/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.5757754]

what does sci think
about the singularity?

[Vencer Vencer !xEmf3BzAWQ No.5757762]

It is baby physics
Team Israel sells it

[Anonymous No.5757771]

Some associations connected with the term are vague and improbable.

But the general idea of transhumanism and rapid transitions is plausible.

It is a huge historical coincidence that intelligence has been connected with human idiosyncracies and human biological specifics. Once intelligence is liberated from those constraints, civilization can change in very rapid and unpredictable ways.

This is clearly a tipping point in history, and we are approaching its technological requirements in this era.

[Anonymous No.5757781]

>>5757762
i was referring to the idea that one day technological development will longer be in the hands of human beings

[Anonymous No.5757785]

>>5757754
You can chart a log-log plot with a straight line on most data sets, it means nothing:

http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/491.html

Also Moore's law has been altered and amended repeatedly to keep it "coming true" and still has been faltering recently.

But if you look at Kurzweil's past, he has a pretty solid track record of delivering positive, beneficial technology for humanity. Dude is pretty legit but the law of accelerating returns is oversold.

Distribution is one hell of a problem and anyone looking to engineer creative disruption must work through constraints at several different levels.

[Anonymous No.5757788]

>>5757754
>the singularity

reported

[Anonymous No.5757789]

>>5757785
engage me in the hypothetical
>>5757781

[Anonymous No.5757798]

>>5757781
Obviously, duh. Homo sapiens in its current form is not the most efficient possible phenotype for anything, including technological development.

The time scales may be questionable, but the predictions that other forms of intelligence, created by technology, will take control from current the Homo sapiens form is almost trivial.

[Anonymous No.5757804]

>>5757789
The current state of technology favors using humans and computers together.

There are a few examples of machines working on their own, Eureqa developed by Cornell labs can pick out mathematical patterns in data. Also very useful in biotech.

I don't see them being a force on their own for the immediate future, even if they do develop sentience they won't be given rights equivalent to humans for many decades after that.

http://www.palantir.com/2010/03/friction-in-human-computer-symbiosis-kasparov-on-chess/
>Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.

[Anonymous No.5757817]

>>5757804
This is consistent with Kurzweil's view that humans and computers will merge.

You can have something like genetically augmented humans with brain implants conntected to digital processors and memory + wireless internet. It doesn't have to be generic AI doing everything.

This can be a gradual process, but the results would lead to a radically different world a few hundred years down the line.

[Anonymous No.5757819]

>>5757804
What does it mean by "weak" and "strong" humans?

[Anonymous No.5757825]

>>5757817
Yes I know I've read all his books and such. It will kick up the pace of innovation, but there are plenty of wildcards to keep things fun.

[Anonymous No.5757851]

I think there are four parameters that can work together to qualify as a Singularity:

1) increases in capability, e.g. intellectual capability
2) increases in efficiency, e.g. optimizing resource use to sustain people/intelligences
3) increases in reproduction and education speed and healthspan (improving the average output/input ratio)
4) increases in total resource access

Technology can do all of these, and all of these can feed back into technological development.

I just hope the outcome is worthy, i.e. contains more pleasure than suffering.

[Anonymous No.5757869]

>>5757819
Read the article, it's talking about chess. A strong human is a good chess player, a weak one is a weak player.

>implying scientists need to read

[Anonymous No.5757989]

It's happening... 2050... mark my words.

If you live to 2050, they can scan your brain and run your mind until the heat death of the fucking universe.

[Anonymous No.5757992]

>>5757989
thats a long time to wait anon

[Anonymous No.5758014]

>>5757992
I don't know. Let's say you can get a million subjective happy years with a probability of 0.1% if you survive til 2050 or 2060.

If you are reasonably young and healthy now, and you believe that this is true, this could be a dominating factor in your life decisions.

[Anonymous No.5758040]

>>5757989
In 2050 I'll come back to sci to say I was right.

[Anonymous No.5758099]

If your brain can be scanned (before you die) in sufficient detail for your identity to survive

and if a stable system can be set up that allows all stored minds to exist for a long time

and if that system is held stable by error correction and digital intelligence

then it seems that you could be looking at a life expectancy of millions of years, possibly billions. Incorrect?

[Anonymous No.5758121]

Singularities aren't physical. They indicate a regime where your theory doesn't work.

[Anonymous No.5758126]

>>5758121
>claim can't describe itself

[Anonymous No.5759381]

>>5758099
Depends if there is something to consciousness beyond brain/nervous system electrical activity. I wouldn't count on my individual experience of life being passed on into a computer no matter how complex. What if there were half a dozen machines that replicated your brain? Would you expect to experience half a dozen perspectives?

That could be an interesting question for /sci/ (that I'm sure hasn't been asked a million times by tourists from /x/): If there is more to consciousness than the nervous system, what is it? Do we have a soul?

