On Wed, 2002-07-31 at 10:51, Ben Goertzel wrote: > > Well, I'm 35, and in my view the transition from 20 year old Ben to 35 year > old Ben has not been any kind of "subjective Singularity." Perhaps I'm overly skeptical, but I seriously doubt that your 20 year old self could have modeled the world at anything even remotely resembling the complexity that your 35-year-old self does. And multiplying that by several billion humans living longer than they would in a primal state leads to the conclusion that the world is vastly, subjectively different today than at any time in history. > Certainly nowhere near comparable to, say, the transition from primate mind > to human mind. And I think that the subjectivity shift to come, based > on neuromodification, uploading, and so forth, is going to be at least > as big as the shift from primate to human. Indeed. But arguing that *another* transcension is imminent in no way detracts from the position that we, as a species, have already transcended our historical notion of humanity at least once. Moving from nomadic groups of 30-50 individuals to a globally networked civilization with members who regularly interact with thousands of others is a change of such magnitude that it is hard to appreciate, especially from our privileged perch within the process, the true scope of the alterations. daniel -- Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.