Richard Dawkins on the Singularity Monday, Feb 22 2010
singularity and videos 3:18 pm
In this video, Dawkins acknowledges the possibilities of hard takeoff and open-ended recursive self-improvement in Artificial Intelligence.
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Are there any naturalists who do not accept the technological feasibility and eventual possibility/certainty of a Singularity? Can you believe in matter only and deny the possibility of better-than-human-performing mind-like configurations of it?
If you asked Mr. Dawkins whether it is “possible” that god exists he’d probably say yes. At least, that’s the impression his militant atheism talk at TED gave me.
For me, the best part was his discussion of the possibility of an intelligence explosion in biological evolution. If it’s true that a small but recursive insight led to a relatively quick explosion in biological intelligence, then a sudden insight into intelligence might work similarly for AGI. In fact, it might also mean that understanding human intelligence might also be relatively straightforward, if it is a matter of recursion and not complexity.
There probably are algorithms and insights that have opened the floodgates to advances in science.
Will AGI have one – or several? Perhaps there are several floodgates that have to be opened. No single breakthrough will get you what you want – you need to have them all figured out, completely, or it’s just fancy narrow AI.
Of course (even if not consistently). For instance, look at any post on this blog about Singularity critics.
Not to be overly dramatic, but the worldview of people like Dawkins and Kurzweil is in danger of going extinct. Their brand of modernity has culminated in negative birth rates, genocide via abortion and the spiritual bankruptcy of materialism, yet strangely “progressives” call this progress. What it really represents is extinction for post-Enlightenment civilization in an almost Darwinian sense. Secular Europe is currently being converted to Islam by the thousands, and there is no way religious people will ever accept superhuman AI or their own obsolescence without enormous bloodshed. This is why the much more likely scenario for the near future is a new dark age, not a technological singularity.
He also says that “it’s pretty hard to imagine a life that’s not protein-based” and “my suspicion is that you’ve got to have protein” – in part 2, 3:00 and 3:56.
Yes! I have spent many thousands of hours marveling at this fact. It seems as if holding this set of beliefs would be vulnerable to Dutch Booking in the right setup.
April 30, 2008
THE ARAB MIND MEETS THE SINGULARITY
http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/2008/04/the-arab-mind-m.html
“…The Muslims have very carefully and for many decades prepared the intellectual “battlespace” in a massive way to favor them and I don’t see how–especially in the short term–given the current attitudes in the West, we are going to be able to attack and demolish the central ideas of Muhammad, Islam and the Qur’an if we are afraid that our first word will be met with worldwide killing, riots and likely suicide bombs and don’t have the courage and conviction of the truth and value of our own values, culture and civilization to withstand Muslim intimidation…”
What’s with all this anti-Muslim propaganda all of a sudden?
Don’t know Summerspeaker, but it’s funny how they briefly mention the sing, then just go onto how singularly awful Islam is, as if it’s the only threat to all civilization.
The problem is that people conflate radical Islam with the more moderate version that is a fast growing demographic in Europe.
In contrast to Islamaphobia, Jefferson’s link actually seems to argue that increased material abundance will decrease Islamic fundamentalism:
“Islamic fundamentalism depends on the scarcity of material wealth and sexual outlets. A comfortable, sexually satisfied man is much less likely to desire martyrdom than an impoverished man with no hope of ever attaining wealth, status, or privilege, or sex.”
If one accepts the neofreudian analysis, this suggests that muslims moving into Europe will adopt less radical viewpoints, because they will have access to increased material wealth (and sex).
Going further, Jefferson’s link quotes Michael Anissimov and suggests that the so-called “Final Industrial Revolution” would quickly undermine radical Islam.
Perhaps the naturalist AGI-deniers simply think that unless they’re performed by proteins, your computations don’t count as thinking.
@Sean: You need to be more specific
“Secular Europe … being converted”
Exactly who are being converted?
“enormous bloodshed”
Who are the immigrants going to target in otder to advance the dominance of their memes? Who are going to get killed? Random people on the street? Politicians?
Don’t you think there’d be a reaction to mass scale violence perpetrated by the memeoids?
Do you think the secular Europe has already lost, or is losing, and the medieval memes have won, or are winning?
Cybe, native Europeans are being converted in ever greater numbers, along with the immigrants. I’m pretty sure the “Singularitarian tribe” isn’t growing nearly as fast. This might sound silly to a lot of people, but science and technology don’t exist in a cultural void, as people like Einstein and von Neumann would tell you. And yes, I think the medieval memes are definitely winning, don’t you? Modernity seems almost defenseless against virulent, aggressive medieval belief systems like Islam. It goes back to the demographic problems I mentioned earlier. Maybe transhumanists need to ramp up the development of artificial wombs so they can pump out a horde of secular nerds who can simply overwhelm the medieval primitives with sheer numbers? Just a thought :)
It still seems unclear as to who exactly are those people being converted? Children? Teenagers? Young adults?