[Anonymous No.5759419]

>>5758099
>then it seems that your copy, an entity completely unrelated to you, could be looking at a life expectancy of millions of years, possibly billions.
Fixed.

[Anonymous No.5759431]

>>5759381
>Do we have a soul?
No. That nonsense has been debunked by science. (And no, we don't have to discuss it here again)

>What if there were half a dozen machines that replicated your brain? Would you expect to experience half a dozen perspectives?
If you normally survive six consecutive days, do you NOT experience half a dozen perspectives?

>>5759419
You don't understand what personal identity IS. Ordinary survival is nothing but a copying process: You use food, water and air and copy yourself into it - lossfully.

[Anonymous No.5759440]

>>5759431
You replace the pieces of a ship one by one until all the original pieces are gone.
You build a second ship with the old pieces.

What's the original ship ?
Hint : It's not the second one.

[Anonymous No.5759459]

>>5759440
Imagine you have a mosaic, let's say the Mona Lisa made of glass pearls.

Step by step, you remove the glass pearls and change the colors, until the Mosaic looks like pic related instead.

Meanwhile, for every glass pearl you remove, you put a colored stone of the same color into a second unrelated picture until it looks like the Mona Lisa.

Which one is the Mona Lisa?

[Anonymous No.5759463]

>>5759459
Your pic.
She didn't aged well.

Kept her enigmatic smile, though.

[Anonymous No.5759467]

Personal identity is a question of definition, not fact.

People use pronouns like "me" and "you" naively, i.e. they overlook hidden complexities because they aren't practically relevant to their evolved psychologies.

Some of these complexities will come to relevance in an era where brains can be scanned and replicated.

During this confusion, it helps to remember that personal identity is not a question of fact, it is a question of definition. "You" are what is defined to be "you".

[Anonymous No.5759474]

If uploding involves scanning and copying your brain to another medium and then destroying you, you die. Period. This is not a question of identity or anything like that, it's common sense, but you faggots still have this idea that your identity is something incorporeal and metaphysical and mysterious and not a product of your physical brain.

[Anonymous No.5759475]

>>5759467
No you're fucking wrong nigger. None of what you said makes any logical sense. You don't get to just ignore and play with definitions, that is kike argumentation.

[Anonymous No.5759478]

>>5757819
>weak
Blacks, Mexicans, Southeast Asians
>strong
Whites, East Asians

[Anonymous No.5759483]

>>5759431
If a small part of our brain function was replicated by a machine, would we be partially aware from that machine's POV?

Twins that are born with, essentially, the exact same hardware, do they share one mind?

[Anonymous No.5759487]

>>5759431
You declare there is no soul but you believe in the same shit: "identity" as something that can magically transfer from one physical medium (your body) to another (computer/robot/whatever) while destroying the original.

>Ordinary survival is nothing but a copying process: You use food, water and air and copy yourself into it - lossfully.

None of this has anything to do with what we're talking about you ignorant fag.

[Anonymous No.5759489]

>>5759474
Sad thing is, mind uploading will be the first process to be developped, and the incremental one will never get any funding.

Only death await.
But hey, at least your clone will live quite a long time, neat heh ?

[Anonymous No.5759488]

>>5759475
>You don't get to just ignore and play with definitions, that is kike argumentation.
You don't HAVE a definition of your personal identity. You just have an intuition about it that is transparent to you. If you are replaced by an exact (or even not perfectly exact, but good enough) copy with the same memories, that person will think he is you, and so will everyone who recognizes him.

If you wake up tomorrow, you will think you are the same person as today because you remember it, but if I replace you with an exact copy during your sleep and destroy the original, nothing of relevance has changed. Nothing about your consciousness has changed. Nothing about the world has changed. It will be exactly the same.

People are not essences. That is incompatible with the nature of our brains. We are information, complex patterns. There is no soul pearl that makes "you" "you".

[Anonymous No.5759494]

>>5759483
Minds don't come in countable distinct units. Consciousness doesn't work that way. We just evolved to naively treat it as such to navigate the social world with minimal effort.

[Anonymous No.5759496]

>>5759488
>If you are replaced by an exact (or even not perfectly exact, but good enough) copy with the same memories, that person will think he is you, and so will everyone who recognizes him.


But it won't be you, you won't have the same experiences it does, no matter the outside perceptions of other people.

>It will be exactly the same.

No it won't, because I'll be dead. If you deny this then you don't have a materialistic conception of reality.

[Anonymous No.5759497]

>>5759488
>if I replace you with an exact copy during your sleep and destroy the original, nothing of relevance has changed.
I think being, at best, bound in a basement somewhere, or at worst simply dead is quite the change.

[Anonymous No.5759498]

>>5759494
"Mind" isn't a noun. "Mind" is something your physical brain does.

[Anonymous No.5759503]

>>5759496
>>5759497
Consciousness isn't what you think it is, and personal identity isn't what you think it is. You are using personal pronouns naively and think it gives you special epistemic power.

