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THE SINGULARITY

If you're not familiar with this topic, I suggest reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

In a nutshell, the singularity is the exponential rise in the sophistication of technology and understanding (if not mastery) of the natural world - physics, chemistry, biology, etc. It is believed that the singularity will be brought on by the increasing power of computation coupled with an array of artificial intelligence capable of simulating and modeling the physical world with extreme resolution.

Some things I'm looking forward to:

1. Self-replicating nano assemblers
2. Fully immersive virtual reality
3. Unlimited energy
4. Terraforming
5. Widespread space travel
6. AI
7. Ending disease
8. Immortality (useful for space exploration)

An example of a recent leap in imaging technology:

Electron microscopy enters the picometer scale
http://www.physorg.com/news136127214.html

Any thoughts on the singularity?

Open for discussion...

Tags: exponential, singularity

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Permalink Reply by BADWOLF on August 20, 2008 at 8:17am

nano tech gotta love it no money needed
use it to make house, food, clothes, power ect
and possiable insert memorys to learn instanly

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Permalink Reply by Efrique on August 27, 2008 at 7:58pm

Yeah, I don't believe that a singularity is actually possible.

The pace of change will probably increase quite dramatically - maybe to the maximum that we can tolerate - but the inherent finite response times of our brains, our machines and the infrastructure of our civilization will smear out any tendency to get even "metaphorically" singular. We won't ever get very far past "wow, everything is just changing too fast for me to keep up", because once it gets there, the rate of increase has to taper off.

Lets say we design machines that are AI enough that they can take over a lot of technical development (design new stuff). It still has to be supplied with raw materials to do anything with it. That has fairly hard limits.

I think the singularity is a cute idea, but I don't think it's going to be actually anything like a singularity at all.

Still, we may be in for some nifty changes.

Then again, when was the last time a human walked on the moon?

For that matter, where's my jet pack, my flying car and my pony that farts rainbows?

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Permalink Reply by Joshua1080109 on October 4, 2008 at 7:48am

things im not looking forward too
1. the first on your list, no more jobs nothing to do
2. ill loose conception of reality
3. terraforming the economy would crash
4. unlimited energy, more energy = more weapons = more destruction
5. ai i dont like things smarter than me
6. widespread space travel, our neibores will be soo far away
7. ending disease, its a population control, not a good thing to get rid of something that keeps us in check
8. again population control plus, if you ever did get bored with life how would you end it? and again economy would crash and etc etc.... if u want more details on how this would happen post reply to this...