More from One-Half of a Manifesto
More arguments from Lernier against the “inevitable” coming of the technological singularity and post-human cybernetic society:
Here is a partial roster of the component beliefs of cybernetic totalism:
1. Cybernetic patterns of information provide the ultimate and best way to understand reality.
2. People are no more than cybernetic patterns.
3. Subjective experience either doesn’t exist, or is unimportant because it is some sort of ambient or peripheral effect.
4. What Darwin described in biology, or something like it, is in fact also the singular, superior description of all creativity and culture.
5. Qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of information systems will be inexorably accelerated by Moore’s law.And finally, the most dramatic:
6. Biology and physics will merge with computer science (becoming biotechnology and nanotechnology), resulting in life and the physical universe becoming mercurial; achieving the supposed nature of computer software. Furthermore, all of this will happen very soon! Since computers are improving so quickly, they will overwhelm all the other cybernetic processes, like people, and will fundamentally change the nature of what’s going on in the familiar neighborhood of Earth at some moment when a new “criticality” is achieved - maybe in about the year 2020. To be a human after that moment will be either impossible or something very different than we now can know.
Now as much as I hate to disagree with Dresden Codak, (one of the most intelligent comics on the web), I think Lenier’s got a point- the tenets of a exponential curve leading to computers and future AI evolving to the point where they absorb humanity (like some kind of bizarre, omniscient God, imo) is just unsound and unrealistic.
It also reminds me of an intriguing essay I read in one of the “Best Science Writing of the Year” collections about the emotional stakes in the search for life outside of Earth. Many believers in existence of aliens- including both respected researchers and alien conspiracy theorists- deeply desired that aliens exist, without any regard to evidence. There were a lot of reasons given, ranging from those who don’t want humanity to be alone in the universe, to those who would like to see humanity humbled by a more technologically advanced and culturally superior alien race. (I’m not saying they don’t exist, just that the evidence doesn’t really matter- people will think what they want to think)
This line of thinking about the coming age of machines, kinda smacks of the same thing- people who feel that computers are more cleaner thinkers, superior and just more fundamental existences.
“If the last half-century has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t plot the future with a straight edged ruler.” -John McCarthy (famous AI pioneer)