You just don't see the implicit omission.

[Anonymous No.5759508]

>>5759503
Yes it is. You are wrong, period. You are probably an idealistic mind-body dualist faggot. Go pray to Jesus you irrational nignog.

[Anonymous No.5759505]

>>5759498
>"Mind" isn't a noun.
Go to bed, kiddo.

[Anonymous No.5759511]

>>5759503
Consciousness and personal identity are a result of the electron potentials and neural configuration of our brains. If our physical brain is destroyed these disappear. If you make a copy of a ship and smash the original ship, the new ship doesn't become the original. Your babbling about epistemology doesn't matter. Go pray to Jesus you stupid philosopher faggot.

[Anonymous No.5759516]

>>5759503

[Anonymous No.5759524]

>>5759516
Philosophers are fucking retards. News at 10

[Anonymous No.5759525]

Religion for the nerds.

Not that it can't happen, but everyone seems to gloss over the amount of work it needs to happen. Not to mention that when it does happen (which might be after 60 economic collapses and 10.000 years in the future), probably it will look completely different with whatever you have imagined.

[Anonymous No.5759535]

>>5759511
>>5759511
>Consciousness and personal identity are a result of the electron potentials and neural configuration of our brains.
>neural configuration of our brains
>exact copy
>neural configuration of our brains
>exact copy
>neural configuration of our brains
>exact copy

The person who will wake up in your bed tomorrow does not have the same
>neural configuration
as you do. A perfect copy does.

It is you who implies dualism by imagining a magic essence or consciousness token that exists outside of the
> neural configuration of our brains

[Anonymous No.5759596]

>>5759535
You.... you're right. I hadn't considered it that way!

[Anonymous No.5760129]

>>5759487
>You declare there is no soul but you believe in the same shit: "identity" as something that can magically transfer from one physical medium (your body) to another (computer/robot/whatever) while destroying the original.

Identity is about properties. If you have two systems with precisely the same properties, they are identical.

If you could copy a ship, or a person, and keep all properties precisely the same, there would be no fact of the matter which is the copy and which is the original. (In practice, properties are never all the same, e.g. location in space, building materials etc. are often slightly distinguishable)

If you could replace a person with an exact copy of that person in the same context, it would be the same person. It would have the same consciousness. If you don't believe this, you are a dualist.

If all the physical facts about the world state are identical to the alternative world state in which the person wasn't replaced by a copy, and you don't believe in dualism, then you must believe that all the facts about consciousness are also identical.

[Anonymous No.5760171]

Taking a pole on the singularity, eh? Some will say it's essential... to avoid it. Some will say the threat is quite removable. Others will say it's not so simple. Some slick talkers say it's not there at all! I say there will be residu-al effects. Whatever the case, we must surely Riemann Roch solid in our resolve... help me out here... I'm dying!

[Anonymous No.5760496]

>>5757992

Less than 40 years man. If you are in your teens (like most on /sci/) or twenties and don't kill yourself doing dumb shit, you'll see it.

[User !!rEkSWzi2+mz No.5760499]

there are more imprtant things to worry about

[Anonymous No.5760506]

If there is one thing I took away from Uni its something that my old quantum physics lecturer told me. He's been around the subject for 45 years and went to loads of conferences over the last few decades. He summed it up:

"When old, distinguished scientists say something is possible, they are almost certainly right. When the same people say something is NOT possible, they're almost certainly wrong."

Remember when the patent office thought it had to close in 1903 'cos everything that was going to be invented...had already been invented? Yeah, that's right.
People who sit there and say NOPE NOPE! CAN NEVER HAPPEN! YOU'RE DREAMING! NO WAY IN HELL! NOT UNTIL 2500AD AT THE EARLIEST! Those people really are the most blinkered and often between 18 and 25 years old. They have no comprehension of how much things change and how fast they change as they haven't lived long enough to see it.
Its only when you compare the brick of a mobile phone you carried 15 years ago to the slim thing you have in your pocket that has more power and function than all the computers in your school 15 years ago that you begin to realise how much shit can change in only a decade or two.

But sure, keep saying it won't happen. Keep saying no. You'll feel better.

[Anonymous No.5760513]

>>5760129

This just goes back to that:
"If you stepped into a teleporter and you were instantly destroyed while being cloned at the new location, would you use it?" question.

[Anonymous No.5760541]

>>5759440
You replace the pieces of a ship one by one until all the original pieces are gone.
You build a second ship with the old pieces.
And then you build a house with the pieces of the original ship.

[Anonymous No.5760569]

>>5760506

>This

[Anonymous No.5761029]

>>5760513
Yes. And of course I would use it, as long as it works reliably and no one tampers with it etc.

[Anonymous No.5761170]

Identitybros: I recommend a film called Upstream Color, because it inherently deals with all these ideas. Though on a more philosophical level

[Anonymous No.5761180]

pseudo-scientific religious nonsense

more scientism than science