Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
The Singluarity Is Near (Maybe.)
Posts
Well, that statement is certainly incorrect for our own case, because we, human beings, most certainly are more capable of surviving in more environments and situations than our evolutionary ancestors. By far, actually.
However, even taking human beings as a fluke, you're not taking into account the fact that environments don't stay the same. They change, constantly. Yes, often evolution opts for more specialization rather than a broader survivability, but over an incredibly long period of time broader survivability is going to win out because the world around us is changing. A highly specialized animal will go extinct if its native habitat is destroyed by a natural disaster, a generalized survivor will not. Over time the general survivors are going to win out over the highly specialized creatures.
We havent held on to all of our previous incarnations adaptations. We are adapted to our current environment. Thats it. You could make the argument that our brains allow us to make fire and weapons, I guess. But you said that it was true of all animals.
I just want to point out that evolution isnt leading us or anything to a certain place. All it does is change organisms over time. This is a fact. Its not progress, its just change.
A human being can survive for months in the cold of antartica, which is a place vastly different from where we evolved. Our distant rat-ish ancestor could not. Because of our ability to develop novel solutions to problems we are better able to survive in changing environments. The effect of environmental changes on our bodies is inconsequential, whether we're more likely to freeze to death in cold weather doesn't matter because we have brains that invented heaters.
And it is true that all animals are more capable than their evolutionary ancestors at general survival (though maybe not all of their ancestors). The first life-forms couldn't hope to have anywhere near the sort of resilience or reproductive capability that living things today do.
I'm not arguing that evolution is some divine plan purposefully taking us in a direction, I'm arguing that evolution is going to take us in a particular direction simply because of its nature. It's inevitable that evolution will produce more complex creatures and better all-purpose survivors, because logically it has to. It will inevitably drift in that direction.
Nonetheless, a couple failed harvests in the wake of, say, an asteroid, and we go extinct. The horseshoe crab keeps going.
If there was ample incentive I'm pretty positive that our technology would allow us to create a self-sustaining colony on Antartica. I also doubt that it's actually that easy to make the entire human race go extinct in a non-world-destroying situation, in fact I think it's nearly impossible. I doubt that any disaster that would not cause nearly every other animal on the face of the earth to go extinct would actually cause the human race to die off entirely. Maybe it could've happened much earlier in our history, now there are six billion of us.
Anyway, that's all besides the point, my earlier statement was that even if you consider humans to be a one-time fluke, evolution will still end up favoring generalized survivors in the long, long run. A specialized survivor runs the risk of having it's environment of choice destroyed and getting wiped out, a generalized survivor doesn't suffer this problem as much. You can hardly say that we, who are astounding generalized survivors as compared to about any other species on this planet, do not display extraordinary evolutionary fitness. Eventually the random number generator of meiosis was going to make something that had our level of adaptability, and once it existed it would do incredibly well.
We evolve as a society and a culture to changes in the environment, instead of on a genetic level.
I am so confused by this. Specialists are number one in evolution, because any generalist is going to lose in every single environment. Just look at how specialized insects are, or even birds for that matter. Some birds can only eat the nectar from a single species of flower.
Not to mention the extreme biomes, such as deserts. All extremist organisms are highly specialized because anything short of that will die.
I think the idea is that it IS Moore's Law, but given a concrete reason why it should exist (which does not currently exist, it's just an observed trend). Moore's Law states that computing power doubles approximately every two years, which is exponential growth.
In mathematics, a singularity is a point with an undefined value. For example, what is 1/x for x = 0? Usually these points have very, very steep growth before and after these singularities, and it's often difficulty to predict their behaviour near singularities (a small, small variation in x near 0 means a HUGE difference in the value of 1/x).
Another good example is sin(1/x). It's undefined and 0, and very difficult to predict nearby since it oscillates so frequently.
While exponential functions do not technically have this singularity, as they become steeper and steeper, it looks as though they are approaching a singularity with unclear behaviour (if we suppose that a function is growing at 100000000000000000000000 units per year, then a change of even a day makes the value of that function vary by a lot of units), and so the term has been coopted to describe technology once it reaches a period of ridiculously steep growth.
