Re: The limits of complexity & change

From: Michael Roy Ames (michaelroyames@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Apr 20 2003 - 08:46:42 MDT


Dear Amara,

In Theodore Modis' article he presents patterns in complexity change and
fits them to various models. Ray Kurzweil has done this also. Upon
first reading these models and the data fitting to them, they struck me
as compelling. But when looking at the assumptions implicit in the
projections, the predictions of the amount of future complexity change,
compulsion turned into conniption.

The assumption that both make is that the 'rules' stay the same. The
'rules' being our unintelligent universe continuing to unfold randomly,
chaotically, and with no purpose or plan.

I cannot speak for other Singulatarians or even SL4, but it is my
understanding that the 'rules' are about to change. Once we have
created the ability to intelligently modify (read 'improve') an
intelligence, most of the existing rules will lose almost all of thier
influence to constrain complexity change. And because of this, some of
the most basic assumptions that these fine scholars are relying upon,
will be invalidated.

Don't get me wrong! Up until the moment that we actually create such an
intelligence, the models *are* compelling... and the implications of the
models should be widely discussed - for the edification and benefit of
all. My point is that intelligence is orthoganal to these models. It
just won't fit.

Michael Roy Ames

---- Original Message ----
From: "Amara D. Angelica" <amara@kurzweilai.net>
To: <sl4@sl4.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2003 4:25 AM
Subject: The limits of complexity & change

> In "The limits of complexity & change," May-June 2003 The Futurist
> (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/tmodis/Futurist.pdf),
> Theodore Modis presents a logistic model of complexity that asserts
> that "the rate of change may soon slow down." >
> I would be very much interested in comments by SL4 list members.
>
[huge snippage]
>
> Amara D. Angelica
> Editor, KurzweilAI.net



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:42 MDT