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It's times like these that I end up writing. I'm sitting by the lake, feeding mosquitos that will feed fish. Catch a fish and I complete the cycle.
My last few exams are approaching this weekend, my last few days with classmates and chums before we all go flying off to places near and far, taking our places as minor stars in the constellation of managers, financiers, and consultants that this school has convinced us drives the world forward.
What actually drives this world forward, though?
What actually makes this world a better place?
The funny thing about that question is that it is literally Cthulhu. It is the first step on a twelve-step program into madness. Dwell too hard on it and you might end up a philosophy professor, running for president, or starting a religion - all paths that end in individual insanity at best and collective insanity at worst.
Lovecraft had it right. The ones who stay sane are the ones who stumble into this situation and then run away without looking back. Everyone else ends up sacrificing themselves on the altar to the Elder Gods or killing to maintain the fiction that all is normal in the town of Innsmouth.
And yet I will state, here, that I have found one small step to making this world a better place.
Inequality and the singularity will be the end of humanity as a species. I mean that in the literal sense, as the rich gain access to the tools by which to direct their own evolution, and in a more figurative sense. Since the Tower of Babel, the trade of goods and services has been the dominant conversation of humanity. This will soon become a one-sided conversation between the minority who own intelligent machines and the silenced majority, whose marginal economic value becomes less than zero.
To make this world a better place, we must find a way to make the singularity relevant to all of us, since we cannot stop it from coming. I wish I knew how. Or maybe even one small piece of that answer. But all I know is how to make the singularity relevant for me. So maybe, your mission becomes a personal one - how to make it relevant for you. And then, when you have that answer, you will be able to help those next to you (just like those cheerful safety handouts in commercial aircraft).
As we grow older, ideals never die, they just fade away. This is one ideal where the colors are bleached. All I can do now is figure it out for myself, and wish you well on your attempt.
 
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As much as your colorful writing looks nice and fluffy, why bother being melodramatic and borderline cryptic about your concern about our future? Seems like you're voicing a call to action in a way that most people won't understand, defeating the purpose of writing it in the first place.
What is the singularity? Why does "the singularity" threaten us? If it's basically AI, why call it by a term which is essentially sci-fi?
A few days ago I was listening to a podcast with Joe Rogan and Sam Harris and they briefly spoke of the old topic of AI's surpassing human intelligence and the various concerns that range from humans being irrelevant to the economy all the way up to essentially terminator-type scenarios. Yet I see no reason to predict with a ridiculous level of certitude the end of our species.
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On June 04 2016 03:37 Djzapz wrote:
As much as your colorful writing looks nice and fluffy, why bother being melodramatic and borderline cryptic about your concern about our future? Seems like you're voicing a call to action in a way that most people won't understand, defeating the purpose of writing it in the first place.
What is the singularity? Why does "the singularity" threaten us? If it's basically AI, why call it by a term which is essentially sci-fi?
A few days ago I was listening to a podcast with Joe Rogan and Sam Harris and they briefly spoke of the old topic of AI's surpassing human intelligence and the various concerns that range from humans being irrelevant to the economy all the way up to essentially terminator-type scenarios. Yet I see no reason to predict with a ridiculous level of certitude the end of our species.
Singularity is a fairly common term, and has an actual scientific/mathematical origin and is not just "sci-fi."
The singularity threatens us because creating self-replicating machines ensures an exponential growth and depletion of resources. That's just one possible threat/hypothesis/interpretation; there are many others.
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On June 04 2016 06:37 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2016 03:37 Djzapz wrote:
As much as your colorful writing looks nice and fluffy, why bother being melodramatic and borderline cryptic about your concern about our future? Seems like you're voicing a call to action in a way that most people won't understand, defeating the purpose of writing it in the first place.
What is the singularity? Why does "the singularity" threaten us? If it's basically AI, why call it by a term which is essentially sci-fi?
A few days ago I was listening to a podcast with Joe Rogan and Sam Harris and they briefly spoke of the old topic of AI's surpassing human intelligence and the various concerns that range from humans being irrelevant to the economy all the way up to essentially terminator-type scenarios. Yet I see no reason to predict with a ridiculous level of certitude the end of our species. Singularity is a fairly common term, and has an actual scientific/mathematical origin and is not just "sci-fi." The singularity threatens us because creating self-replicating machines ensures an exponential growth and depletion of resources. That's just one possible threat/hypothesis/interpretation; there are many others.
Alright I see. Thanks for the correction.
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On June 04 2016 07:11 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2016 06:37 Jealous wrote:On June 04 2016 03:37 Djzapz wrote:
As much as your colorful writing looks nice and fluffy, why bother being melodramatic and borderline cryptic about your concern about our future? Seems like you're voicing a call to action in a way that most people won't understand, defeating the purpose of writing it in the first place.