It's more of an asymptote?
It's more like, if we're at 10000 units of technology right now, we predict that in 30 years under the singularity model we'll be at 10000000000000000000000000000000000 units of technology, and god knows what that means.
Which is where some of the comparisons to a stock market bubble come in, because it seems implausible that this rate of growth can be sustained. Singularists point out that throughout human history, it basically has been maintained. There has never been a bust of technology progress that has significantly dented this exponential rate of growth.
Technology isn't - more technology enables you to make even more technology faster.
This always amazes me. Simple things like a straight edge--how do you make one today? Probably cut along another straight edged guide. How do you start making straight edges? If I recall properly, the best way is to try to make three, adjusting as necessary, and when all three can lie together in any order with no gaps between them the edges are far more likely to be straight than so many parallel random curves.
Imagine what a pain in the ass that must've been. And now an exceedingly proper straightedge doesn't even cost all that much.
Though perhaps this requires an AI that isn't capable of second guessing itself in a swift fashion--an ability that is astonishing, when you think about it.
What books on this subject are people recommending?
Yes, evolution need not be genetic. That would be an example of one of Kurzweil's "paradigm-shifts", we went from the genetic S curve to the memetic S curve.
On the Singularity in general (and a number of subjects tangential to it, like AI and nanotechnology) there is Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity Is Near.
http://troublethinking.wordpress.com (Updated Wed) http://twitter.com/#!/Durandal4532
I think that's true for some people, but the concept of the Singularity doesn't even necessitate that it must occur within any of our life-spans, it may be a century from now or more. I think people confuse what some people want desperately to happen because of their own personal feelings with this general theory of explosive technological growth.
This. "It's just the Rapture" works for some people who talk about it, but definitely not all.
However, it will be interesting to see computers get so fast and so powerful that they become an even larger part of our lives. Batteries keep getting better, processing power gets cheaper, more efficient, and smaller. The current iphone is like 5 times more powerful than the original Cray supercomputer. That is insane. So basic things like word processing require a tiny bit of the available power of a modern computer. You could make paper with a chip and battery built in that can spell check your handwriting, take dictation, and email itself to your teacher.
Or your cell phone records everything you hear and anytime you need some information, you just ask it a question. Someone calls you and invites you to a party and it automatically sets up an entry in your calendar...
And then you die in your home and your cell phone keeps living your life for you and you become immortal.
Singularity.
On the Singularity in general (and a number of subjects tangential to it, like AI and nanotechnology) there is Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity Is Near.[/QUOTE]
Oh, didn't realize the name of the thread was the title of the book.
In the form of transhumanism it is very much relevant. Though perhaps you could argue that they are one and the same.
I'm willing to cast off my body and augment my brain if those are the only conditions for my survival, but shit I hope it doesn't come to that.
Edit: On computers more powerful than the human brain of course.
Don't worry, just get a plan with Old Glory Insurance.
Yes it will.
AvrahamThetherooTayaZerofillEffefCrimson King LalaboxMortal SkyASimPerson SalWietTheidarTynicSpeed Racer Neotoma Goatmon Larlar Munkus Beaver Day of the BearmiscellaneousinsanitySkull ManDelzhand ==>Caulk Bite 6This assumes that modern computer science even knows how to begin programming an AI that's anything more than a very clever series of routines that at best ape real intelligence.
What irritates me is that this entire argument hinges upon the invention of something that we don't even know how to begin creating. An artificial intelligence that is similar to a human brain is science fiction. No one can claim to know how to even begin programming one.
You might as well worry about scientists inventing a magic wand.
Well, SURE, if you want to equivocate on different meanings of the term "evolution"... you might be right.
But this is of course one of the many problems with the graph, it is invalid to equivocate between the many different meanings oif the term evolution - and pretending that biological evolution is at all like technological evolution and belongs on the same graph and can thus be used as any sort of technological predictor is specious nonsense.
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
What's the difference between "aping real intelligence" and being intelligent?
