Decent Singularity Skepticism Summary at Space Collective
There's a guide to Singularity skepticism at Space Collective. It's not bad -- it goes over some of the main objections to the Singularity, mostly Kurzweil's version thereof, but it touches on others. This page was particularly widely read this last week because it was linked from io9.
While the page is nice, I get the feeling that the author wrote about Singularity skepticism because the arguments and references just crystallized in his head fairly recently. For instance, he cites Charlie Stross' really trite and crappy guide to the Singularity as accurate, but I think the reference might be partially tongue-in-cheek.
In general, I think the mood displayed by Cory Doctorow, io9 staff, and most of the Digg community is the same: "Oh, Singularity? That has to do with humans melding with machines, right? Boy, that gives me food for thought... *thinks while two seconds pass.* So how about that new TV show?" In this era of "infotainment", any information not presented in an explicitly entertaining way is tuned out immediately. Since I know from years of observation that 95% of people that write comments on blogs and social websites about futurism think this way and never do any background reading, it's worth realizing that their opinions are pretty much useless.
The writer of the Space Collective article actually goes above and beyond the usual effort to untangle Singularity skepticism, and as a result, I'd give the article a 6/10, especially for the richness of its links. The article routinely links longer pieces, a refreshing break from mostly thinking-free articles linked from sites like Cracked, Digg, and Reddit.
January 7th, 2010 - 03:44
As a regular poster at io9 who has defended numerous transhumanist ideas, I would have to say that’s probably pretty accurate. io9 seems to be more anti-transhumanist than pro. Among the “creepiest” science developments of the year they listed the RepRap program, making idiotic references to grey goo and runaway replicator memes.
They’ve also been pretty consistent about the Kurzweil bashing too. It’s depressing that a site dedicated to Sci-fi, and urban fantasy is so negative about REAL scientific progress.
April 8th, 2012 - 10:52
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