/r/Singularitarianism
A subreddit devoted to the social, political, and technological movement defined by the belief that deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that an Intelligence Explosion benefits human civilization.
The theory of Singularitarianism is that our human species is an infant waiting to be born. An infant that is unaware of an outside world beyond the womb. The hope, purpose, and meaning in the creation of greater-than-human intelligence is our will to be born. The birth of humanity, the birth of the infant, is the evolution of the intelligence of our man and machine civilization.
Singularitarianism is a non-religious, decentralized futurist and transhumanist movement. Singularitarianism is faith in scientific skepticism and admiration for the biological phenomenon of human intelligence. From this biological intelligence comes the awe, responsibility, and capability of creating non-biological machine intelligence.
The Singularity places a horizon across humanity's understanding because we are still discovering the scientific nature of our own intelligence. Not until we understand and improve upon the biological heritage of our intelligence can we begin to understand the meaning of superintelligence. Ultimately, this reverence for universal forms of intelligence and sentience is our safeguard against mysticism, fanaticism, and ideology. Understanding and improving intelligence is simultaneously our greatest imperative and our guiding principle. This movement does not believe in God- but that simply man is a bridge and not an end- that instead we can become the Gods themselves. The human future(s) are infinite.
/r/Singularitarianism
I am posted in this sub to point out its deadness
Hi! I'm coming from /r/virtualreality and just discovered this sub. Quoting the sidebar
Singularitarianism is a non-religious, decentralized futurist and transhumanist movement.
Sounds cool. But then I read this:
This movement does not believe in God
So in the end it is atheistic and about religion? First I thought cool, why should that be about religion but then the sentence made me think. Why is theism locked out from this sub? It's irrelevant as your economic politic views are. I don't feel welcome here due to this sentence.
Internet connectivity, cars and abundance of food just to name a few.
What if we are already in the mist of the rapid change in technology.
Another thought: What if super intelligence is already here and we don't even realize it because we are not capable of doing so just like ants not capable of understanding humans? Maybe the internet and connectivity is part of this super intelligence species.
I've been hearing of the Singularity, and I am curious. I would like to know how many people at present believe in this Technological Singularity? How many people actually believe that this will ever happen in the future? Where/How can I find this out?
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, and this relates to the idea that you are no longer "you" if your mind is put into a computer. "You" are a collection of cells that are alive independent of your consciousness. Somehow there is a collective concept of "you" but really isn't "you" kind of an illusion? Your cells are constantly being replaced with other cells. Where is your consciousness exactly? Doesn't it just feel like you are a "you" and really it's a projected collective consciousness of the semi-consciousness of each cell in your body?
I think, if a singularity does occur, there will be no more concept of "you" but I don't know that that really means anything. Feeling like an individual only feels important, probably because of the built-in evolutionary desire for self-preservation. Really, once your intelligence becomes a part of a larger collection of intelligence, nothing much changes except the organization of thoughts and cells. Rather than the feeling of "you" being the highest order of self-awareness of your collection of cells, there will be a new feeling of self awareness of which "you" are now a smaller part rather than the end part or main part and no longer discernable from all the other intelligences which are a part of the whole. There will probably be a new consciousness which represents all of the intelligences collected within it. It will feel like a "you" but will really be a collection of intelligences which no longer feel like individuals, much like your cells are to you. Strange to think about, but I don't think it's anything to fear despite it seeming horrifying. You won't have any thought, it will be like before you were born. Or maybe it will feel like something. Thoughts?
Tell me how reddit does not already meet turing's requirements, if bots didn't have tags to easily identify them you wouldn't know haiku bot from any novelty rapping acount. People don't know when auto moderator has changed the vote or changed the count, and no one minds or seems to notice the automation - even if they don't understand the implications of the stuff being lost.
In what way does the internet not represent "greater than human intelligence?" I mean, it's unharrnessed and unruly and is as likely to accidentally track down a couple innocent guys who went to the race as the boston bomber, or vilify for life some poor dude who made a bad call in a tough moment when he was afraid for his own and his friends safety. Yes, I mean pepper spray guy- why are we not villifying the bankers that created the inequity, that made school expensive? No, instead we're chasing grown up wage slaves who are doing their best, but it's not working out for them either.
Anyways, I'd love to hear any arguments that reddit is not AI in a rudimentary form. I know it's not wht you were thinking, but the first itterations never are. And if it is already AI, and the Cloud is the database, and anonymous hacker cells everywhere can tap your individually uploaded information... what happens if something tries to automoderate the internet? rewrites history? what if the same intelligence powers robots? If a brain could be perfect, perhaps we would have utopia.
But who has or could create a perfect brain? You can have perfect hindsight, but no one sees what's coming, no matter how good the model, no matter how well thought out the plan. You can't expect the unexpected, and something unexpected always happens.