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
I think its more plausible than a magic wand, since we have biological brains to work from. The rest of your post I agree with though. "The Singularity" is treated as though it is somehow an inevitable development that arises from ever-advancing technology. No. AI would dramatically alter the world, certainly. When will this happen? Fuck knows, computer scientists thought it was just around the corner in the 50s. The brain is very mysterious, and complex functions like "intelligence" or "awareness" are so poorly understood that science can't even define them, let alone re-create them. We've got a ways to go on AI yet.
Other advances like a mind-machine interface, or genetically engineering humans will also have profound influences. When will these occur? Fuck knows. Aside from technical limitations, we get moral questions too which will affect how these things come about. Will technology just advance faster and faster until its out of our control? I don't see how; its the individual advances, and more importantly how they're implemented in the real world that brings about change. I see no reason to think this will continue to accelerate to a singularity, since as I've mentioned nothing else in nature obeys this rule (aside from maybe black holes).
This just made this thread worth it.
Only they really can be reduced to the same thing. At its most basic level evolution via natural selection can be reduced to the simple principle that what is the most likely to continue existing will continue to exist. The same basic process governs all of these things; genetic evolution, memetic evolution, technological evolution. Obviously the underlying mechanisms behind how each of these types of evolution differ but they are all related to the same fundamental concepts. They also build off each-other, genetic evolution enhances memetic capabilities, memetic evolution enhances technological capabilities, etc. Not to mention that each amplifies the ones before it; memetic evolution enhances genetic fitness, technological evolution enhances both memetic and genetic fitness. All of these concepts actually are very closely inter-related.
That's an incredibly, incredibly long way away from creating a program that's intelligent in the same way that humans are intelligent.
Though it's very difficult to come up with an even slightly comprehensive answer, I'll use the example of facial recognition software. It's not intelligent in the way that a human is intelligent; though it can recognise faces using very clever algorithms, it's not doing anything that the programmers didn't originally intend. It's only aping real intelligence, as it only seems to be intelligent.
The magic wand comparison was to bring attention to the fact that programming an artificial intelligence is beyond our current comprehension. It can only be described in the most nebulous terms; sure, we do have the example of a biological brain, but that's still doesn't help us in working out how to make an artificial intelligence beyond "It should function like a biological brain". You also raised the best point against artificial intelligence; a clear, comprehensive definition of intelligence and awareness have yet to be created in a way that would be useful to computer scientists interested in developing an artificial intelligence.
An interface between mind and computer already exists in very primitive forms, but it's only a novel form of input. The science fiction concept of a human brain merging mentally with a computer doesn't exist even in the most primitive form currently. It's an absurdly long way off, if it's ever coming.
Success at cocktail parties?
My question was a Socratic one. There are those who believe a machine which completely reprodcues intelligent behaviour would not be intelligent. This is a flawed position, I believe. On the other hand, the point that there is a qualitative distinction between how we recognise faces and how machines do so is a good one.
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
*sigh*
And when you think about it, planes are really just huge flying bullets.
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
If you're referring to the fact that they're governed by the same principles of aerodynamics and gravity, then yeah.
You don't seem to have any understanding of the ranges of species other than humans, the kinds of natural shocks that are common in geological time or the species that have survived them, what the true meaning of a "general survivor" is (hint: one of the newest species on the planet is not a position to contend for the title), or how common and how easy mass extinction is. Most importantly, you don't understand technology at all. The technology of the last 20 years is the tiny top of the pyramid. At the base of the pyramid are the same things that have been there since at least the Egyptians: rice, potatoes, and wheat, with corn now added. If those fail for a year, it will destroy our civilization. If they fail for a few years, combined with other environmental stressors, we will go extinct. All the people left in a position to live by hunting and gathering would be too close to the edge to survive the other effects of the long winter.
This is all besides the point, of course, which is that evolution is not magical; it cannot override the laws of physics, which state that there are absolute upper bounds to information processing efficiency.
This explains a lot.
Look, evolution is a process that applies only to things that self-reproduce. Specifically, it requires an entity that reproduces itself with minor deviations. Too little or too much and the organism will not evolve at all. Technology does self-reproduce except in nerd fantasies. If we create entities capable of independent self-reproduction, then they will cease to be technology and become organisms.