“When scientists become a million times more intelligent and operate a million times faster, an hour would result in a century of progress (in today’s terms).”
This whole “singularity” business is just plain silly. Faster is not smarter. Calculating fast is not the same as thinking or even thinking slowly. Is the kid who constantly surfs and texts on his cellphone smarter than the high school student who is slowly pondering over a physics textbook? If you merged the kid with his cellphone, would he be smarter than the high school student who has, in fact, allowed the physics textbook to invade his mind? Yes, a book invades your own mind, if you study its contents intently and learn them. You become one (with respect to that subject matter) with the mind that created the textbook.
In the past, lovers of technology at least knew how to change the oil in their own cars or could repair a broken-down washing machine. Now all they can do is write foolish books about a supposed “singularity.”
Nancy Kress's Sleepless trilogy is somewhat of the anti-Kurzweil. We do see a form of singularity happen, in the ability of some humans to exist completely without sleep. Soon though we get a stratified society of people who can't understand each other, and the brainiest of them all decide one day to guide the human race in a way we might not all like.
Heck, we haven't even successfully processed the creation of birth control yet. I wonder if we'll end up like S.M. Stirling's books out of sheer exhaustion from accelerating progress.
16 weeks ago
Report Abuse
16 weeks ago Report AbuseLink To Comment
This comment has been reported.
Click here
to view it anyway.
“When scientists become a million times more intelligent and operate a million times faster, an hour would result in a century of progress (in today’s terms).”
What will happen to non-scientists?
We have 500 TV channels, but nothing to watch.
This whole “singularity” business is just plain silly. Faster is not smarter. Calculating fast is not the same as thinking or even thinking slowly. Is the kid who constantly surfs and texts on his cellphone smarter than the high school student who is slowly pondering over a physics textbook? If you merged the kid with his cellphone, would he be smarter than the high school student who has, in fact, allowed the physics textbook to invade his mind? Yes, a book invades your own mind, if you study its contents intently and learn them. You become one (with respect to that subject matter) with the mind that created the textbook.
In the past, lovers of technology at least knew how to change the oil in their own cars or could repair a broken-down washing machine. Now all they can do is write foolish books about a supposed “singularity.”
Fortunately such advances will be confined to the Western world only. It’s not like China or Iran will have any role to play…