize
winning dissertations.

>  
> > Incidentally, I can and have made definite predictions. I agree
> > that I cannot make legitimate predictions :-)  Eight years ago I
> > predicted the singularity within ten years.
> 
> Many people have predicted singularity at 2000+X. Your X was
> unusually short, but many others placed their bets not soon after.
> I put my bets somewhen in 2030..2050 range, IIRC. While this is
> still comfortably remote, I'd now would rather push that date up.
> I would still put it under a century, though. 

I agree. The more we learn, the more we learn how difficult the things
we propose are. I once predicted singularity between 2025 and 2035. I
now push that out to 2040-2060, but only if we avoid destroying
ourselves in the American Crusade or the US-Sino War of 2020.

If the Crusade gets back to our shores in any major way, expect a
revival of Christianity and luddism here, with a possible statutory
interregnum on transhumanist technologies that will bode ill for the
coming US-China confrontation, as China will have no compunctions about
creating the Borg as they see fit.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Chairman, Free Town Land Development
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com


	
		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html