From: Joshua Fox (joshua@joshuafox.com)
Date: Mon Feb 06 2006 - 13:59:15 MST
Greetings,
I read Vinge's fiction years ago and enjoyed it. Only recently, however,
I read the works of Yudkowsky and Kurzweil, and the idea clicked. I get
it. SL4.
Details about me are at http://www.joshuafox.com. As my initial
contribution to the dialog, let me offer this:
Singularity theory, in order to be intellectually honest, takes a hard
look at all possible objections. Though we can try to consider all
objections to details of the theory, we have to be sure that we are not
deluding ourselves. One way to understand how the whole theory might be
wrong is to find historical parallels to the meta-features of the theory.
Socialist theory of the late 19th Century and Singularity theory of the
early 21st both believe that inevitable forces of history take the world
through successively more evolved phases, which must inevitably
culminate--within a few decades of the time of the theorizing--in an
ultimate Utopian phase. Nineteenth Century Socialist philosophers
honestly thought they had a firm _scientific_ basis, and they were
wrong. How can we be sure that we are different?
Joshua
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