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“To appreciate the nature and significance of the coming ‘singularity,’ it is important to ponder the nature of exponential growth. Toward this end, I am fond of telling the tale of the inventor of chess and his patron, the emperor of China. In response to the emperor’s offer of a reward for his new beloved game, the inventor asked for a single grain of rice on the first square, two on the second square, four on the third, and so on. The emperor quickly granted this seemingly benign and humble request. “One version of the story has the emperor going bankrupt as the sixty-three doublings
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Humanity was fiercely tribal.
His initial breakthrough had come when he had devised an ingenious method for creating stable metallic hydrogen,
In 1996, Eastman Kodak was a hundred-year-old powerhouse with one hundred forty thousand employees and a valuation of twenty-eight billion dollars. Yet a mere sixteen years later, the company was filing for bankruptcy, a T. Rex dinosaur that had failed to fathom the disruptive power and game-changing impact of the digital photography revolution.
But the job losses the Luddites of England feared never came to pass. Because of greatly increased efficiencies and cheaper goods, by the end of the nineteenth century, there were four times as many factory weavers employed than there had been during this movement.
In 1830, America’s farmers comprised seventy-one percent of the workforce. Yet, in modern times, this number had plummeted to less than two percent.
But we make allowances for human colonization. My job is to be sure we have a chance to scour a planet for alien life—before we contaminate it for good. If we find life on Mars, we want to know it really is Martian, and not just the descendants of microbes from Earth that managed to hitch a ride
H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds,” she continued. “Our bacteria got them. Given my job, the final passage of this novel is my all-time favorite. Wells wrote that the moment the invaders landed, and I quote, ‘our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. It was inevitable.’” “That’s good stuff,” said Moro wryly. “If this Wells guy keeps at it, he might just make it as a writer.”
“I’m all for other forms of life,” said the president. “As long as they don’t do anything to interfere with ours.
“You know what they say, what happens in the Amazon basin, stays in the Amazon basin.
technological singularity. This can be roughly defined as the point at which man merges with machine and reaches the point of runaway advancement. A huge, exponential burst forward that quickly leads to superintelligence, as man becomes some sort of super-entity. Basically with the capabilities and immortality of a god. A super-species that is unfathomable to Homo sapiens.”
She was quite attractive, but she was also dumb as a rock. Scary dumb.
Amazon survival guides warned about the dangers of traveling in broad circles. The jungle terrain had a way of all looking the same, turning the rainforest into the ultimate minotaur maze.
two-striped forest pit-viper—or
All objects moved through space-time at the exact same rate. The probe had been moving through space at such a high velocity, it had barely moved through time at all.
Richard Feynman’s talk in 1959 entitled, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom.”
The automated self-construction of a human being from a single cell, including a working brain hundreds of billions of neurons strong, was a staggering, mind-boggling feat of engineering. But since nature made this look relatively easy, it was largely taken for granted.
“Bugs don’t breathe like we do,” he began finally. “Air comes in through holes in their abdomens and shuttles along tubes.” “You mean they don’t breathe in and out, right?” “Right. It’s passive. The air just kind of travels through them. Which isn’t as efficient as our system. So the bigger the bug, the harder it is for it to get the oxygen it needs. In prehistoric times, the oxygen content of the atmosphere was fifty percent higher than it is now, so the bugs back then could grow a lot bigger. Hundreds of millions of years ago, there were dragonflies with two-foot wingspans.”
“It’s about the size of a bloated orange, mate. How much harm can something like that do?”
my creators have constructed me with a complex regulator, ensuring that I never achieve the independent thinking of a fully sentient being. Ensuring that I’m unable to initiate self-directed runaway evolution.
Yet you have learned that eighty-five percent of them are part of binary star systems,
“So all of you are here to take your species’ final exam. You are here so I can determine which sect of humanity is best suited to reach the singularity. Which is best suited to form the starting material for a super-civilization more powerful than any of you can even comprehend. One whose members will achieve virtual godhood. To determine which sect has the cultural, philosophical, and intellectual traits that will give you the best chance to prevail against the coming ASI.
“What you humans would call a catastrophic thinning and homogenization of the herd will actually dramatically increase your chances of species survival. This homogenization will eliminate serious conflict between members of your species, create a truly unified purpose, and lead to immortality.
not just a doctor who sees individual patients, but one who discovers cures that can impact the entire human race, enabling humanity to reach immortality escape velocity.”
