Singularity

Dave O'Neill wrote:


James Nicoll wrote:

In article ,
Joe Strout wrote:

In article . com,
wrote:


When do you think the technological singularity will occur?

35 years from whenever this question is asked.

When was writing invented? I'm torn between calling that or
agriculture the Singularity. One let there be enough people to have
interesting thoughts and the other allowed collaboration between people
who could never meet.


I'm not sure if Writing or Speech was the first Singularity. I was at
a talk by Venor Vinge on this where he was discussing his thesis that
the point of the Singularity is you couldn't articulate it to anybody
from before it happened.

I think you could with agriculture, but you'd struggle with somebody
or "something" that couldn't speak.

I'm not sure what is meant by singularity in this context but
neither speech, writing nor agriculture came into being
suddenly. One thing that did change the world in an important
way and for which we can pinpoint when it started is the
great invention that has propelled the European culture to
to its dominant position. It happened in (or about) 1440 in
the city of Mainz in Germany. The inventor was Gutenberg.

Alain Fournier

In article ,
Alain Fournier wrote:
I'm not sure what is meant by singularity in this context...

A concept popularized by some of Vernor Vinge's science-fiction stories.
The rate of technological change has been accelerating for a long time,
and despite innumerable predictions which assume that it will stop, slow,
or continue along a straight line, it continues to accelerate. Especially
when machine augmentation of human intelligence really gets going, it's
not inconceivable for the rate of mental and social evolution to rise to
the point that human thought, motives, and capabilities become
incomprehensible to a non-participant.

My paternal grandfather was born in a world where man could not fly, radio
was a toy, "antibiotic" and "vitamin" were not English words, and farming
was the occupation of nearly the entire population of North America. He
might still be alive today if he'd taken better care of his health. The
world has changed *beyond recognition* in one long lifetime. What happens
when that takes a decade, or a year, or an hour?

The term has also been applied more loosely to any sudden transition that
radically changes the world.

...One thing that did change the world in an important
way and for which we can pinpoint when it started is the
great invention that has propelled the European culture to
to its dominant position. It happened in (or about) 1440 in
the city of Mainz in Germany. The inventor was Gutenberg.

Well, if you don't count the Chinese, who came up with it rather earlier
but didn't exploit it effectively.

Alfred Crosby has argued rather persuasively that the key invention that
took Northern Europe from a cultural backwater to the successful conquest
of the world was not a piece of machinery, but a way of thinking: the
idea that the world was best understood in terms of numbers, that to
understand something meant finding a way to *measure* it numerically.

This is so central to modern thought that it's hard to imagine that it
wasn't always this way, but it *wasn't*. Plato's ideal Republic was to
have 5040 citizens, a number he chose not because it was around the right
size, but because of its *symbolic* significance (it's 7 factorial). To
us, 5040 is just the number between 5039 and 5041 -- a *measurement*, not
a magical symbol. Similarly, the idea that you could measure, say, time
or temperature -- conceive of it as something you could lay a ruler along
and assign a number to -- was once strange and radical. It's a completely
different world view, although it evolved so gradually that the change
wasn't obvious.

The result, Crosby suggests, is that Northern Europeans *organized* things
better because they *thought* better: money, technology, armies, trading
ventures, business in general, and eventually science all ran better when
people routinely used numbers and measurements as an intellectual tool.
The result, as seen by other cultures, was something like a Singularity:
weird people whose view of the world was almost incomprehensibly strange...
and whose onslaught was virtually unstoppable.

There may well be more such intellectual tools waiting to be discovered.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 17:56:10 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Henry Spencer) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:


The result, Crosby suggests, is that Northern Europeans *organized* things
better because they *thought* better: money, technology, armies, trading
ventures, business in general, and eventually science all ran better when
people routinely used numbers and measurements as an intellectual tool.
The result, as seen by other cultures, was something like a Singularity:
weird people whose view of the world was almost incomprehensibly strange...
and whose onslaught was virtually unstoppable.

As some, and perhaps many, people in the Middle East are about to find
out, if they haven't already...

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
...all ran better when
people routinely used numbers and measurements as an intellectual tool.
The result, as seen by other cultures, was something like a Singularity:
weird people whose view of the world was almost incomprehensibly strange...
and whose onslaught was virtually unstoppable.

As some, and perhaps many, people in the Middle East are about to find
out, if they haven't already...

Appealing though the analogy to current events is, it fails. The Middle
East's cultures are just about as thoroughly numerical as ours now, except
perhaps among the uneducated poor. Acceptance of this particular
intellectual tool is now virtually universal; the earlier non-numerical
ways of thought are *gone*. Occasional traditions from those days may
linger -- as they do here -- but not the whole package.