Are you saying that a wave of religiousness is taking over the native populations of Europe? As if the modern secular population of Europe has finally seen the light and that light is one of the most unprogressive belief systems in history? Is this what you hear yourself saying? That’s what it sounds like to me.
I don’t doubt that the immigrants are outbreeding the natives, but winning the hearts and minds of the existing population with their memes, I don’t find any evidence for.
I’m not sure I buy these numbers, but:
“According to the US’s Migration Policy Institute, residents of Muslim faith will account for more than 20 per cent of the EU population by 2050 but already do so in a number of cities. Whites will be in a minority in Birmingham by 2026, says Christopher Caldwell, an American journalist, and even sooner in Leicester. Another forecast holds that Muslims could outnumber non-Muslims in France and perhaps in all of western Europe by mid-century. Austria was 90 per cent Catholic in the 20th century but Islam could be the majority religion among Austrians aged under 15 by 2050, says Mr Caldwell.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/5994047/Muslim-Europe-the-demographic-time-bomb-transforming-our-continent.html
A closer look at the article, however, shows this:
“Muslims are [not] the only immigrants coming into the EU in large numbers; there are plenty of entrants from all points of the compass…”
In the 1840s+ USA, the Catholic Irish provoked similar fears. It’s an old thing.
If we are unable to ignite the S event well before 2050, we deserve no better than the islamization, I would add.
Panda, it does look as if that linked blog post itself isn’t as troubling as the comment Jefferson quoted. I’m not at all convinced the analysis, but at least the post refrains from embracing a simplistic clash of cultures. That’s what offends and worries me about these anti-Islamic sentiments; they’re typically just about claiming cultural superiority. Needless to say, I have scarce sympathy for the mainstream dogma of any Abrahamic religion; of course we should oppose such oppressive ideas and practices. But for many (most?), religion is about identity and community much more than the dogma. Posing the issue as Western values against Islamic values does nothing to advance rationality.
Re: “Are there any naturalists who do not accept the technological feasibility and eventual possibility/certainty of a Singularity?”
Me for one. See:
http://alife.co.uk/essays/-the_singularity_is_nonsense/
I’ve read your writings Tim Tyler. It seems to me, that you don’t grasp the semantics here. The S events means only several “doublings” in a short time – for a longer time. And not a several “doublings” in a lifetime.
By Thomas’ definition a singularity has already happened. He’s not the only one. Look at Hanson’s Economics of the Singularity: “The two solidly demonstrated singularities, the agricultural and industrial revolutions, came with little warning.”
So yes, that definition is hard to disagree with, because few dispute the occurrence of the agricultural and industrial revolutions or that they sped up growth.
Michael also hardly helps by using the word “possible”. God’s existence is possible. The Singularity’s occurrence is possible. That I am living in a solipsism is possible. And because a solipsism makes the singularity impossible, it’s therefore possible that the singularity is impossible.
I guess that’s my answer.
One of the problems with the “S” word is that it means many things to many people – so critics face a shifting target.
My approach is to attack on all fronts – all the common meanings of the term are either bad futurism, or a poor excuse for using the term.
Robin Hanson is fighting decades of usage of the terms “agricultural revolution” and “industrial revolution”. IMHO, there is no coherent reason for doing this.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61O53820100225
“BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi called on Thursday for a “jihad” or armed struggle against Switzerland, saying it was an infidel state that was destroying mosques.
“There is a big difference between terrorism and jihad which is a right to armed struggle,” he said
“Any Muslim in any part of the world who works with Switzerland is an apostate, is against (the Prophet) Mohammad, God and the Koran,” Gaddafi said during a meeting in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi to mark the Prophet’s birthday.”
So far the Swiss have produced only non-”S” attracting fans and no “S” has hit one. Will the next Swiss product be an actively “S”-repellent fan?
NOTE/CORRECTION: I mis-attributed the “possible” quote to Michael. That was actually Cybe.
Sorry!
The man tries to use the computer science concept of recursion. However, he clearly doesn’t understand it, confusing it with a process that accelerates, such as exponential growth. (Recursion is simply a self-referential way of expressing a loop, (preferably with a terminating condition!) analogous to the principle of induction used in mathematical proof.
This, however, isn’t surprising. It seems that almost everything he’s written has weak arguments at its core, expressed in phraseology that can appear to be superficially impressive. However his reasoning, at its best, (rather than his accent, a practised reasonable-sounding tone) is usually non-existent or weak.
He would do well to place a negatively exponential limit on his use of concepts of which he has no sound grasp. What remains might well turn out to be ‘The Delusion’, or ‘The Selfish’, or ‘The Blind’. Less likely to make him best-seller-list fortunes, one suspects.
I think that there is a big difference between the thoughtful and convincing writings of intelligent men and the ramblings of scientists when someone puts a camera in front of them and gives them free reign to talk about whatever. In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins is often brilliant, but in this video he seems much less convincing. It’s a shame the questions weren’t a little more thoughtful. Dawkins’ eagerness for the advent of the “singularity” seems completely misplaced and devoid of rationale.
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