From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Fri Jan 02 2004 - 02:55:05 MST
On Wed, 31 Dec 2003 16:42:09 -0500
"Ben Goertzel" <ben@goertzel.org> wrote:
>
> Robin wrote:
> > The only substantial difference between the
> > singularity and the rapture is that no-one involved in the
> > singularity claims to have had a vision from god.
Hmmm. I had a vision that we are in fact part of God coming into being if seen from linear time perspective or that we are God becoming/being/simulating its beginnings/iterating verself. The vision showed me that the only way to actually acheive everything every religion claims to be its ultimate best aims or the fruit of its practices (and much more) universally is through creation of ever-improving intelligence/wisdom/being. FAI is the current highest technologically grounded form of this. That could at least count as a vision "of god". The vision (as is usually true of these things) was actually quite powerful, deeply moving and integrative and nearly impossible to capture in words.
>
> Singularitarianism takes scientific and rational values as foundational --
> that is what distinguishes it from nearly all religions.
>
Yet it ultimately goes rapidly toward very "godlike" developments and introduces very deep ethical/spiritual/consciousness type problems. We are not content just contemplating the Ineffable but strive to build that which should become so.
> Scientists can get their inspiration from divine visions or from the garbage
> heap. What's critical to science is not the source of inspirations, but
> rather the methodology for validating/falsifying hypotheses. Kekule
> hypothesized the benzene ring partially by hallucinating snakes eating their
> own tails, but this didn't make him believe his hypothesis -- it was just a
> source of inspiration which led him to testable hypotheses.
> Singularitarianism is not a scientific theory in itself, but it holds to the
> scientific method and the accompanying discipline of rational inference.
>
Yes. Make it real.
- samantha
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