Which is not to say that those cultures think exactly the same way we do.
But in this one particular respect, it was convert or die.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

On Fri, 10 Jun 2005 18:09:48 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Henry Spencer) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
...all ran better when
people routinely used numbers and measurements as an intellectual tool.
The result, as seen by other cultures, was something like a Singularity:
weird people whose view of the world was almost incomprehensibly strange...
and whose onslaught was virtually unstoppable.

As some, and perhaps many, people in the Middle East are about to find
out, if they haven't already...

Appealing though the analogy to current events is, it fails. The Middle
East's cultures are just about as thoroughly numerical as ours now, except
perhaps among the uneducated poor.

Then you miss the point, being too specific...

(Henry Spencer) wrote:

Rand Simberg wrote:
...all ran better when
people routinely used numbers and measurements as an intellectual tool.
The result, as seen by other cultures, was something like a Singularity:
weird people whose view of the world was almost incomprehensibly strange...
and whose onslaught was virtually unstoppable.

As some, and perhaps many, people in the Middle East are about to find
out, if they haven't already...

Appealing though the analogy to current events is, it fails. The Middle
East's cultures are just about as thoroughly numerical as ours now, except
perhaps among the uneducated poor. Acceptance of this particular
intellectual tool is now virtually universal; the earlier non-numerical
ways of thought are *gone*. Occasional traditions from those days may
linger -- as they do here -- but not the whole package.

Henry, I think it's rather obvious that Rand doesn't mean numeracy. The
"incomprehensibly strange" worldview he's talking about is of an entirely
different character, one which the "some...people" he's talking about
consider culturally and personally threatening.

Alan Anderson wrote:
(Henry Spencer) wrote:

Rand Simberg wrote:
...all ran better when
people routinely used numbers and measurements as an intellectual tool.
The result, as seen by other cultures, was something like a Singularity:
weird people whose view of the world was almost incomprehensibly strange...
and whose onslaught was virtually unstoppable.

As some, and perhaps many, people in the Middle East are about to find
out, if they haven't already...

Appealing though the analogy to current events is, it fails. The Middle
East's cultures are just about as thoroughly numerical as ours now, except
perhaps among the uneducated poor. Acceptance of this particular
intellectual tool is now virtually universal; the earlier non-numerical
ways of thought are *gone*. Occasional traditions from those days may
linger -- as they do here -- but not the whole package.

Henry, I think it's rather obvious that Rand doesn't mean numeracy. The
"incomprehensibly strange" worldview he's talking about is of an entirely
different character, one which the "some...people" he's talking about
consider culturally and personally threatening.

Hmmmmm, would that be the same worldview our indigenous
neo-conservatives and fundamentalist christians are in such high
dudgeon about?

On 11 Jun 2005 17:09:26 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Name
Redacted" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

people routinely used numbers and measurements as an intellectual tool.
The result, as seen by other cultures, was something like a Singularity:
weird people whose view of the world was almost incomprehensibly strange...
and whose onslaught was virtually unstoppable.

As some, and perhaps many, people in the Middle East are about to find
out, if they haven't already...

Appealing though the analogy to current events is, it fails. The Middle
East's cultures are just about as thoroughly numerical as ours now, except
perhaps among the uneducated poor. Acceptance of this particular
intellectual tool is now virtually universal; the earlier non-numerical
ways of thought are *gone*. Occasional traditions from those days may
linger -- as they do here -- but not the whole package.

Henry, I think it's rather obvious that Rand doesn't mean numeracy. The
"incomprehensibly strange" worldview he's talking about is of an entirely
different character, one which the "some...people" he's talking about
consider culturally and personally threatening.

Hmmmmm, would that be the same worldview our indigenous
neo-conservatives and fundamentalist christians are in such high
dudgeon about?

Well, unless you can be more specific about your strange,
narrow-minded, anti-freedom and pro-islamofascist views, no one can
say.

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
Alain Fournier wrote:

...One thing that did change the world in an important
way and for which we can pinpoint when it started is the
great invention that has propelled the European culture to
to its dominant position. It happened in (or about) 1440 in
the city of Mainz in Germany. The inventor was Gutenberg.


Well, if you don't count the Chinese, who came up with it rather earlier
but didn't exploit it effectively.

That is right. To their defence, it isn't easy to exploit it
effectively given their character set.

Alfred Crosby has argued rather persuasively that the key invention that
took Northern Europe from a cultural backwater to the successful conquest
of the world was not a piece of machinery, but a way of thinking: the
idea that the world was best understood in terms of numbers, that to
understand something meant finding a way to *measure* it numerically.

