Do you think we will experience the singularity or immortality?

Do you think we will experience the singularity or immortality?

I wish so much that it's true. It would be fucking brilliant to stick around another few centuries and see how humanity colonizes the galaxy.

Why no replies? Is this topic really this weird?

There can't be any denying that we are in the middle of unprecedented progress. 25 years ago the web barely existed and now it's a multi-billion dollar industry which connects everyone and everything.

Are there really no visionaries on this boards?

>Do you think we will experience the singularity

If you mean "the singularity" as in "infinite computation", no. This is like Bucky Fuller looking at rates of travel in the 20th century and forecasting that teleportation would be invented by 1990.

If you mean "the singularity" as in "artificial intelligence", well, that's forecasting the development of one technology and amounts to opinion. I actually think that's the weakest singularity theory and it's irritating that the Yudkowski cult has been so successful reframing the whole singularity conversation as the AI question.

If you mean "the singularity" as in "energy rate density on the surface of our planet continues on the curve that it's followed for thousands of years", then yeah maybe that keeps up. The forms that harness the most mass and energy naturally tend to dominate the ones that don't. There are physical limits to how much mass and energy we can engage in productive activity, but those limits are far above the point where the Earth gets so hot that we all die. So if we have control of the situation and have any shred of self-interest, we get off the growth train at some point. Do we have that control? Idk.

If you mean "the singularity" as in "the mathematical singularity that appears in combination-driven models of invention", then yeah that probably happens, ie, the variation in goods produced by humans approaches infinity in finite time. The space of possible configurations of matter at human scale is impossibly huge; we are never going to run out of things to make. It is not hard to imagine that we approach infinite variety with 3d printing and other highly customizable manufacturing methods. But it doesn't necessarily mean anything other than that all your household goods will be snowflake unique.

progress is a myth and technology creates as many problems as it solves

transhumanists are just one of many die a dozen delusional utopians

>Do you think we will experience the singularity or immortality?

No

Nope. The "Singilarity" is just Protestant Estecology projected into Space instead of Heaven.

You have those immaculate bodies of the Elect, the deniers being left behind and everything is 1:1 Luthers wet dream.

We've already experienced some forms of immortality and singularity, such as genetic immortality through cloning, and self-improving robots, although it's incredibly primitive. We'll never see the true "singularity" or "immortality" you envision though user.

I believe that the singularity will just lead to the annihilation of humanity and the robots themselves, regardless.

How is progress a myth? Nobody is forcing me to use all those technologies, but if I want I can.

People in the past couldn't even if they wanted to. That's progress. Being able to do more stuff.

as far as I can tell the best concept of "the singularity" (because it doesn't have the name make no fucking sense) is when we invent something smarter than us which causes all future events to occur beyond the "event horizon" so we can't predict what will happen, like how a housecat can't understand human motivations or intellect so it cannot predict our actions

but humans are already a) not capable of predicting the future and b) full of variation in intelligence levels and mental sophistication which sort of punctures a hole in the theory of the singularity being some sort of unique future event rather than a reality which we live in every day

plus it's the rapture for nerds

...

The myth of progress states that civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction.
The ancient Chinese, Babylonian, Hindu, Greek, Roman, and most of the medieval thinkers supporting theories of rhythmical, cyclical or trendless movements of social processes were much nearer to reality than the present proponents of the linear view.
ultimately it rests upon a mythic history cherry-picked for its rational leanings, though in the end Rationality is a slaves ideology and always brings about the worst

I don't know where you are located but in the past I would have needed to travel weeks or maybe months to reach you and here I can talk to you almost telepathically and in a few seconds.

That's progress.

In the past only a few privileged people were in possession of knowledge and today every punk knows how to read and can acquire knowledge via Wikipedia via his smartphone with a few key strokes.

That's progress.

Let me guess you also think the UNA bomber was right, right?

>most of the medieval thinkers
Did you have a seizure and mistype "pre-Christian Indo-European thinkers"? The myth of progress is directly related to the idea of linear history which is an Abrahamic (And Zoroastrian, but who cares) notion.

>The myth of progress states that civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction.

You can believe in a progression without believing in progress. We measurably do have many more capabilities than we used to, and this can be separated from the belief that we are better than we used to be.

>I don't know where you are located but in the past I would have needed to travel weeks or maybe months to reach you and here I can talk to you almost telepathically and in a few seconds.
>That's progress.

that's rubbish
new technology brings new problems

in the past maybe I couldn;t travel as easily over far distances, but I had significantly more freedom how or where I traveled

today a car for example may take me further, but the necessary rules/limitations that come associatred with that new technology (the automobile) have severely limited my range of motion, both as a pedestrian since roads/cars directly limit my movement, as well as the layout of space which makes movement without cars or opting into the public transport system impractical
where in the past space/urban areas were designed with people in mind.

and Kaczynski was right, progress is a load of rubbish cosmopolitans tell themselves is pulling them along towards salvation in the absence of God

not Catholic thinking, but Protestant as mentioned

You can still walk pretty freely if you want to. You don't want to, though, because you prefer the convenient if constrained modes of travel. Is it progress when your preferred mode of action is prevalent?

I have to fear for my life when I cross the busy road
highways cut up entire regions, plowing through fields and forests, destroying habitat
walking in a medieval city is a breeze, walking in a modern American city is a chore at best, a nightmare at worst.

That's not what singularitarians actually believe, but keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel good.

Why would I care what singularitarians believe, I was just shitposting.

Futurology, especially the singularity, it basically a sophisticated form of science fiction. It allows for escapism, fake moral considerations and manchildry, and is in denial of the delusions it predicates itself on.

People should be concerned with the health of the oceans, environmental degradation, overpopulation and other actually existing problems. As far as I'm concerned as a Marxist futurology is a myth to propagate the current modes of production and to sedate people so they don't challenge it.

Kaczynski was correct about a lot but his primitivism is another form of the same simulacra.

If it's a narrative that seeks an infinite destination at the end of a path that we have been following and will follow, it's likely religious.

Don't count on it. Do your best anyways.

Absolutely, absolutely, abso-fucking-lutely.

A singularity has less than the already dubious chance of happening if the oceans rise and our fields die off.

>As far as I'm concerned as a Marxist
And that's the point I stopped reading and threw you opinion out the window! In all seriousness, though, most futurology takes all of the problems you listed into account and proposes ways likely technologies might be able to mitigate them and to what degree, while still holding an understanding that political and environmental reorganization will likely be necessary to solve many issues accumulating faster than our ability to solve them. If you're unwilling to take potential future technological developments into account (which alter the very means of production that historical change is predicated upon) when formulating plans of action to take to face the imminent future that looms before us all, you're ensuring that you'll be caught by surprise like someone who failed to put together the information available to predict with some accuracy what direction the industrial revolution would take, while those with foresight and curiosity for what lies ahead will rule the world as have all the men even a decade ahead in semi-accurate prediction of what developments were to come. So basically stop talking shit about things you clearly don't understand to any meaningful degree, and kindly suck off a shotgun.

Nobody ever can accurately predict the future. If they could then they would set up trade deals which ensure future wealth.

Hindsight is 20/20

I always get so thrown off by some of the threads on this board.

Is this Veeky Forums related?