Quote:
Originally Posted by Ugly Bastard
The singularity is already happening. Humans are being integrated by technology. It's a manifestation of us, not a separate thing.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dent
I think there is a difference between integrating with technology and Kurzweil's Singularity, interested in what you mean by manifestation instead of seperate
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Agree with both of your points. Technically speaking (heh), the Singularity seems to have begun the first time a human being used a tool (technology). The Singularity is just one possible outcome of the use of technology, but if biological life is common throughout the universe, then it seems like it would be an eventual step that any evolving species would gravitate towards; Technology could just be a general side-effect of biological life. I suppose there could be species that evolved to be Luddites, though.
UB, I agree that technology is a manifestation of biology. People tend to forget that human beings are not separate from nature, we
are nature. Joe Rogan makes this point often. Some look at humanity akin to a tumorous abberration (even though tumors are also natural) that is doing the "wrong things". Technology is no more unnatural than mud hives, nests, dams, etc. One complex organization of matter is using "less complex" organizations of matter to propogate its own survival. So it goes.
Technology appears to be the "child" of the collective species of humanity in a lot of ways. Right now, it's just a lot of objects we have created. If we organize matter in a way to simulate or surpass human consciousness, one might look at technology as an aging and dying father might look on his youthful, strong child -- who he can "live through" beyond his own passing. Interesting to think about, in any case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ugly Bastard
What do you mean by events will no longer be able to be predicted in real time?
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I'm not quite sure I fully understand it either, which is why it creeps me out so much, but in a good, Twilight Zone sort of way. The statement, if it means what I think it does, is fundamentally beyond most human comprehension.
Statistics, as humans know the concept of Statistics, might cease to work in the benefit of humanity. New beings will be then be able to collect, analyze, and understand the consequences of variables we can't even fathom.
If one accepts a human being as an organic structure that has the ability to process information from its external environment, using various sensory abilities from evolved organs, one must admit that there are very real limitations to human sensory perception (from which we define and 'understand' all things). It is why we have always invented machines -- machines capable of doing things more efficiently than humans or for doing things that we cannot. Try to think of how different your every day reality would be if humanity had an extra sense --- if you could see ultraviolet or infrared spectrums.
If we are able to create computers capable of thinking, reasoning, (aka data interpretation) far better than humans, what will those machines end up doing? When events are happening too fast for the human brain to keep track of (think of what happens if you miss a day on Reddit or your favorite website), what will become of "us"? The mystery is really what excites me.
This is where transhumanism comes in --
becoming the technology rather than keeping separate, defined lines. Implementing biology with technology might just be the "destiny" of human species.
We might be the Borg.