This is so central to modern thought that it's hard to imagine that it
wasn't always this way, but it *wasn't*. Plato's ideal Republic was to
have 5040 citizens, a number he chose not because it was around the right
size, but because of its *symbolic* significance (it's 7 factorial). To
us, 5040 is just the number between 5039 and 5041 -- a *measurement*, not
a magical symbol. Similarly, the idea that you could measure, say, time
or temperature -- conceive of it as something you could lay a ruler along
and assign a number to -- was once strange and radical. It's a completely
different world view, although it evolved so gradually that the change
wasn't obvious.

The result, Crosby suggests, is that Northern Europeans *organized* things
better because they *thought* better: money, technology, armies, trading
ventures, business in general, and eventually science all ran better when
people routinely used numbers and measurements as an intellectual tool.

Money was always measured and therefore trading ventures and businesses too.
The sizes of armies, number of soldiers, number of boats and number of horses
were always compared, you can see that in some quite old books (parts of the
bible for instance). Time has been measured since about 1500 BCE, the
difference between time measurements now and then is mostly about precision
and availability of timepieces.

One thing that did change dramatically the effectiveness of those measurements
is the inventions of division, of the decimal numerical system and the decimal
separator. If one reads Euclid's elements one can see clearly how important
those are, 4.375 = 4 3/8 was written as 4 to which we and the 8th part and the
8th part and the 8th part. One can easily see how difficult it is to compare
4 3/8 + 3 2/5 to 5 1/7 + 2 2/3 when one uses such a system. So if you had two
business proposals, which could be compared by comparing 4 3/8 + 3 2/5 to
5 1/7 + 2 2/3, you were probably better off considering other things such as
which business partner seemed nicer or things like that rather than spending a
month trying to find a man of science capable of solving such a difficult
problem. Unfortunately for Crosby's theory, neither the decimal numerical
system, the decimal separator nor division are European inventions.

It is believed by some that Pythagoras had such a vision of the importance
of mathematics and measurements. His followers separated into two groups
the akousmatikoi and the mathematikoi. The akousmatikoi clearly gave to
numbers some mystical, magical powers. But the mathematikoi considered the
akousmatikoi to be superficial and not seeing the real power of numbers,
which was that the numbers and measurements were the key to understanding
the world through astronomy, geometry, mechanics, music etc. But even
the mathematikoi introduced some magic into their thinking, and their
view of the world lost some credibility. What was the true thinking
of Pythagoras on the subject? We don't know. Why don't we know? There
wasn't any printing presses at the time, and all we have on the subject
is what some people copied, discarding the parts they viewed as less
important, of what some other people had copied, doing also their edits,
of what some other people had written about what Pythagoras has said.

Note also, that even today with our "numerical thinking" isn't all that
strong. Not only in wacky branches of the greenies and the such. In
medicine, in Canada, the US, Europe and elsewhere, psychotherapy is still
in use to treat schizophrenia. It has been shown for some time that
this method gives no measurable results (other than in the wallet of
the psychotherapist). I'm not talking about some shadowy alternative
medicine here, but the "official" medicine. There are many parts of
our culture which are outside the realm of measurements. It is next
to impossible to convince the man on the street of the safety of some
radioactive material by performing the correct numerical calculations.
It is easier to do so by showing him a book where the conclusion is
written (doesn't make sense but that is just the way it is).

Even sensible people would be fooled away from the truth if our society
had numerical thinking but no printing press. When I was first taught
the theory of relativity of Einstein, I immediately noticed a fallacy
in the theory and thought of it as bull****. Of course that wasn't
Einstein's theory that had the fallacy, but the theory of someone
which had read an article in the Time magazine about it. If all I had
was the account of someone who read a copy of an article by someone who
had been given a summary by someone who read a translation of Einstein's
work then thinking numerically wouldn't be sufficient to consider the
theory valid.

Alain Fournier

Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 17:56:10 GMT, in a place far, far away,
: (Henry Spencer) made the phosphor on my monitor
: glow in such a way as to indicate that:


: The result, Crosby suggests, is that Northern Europeans *organized* things
: better because they *thought* better: money, technology, armies, trading
: ventures, business in general, and eventually science all ran better when
: people routinely used numbers and measurements as an intellectual tool.
: The result, as seen by other cultures, was something like a Singularity:
: weird people whose view of the world was almost incomprehensibly strange...
: and whose onslaught was virtually unstoppable.

: As some, and perhaps many, people in the Middle East are about to find
: out, if they haven't already...


Correct if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Middle East superior to Europe in
terms of money and banking 1000 years ago? That Europe progressed more
rapidly whereas the Middle East stood still in comparison since then is
not in question.

Eric