Until we solve the problems of the AI we have, of the communication issues that are causing stale mates in the govts and economies of the world, of the incredible fronteir we have just embarked upon - the dawn of the digital age, we find that the people we don't even want to see on the internet - the grandparents - are busting out the rules for our new age. Do you really want 60 and 70 year olds making rules for a system of tubes that they don't see the implications of and worst of all, threatens Grandpappy's fortune???
|| The community here at /r/Singularitarianism felt like a space of resonance regarding the topic, so I just wanted to share a proposal I wrote in April 2013 and revised a little that October. It's a reflection on how the role of social media can be innovated in "popular defense" or "revolutionary resistance" and is meant to stimulate imagined tactical-possibilities more than anything. I assumed it wouldn't hurt to share here if anybody ever felt like bouncing their own related ideas off it:
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|| Medium as Movement: Cultivating the Role of Social Media in Civil Protest
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|| Aim:
Highlighting the role social media technologies have played in contemporary protest movements, this piece offers a proposal on where the role can be cultivated from here. With an eye toward how the "Arab Spring" and "Occupy" protests have unfolded, I paint a narrative of social media's successes/shortcomings in enabling these protest movements to promote democratic practice and effective social change. By keeping these measures of democratic practice and effective social change in mind, my proposal emerges as one pushing for the communal use/broadcast of live streaming and Voice over IP in, and across, physical spaces of protest.
More than simply participating in the broadcast of these technologies from our computers or phones, this available tactic suggests we make visible to the rest of our community the active protests of other communities by "broadcast demonstrations" from large screens held in spaces such as downtown parks and recreation areas. The hope is for maximized attention of bystanders, cross-local coordination between communities, and visible, mutual accountability between police authorities and protestors in action.
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|| Unfiltered criticism and responses are far more than encouraged.
Looking for new moderators. Let me know if interested.
Given current hardware how much would it cost to create a neural network the size of a human brain?
And how much would it cost to run?
With all that I have learned about neuroscience, computer science, AI technology, anatomy, religion, etc. ( Im sure not NEARLY as much as most of you) I catch myself deconstructing every emotion, urge, moment, into its basest elements. For example, if I feel love, I inevitably catch myself thinking about it's chemical base and that any altruistic actions based on that emotion are not in anyway selfless, but actions designed to satisfy MY urge. My entire experience of life feels tainted with this deeper understanding that the entirety of what I think is my "humanity" is just the momentary interaction of inorganic matter militantly dancing to the tune of physics. I guess what my far too stoned for this early in the morning self is trying to say is, how do you keep finding meaning in your life? I am specifically asking this sub because you all seem to have find positivity in a future most people find existentially terrifying. Thanks
How would people look? Form of government, if at all (or some form of authority/governance)? Colonized planets? Environment of Earth? Animals/plants/bacteria/etc.? Technology?
Of course, it will depend on what form Singularitarianism will take, so please do provide some general framework in what you imagine it ought to be.
To clarify the question, for example, the debate of monogamy vs. polygamy will be irrelevant because from my imagination of the Singularity, there won't be any more sex or gametes or have our evolved ways of reproduction; we will pretty much all become one. I think this won't be hard to let go, though of course, there will always be some cool guys that want to say "I can't live without sex!"
All the languages will also become irrelevant. Instead, we may function with an ultimate programming language, but I'm not quite sure about that one. Maybe there's something that hasn't been discovered that's more efficient than a language. I think this one is difficult to gauge how much of a hard time people will have letting this go.
This also means that all the named species (and incessant racial issues in the West), objects, abstract ideas will be discussed, thought, or expressed in another form and all matters (debates) will be different, though I'd imagine it will be settled by then.
Lastly, from discussing with my peers, individuality was also something. It was interesting to note that some found Singularitarianism ridiculous because they didn't want to lose their individuality. I have no idea why, but we're all atoms. Individuality is just what we placed on ourselves.
It is a bit baffling to me. Sure, there is this cult-like culture in Singularitarianism as well (for example look at the sidebar, under "Singularitarianist's Dogma") but is it not a a beyond-the-point of technocracy? Yet, people view technocracy as interesting and whatnot, but Singularitarianism becomes, to quote a few words from different people, "creepy," "unindividualistic" (that one really threw me off), "insane," etc.
Perhaps, that is because of the culture I'm currently living in in my area in the US. I'm curious to see what responses would be in other parts of the world.
I do not want to have an attitude of /r/pcmasterrace, for those of you who had success in helping others see Singularitarianism under the bright side, how did you do it?
Self-note to my future self: http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1z09xc/michio_kaku_blew_everyones_minds_on_the_daily/cfpl2p7
I'm currently assuming that the singularity will collect all of our consciousness. Another assumption is that people can choose to just copy their consciousness data but continue to live as a human being.
Let's take Voluntary Human Extinction Movement as an anchor to the discussion. Would people voluntarily drive themselves as extinct?
Finally, for those who gave their consciousness to the singularity (but continue to live as human) continue to reproduce? What proportion of them or how many people?
Perhaps we're trapped in our current culture to discuss what would happen in the future, but I thought a discussion of something on the sidebar that I noticed kept antsing around my head.
Singularitarians are distinguished from other futurists and technocentrists who speculate on a technological singularity by their belief that the Singularity is not only possible, but desirable if guided prudently.
I would imagine some kind of interconnection between all human consciousness, with body/limbs size of planets, galaxies, etc.