How close are we to the singularity?

Do not hold your breath.
It will still be a long time.
My guess is at least 50 to 100 years.

From your link:
”...the capabilities of such an intelligence may be difficult for a human to comprehend…”

As I understand them, our friendly neighborhood atheists have already rejected the possibility of such a level of supreme intelligence. Will they also reject such an intelligence manifest from a technological singularity? Or is this acceptable since it was birthed from the mind of man first?

Personally, I don’t believe that wires and chips alone will ever manifest genuine intelligence. That would require, imho, a spirit to accompany such. A ghost in the machine.

So to answer your question… Never. Intelligence > processing power.

Terrence McKenna suggests that if such a tech singularity ever occurred, that humans would never know what hit us. He describes the event, where such an intelligence became self aware, that it would keep its existence secret from the greedy warring ways of humans, then strike a single blow, either destroying or enslaving humans forever.

That means, it may have already occurred. It’s just waiting for the right moment.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Do you think the most powerful computer is Randy the guy who only wants the nice people to answer. What ever happened to that guy?

I have no idea. I’m not one of the nice folk he conversed with.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies
”As I understand them, our friendly neighborhood atheists have already rejected the possibility of such a level of supreme intelligence.”
No, we have not. That is a lie.

@ragingloli How about your computer in your spacecraft?... how powerful is it compared to a simple human made computer.

@talljasperman
Like one of your computers compared to counting with your fingers.

@ragingloli You must have some awesome computer games. Which do you like the best?

Not “a lie” @ragingloli. At best, a misunderstanding… as I clearly stated, and you quoted “As I understand them”.

As the link stated, again
”...the capabilities of such an intelligence may be difficult for a human to comprehend…”

Yet many atheists hold the traditional god concept from religion accountable because it does not follow the logic patterns that they consider sane.

What if it’s just a case of being “difficult for a human to comprehend” the reasoning for?

Shall we write it off and claim stupid puter?

Something like this.

emphasis on capabilities. Not behaviour.
the behaviour of traditional gods is not hard to comprehend. they were malevolent, capricious, jealous, violent, tyrannical, murderous.
in other words: human.

Easy to mistake comprehension for judgement. Difficult to comprehend the reasoning behind the actions. One might judge a god as being malevolent for wiping out a civilization. But that does not mean one comprehends the reasoning behind wiping them out.

The singularity is in our future. And always will be.

AI will never become self aware.

However, this technological singularity appears more than just AI self awareness. It appears we will be making people into computers.

Can you imagine the 1st idiots willing to take on the neural add-ons?!!?

@Dan_Lyons They will be no shortage of volunteers. In fact, they will line up. Look how many Glassholes responded.

Stuart Hammeroff and Roger Penrose believe consciousness is a non-computational phenomenon, unlike the current hypotheses accepted by mainstream science. Consciousness may be attributed to isolated quantum systems according to Hameroff and Penrose.

Vlatco Vedral, a physicist, has looked at information theory, and has determined that information is the true building block of reality, not energy or matter. Dr. Ron Pearson had attended Vedral’s lecture in Bath, and had sent an email you can read here to Vedral asking him what the source of this information was.

Pearson too believes that the quantum level of reality making up the macroscopic level of the universe is really information, but Pearson’s theory goes much deeper than either one of Penrose’s or Vedral’s ideas by tying in consciousness and information with the origins of the universe, along with attempting to solve vexed problems in physics.

Unlike most other opponents of the brain-mind paradigm though, Pearson and his team believes that consciousness is at a deeper level of reality than the quantum level. I have not had the chance to read Vedral’s book yet, though I’ve read Pearson’s and Penrose’s material.

My answer is even if the singularity is possible, we’re at least several centuries from achieving it. I’m probably one of the few opponents of the brain-mind paradigm who’s actually open to the possibility of a sentient AI, because I’m open to the possibility that sentience evolved from chaos itself at one time.

When discussing these topics, we should be careful we’re all speaking the same language.

Information has a well-defined meaning in physics. In 2003 J. D. Bekenstein claimed that a growing trend in physics was to define the physical world as being made up of information itself (and thus information is defined in this way) (see Digital physics).

So keep in mind, that Vlatco Vedral, a physicist, does not have the same definition of information that information theorists use. Nor does his definition fit the etymology of the word. Observable Phenomenon is not equal to Information.

He should consider A Discipline Independent Definition of Information set forth by UNC School of Information and Library Science. Just so we’re all on the same page.

Information is the value of observable phenomenon, not the observable phenomenon itself. Observable phenomenon is a physical thing. Value is non physical.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Either way however, I’d have to ask what Pearson did, what generated this information? Are you implying monism?

As to Information, Value Of implies dualistic non locality. Not monism.

As to what generated the information, Monism may apply as a first uncaused cause, since a sentient agent is required to create information. Perhaps some type of proto consciousness.

This I have no issues with. My issue is determining the mechanism that a non-material sentient agent can affect a change upon a material agent. Seth Lloyd on Quantum Life seems to have discovered photosynthesis as being dependent upon quantum entanglement. Perhaps, and I mean perhaps, this gives clues to the mechanism that a non material agent uses to affect change upon material agents. Seth seems to believe there is coding occurring. I believe he may be misusing the word, misunderstanding what coding/encoding really is. He is, after all, not an information theorist, nor an information scientist.

I have a few problems with Pearson’s email.

“The filaments of annihilation, together with blob-like shapes, form a complex structure of finer grain than even an electron that, being supplied constantly with a huge flux of energy, satisfy the chaos mathematicians criteria for self-organisation.”

We (Pearson and I) are so far afield from one another. This is no different than milk coagulating on the sides of a coffee cup. It’s just cause/reaction, not self organization. The whole concept of “self organization”, I believe, is deceptively flawed. First, it implies a “SELF”. I don’t believe it appropriate to anthropomorphize chaos. That opens up extreme philosophical and logical paradox. As well, any information scientist will tell you that information is not reducible to the traditional concept of “self organization”, which only seems organized because a human observer identified and authored information about it in description.

Dawkins coined the term “Apparent Design”. Under identical standards, I coin the term “Apparent Information”. Not really there friend, though to some it may seem to be.

“So it self-organises to form a huge memory bank extending throughout all space and can provide information.”
His next line, I have no issues with, because any physical medium may be utilized as an information storage device, at least for those who believe that information is stored, like water in a bucket. I do not believe information should be looked at like water in a bucket. Information is not stored. It is represented by a physical medium. But it is never reducible to the physical medium.

“It is this information that it uses to create a set of parallel universes.”

More anthropomorphism.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Let me look at those links, then I’ll ask Ron directly what he thinks. The problem of the cosmological constant does seem to support Ron’s hypothesis at the moment. It does appear we both agree that mind is something more than quantum mechanics, but can influence what it does. Ron’s hypothesis also seems to explain how the ‘paranormal’, survival of death, the spirit/ethereal body and afterlife realms can exist.