Perhaps his IQ really was higher when she was fully clothed.
Ella grinned. “Wow, you really are as quick on the uptake as advertised.” “Well, yeah,” replied Kagan with a smile. “Now that you’re fully dressed and all.”
I knew that acting dumb would make you crazy, make you feel superior, and lower your guard. All of which could help reveal your personality and true nature.”
“I noticed,” said Kagan. “Apparently combat training comes along with the enhancements.” “As it did for you. Both of our jobs have their dangers. And as you know, my goal is to live forever.
Feynman spoke of them in his original, groundbreaking lecture on nanotechnology. In a section he called ‘swallowing the surgeon.’
researchers genetically engineered increases in an NMDA glutamate receptor subtype in mice. This receptor is known to affect memory formation and long-term potentiation. The result was a mouse that learned faster, and had a better memory. They called it Doogie mouse,
“You only think you’d have backed out. When you have a shot at something this irresistible,” he said, gesturing to himself, “you don’t have second thoughts.”
Her timing with men had been bad before. But never this bad.
The Aussies had been a prime example of a more measured aggression. But Seeker had seen to it that this was no longer true. Seeker had made certain that even the least violent operatives in the jungle would have no choice but to become pitiless assassins, killing all comers indiscriminately in a lethal free-for-all.
‘let’s make like a fetus and head out,’
So Ella was attractive, brilliant, witty . . . and a Star Trek geek? Wow, he thought. She might just be the perfect woman. He made a mental note to marry her if they ever survived.
Israelis had gotten there first. For a country of less than ten million people, their scientific achievements had been extraordinary. On a per capita basis, their citizens had the most MDs and PhDs of any country in the world, and had been awarded the highest number of Nobel prizes.
“If nothing exists outside of yourself, if you inhabit the entire universe, if you are all there is—in all of time and space—then what do you have to compare yourself to? If you’re the only being in existence, you’re the strongest being there is, but also the weakest. The biggest, and also the smallest. Without contrast, nothing has scale. You’re everything, but also nothing. Worse still, you’re destined to go through infinity and eternity with no external stimulation of any kind.”
Struggle, purpose, accomplishment, and challenge are what truly brings meaning to existence.
The ASI wants you to believe it exterminates other species for noble purposes. It’s hard for me to believe that this could be true. But even if it is, when you boil it down, this is all just a game to it.”
“The conclusion is obvious. The Androms didn’t instruct you to run things this way. The ASI did. Maybe because it gets its jollies from watching such a contest.
“War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern invention.” —Henry Maine
“Yes,” replied Seeker. “I’ll have my nanites build a spacious city underground to house them.
“In addition to being my envoy,” continued Seeker, “until your world reaches consensus on the best path forward, which could take some time, I’ll be taking my marching orders from the two of you, as well.”
“Because war, terrorism, violence, mass shootings, and so on are all around you,” replied Seeker. “They seem worse than ever now because you have twenty-four-hour news channels, which bring you constant examples of violence and barbarism from the most remote corners of the globe. These outlets, with the aid of social media, spread and amplify the bad news much more effectively than the good. Plus, few of you are able to put the current age into historical perspective.”
“The An Lushan Revolt in China in the eighth century killed thirty-six million people,” continued Seeker. “Greater than ten percent of the world’s population at the time. This would equate to almost a billion deaths today. The Mongol conquests of China in the thirteenth century killed over half a billion by today’s standards. The Fall of Rome, hundreds of millions.
“Because hope and optimism doesn’t sell nearly as well as pessimism and despair. Your news outlets earn clicks and viewership by sowing alarmism and division. Your social media plays to addictions and creates unprecedented social pressures. You’re wired by evolution to find bad news more motivational than good. To seek it out. “If your ancestors heard the rustle of a friendly breeze far away in the tall grass, and ran away, mistaking the breeze for a lion, this cost them very little. But if they heard the rustle of a lion in the tall grass, and mistook it for a friendly breeze, this would cost
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He paused for effect. “After you brought up the inertial dampener from Star Trek, it became clear to me that I had to marry you someday. Just so you know.” “That’s what it takes to get you thinking a woman is marriage material?” she said with a grin. “The inertial dampener? Really?”
douglaserichards1@gmail.com.
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by Matt Ridley The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, by Steven Pinker, Harvard Professor and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Abundance: The Future is Better Than you Think, by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
2017 article from Singularityhub.com entitled, “How a Machine That Can Make Anything Would Change Everything.”