What is the singularity? Why does "the singularity" threaten us? If it's basically AI, why call it by a term which is essentially sci-fi?
A few days ago I was listening to a podcast with Joe Rogan and Sam Harris and they briefly spoke of the old topic of AI's surpassing human intelligence and the various concerns that range from humans being irrelevant to the economy all the way up to essentially terminator-type scenarios. Yet I see no reason to predict with a ridiculous level of certitude the end of our species. Singularity is a fairly common term, and has an actual scientific/mathematical origin and is not just "sci-fi." The singularity threatens us because creating self-replicating machines ensures an exponential growth and depletion of resources. That's just one possible threat/hypothesis/interpretation; there are many others. Alright I see. Thanks for the correction.
No problem.
For more information, the wikipedia page that is more "sci-fi" and applicable to my latter statement can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
For a definition of the mathematical singularity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_(mathematics)
From what I've learned in classes over the years, one way to think of mathematical singularity is this:
1. You accept that there are an infinite amount of whole numbers (-1,0,1,2,3,4....46475675...12454235634763563...)
2. You accept that there are an infinite amount of fractions between 0 and 1 (1/2, 2/3, 3/4... 3452346/345347...)
3. Therefore there is an infinite amount of fractions between each whole number, and an infinite amount of whole numbers. Thus, the amount of fractions between whole numbers is the amount of whole numbers * the amount of fractions between each whole number, thus giving the perplexing identity of infinity ^2.
4. Similarly, between every two whole-number fractions, there exist an infinite amount of fractions.
So on and so forth.
Although, I might be confusing this term with continuum in this case.
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As we grow older, ideals never die, they just fade away.
There's only one ideal I hold onto: "Happiness is the secret to all beauty!" *
Bring happiness into other peoples lives and it will find its way into your heart.
Success, power, wealth and fame may well be the "American Dream", but they're also the path into solitude and emptyness.
I've never felt the urge to get to the top, because it's pretty lonely up there.
*(quote by C. Dior, which is ironic, because he was quite wealthy and successful, but also...lonely  )
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On June 05 2016 11:34 thePunGun wrote:There's only one ideal I hold onto: " Happiness is the secret to all beauty!" *Bring happiness into other peoples lives and it will find its way into your heart. Success, power, wealth and fame may well be the "American Dream", but they're also the path into solitude and emptyness. I've never felt the urge to get to the top, because it's pretty lonely up there. *(quote by C. Dior, which is ironic, because he was quite wealthy and successful, but also...lonely )
Maybe he could make such a comment because he felt acutely what he was missing? ;-;
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every day is judgement day.
and your own ego is the judge.
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How will you make the singularity relevant for yourself?
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On June 05 2016 11:34 thePunGun wrote:There's only one ideal I hold onto: " Happiness is the secret to all beauty!" *Bring happiness into other peoples lives and it will find its way into your heart. Success, power, wealth and fame may well be the "American Dream", but they're also the path into solitude and emptyness. I've never felt the urge to get to the top, because it's pretty lonely up there. *(quote by C. Dior, which is ironic, because he was quite wealthy and successful, but also...lonely )
Said Galadriel to Frodo, "To bear a ring of power... is to be alone."
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United States744 Posts
I feel like having a religion would help with some of these concerns, if not all of them. But I've met too many people on the internet who think they are too smart to believe in any religion, so I have no interest in that discussion anymore. I must say though, one oughtn't knock it until one tries it; and that doesn't mean "I was raised [insert denomination of Christianity] and it's bullshit". Try it the way you would try at your favorite course in university, like your life depended on it. Because it kind of does, and it's up to you to realize that. I know that has helped me find comfort in the uncertainty of my future, and I've met
some incredible people along the way. This all assuming, of course, I understood your blog the way others have already said.
Perhaps another question to ponder though, why do you care about making the world a better place?
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On June 06 2016 07:43 Aerisky wrote:
How will you make the singularity relevant for yourself?
By funding the startups and companies that bring it closer - the sensor grid that will be the eyes of our cybernetic children, the NLP/NLG that will be their voice, the deep learning that will be their mind, the broad-scale marketplaces and optimization startups that will be their soul, and the robotics and IoT and genomics/proteomics that will be their hands by which they help humanity reshape the universe.
The way I see it, trying to cage the future is a futile errand doomed not only to failure but also a crime against those who might die before it comes. It is our moral responsibility to bring the singularity forward to us as fast as we can, and find our own meanings within it.
Our generation has the pleasure of shaping not one, but two species - our own via genomics, and the machine golems we will sculpt.
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EPT
