Do you see these futurist theories as related or connected?

Note: I mentioned in the above-mentioned thread an observation that “The average person in today’s high-tech society will process in one day the same amount of information the average person in Elizabethan times would process in a lifetime.”
@RealEyesRealizeRealLies replied, asking if I thought it was related to Moore’s Law.

I don’t necessarily see this as an application of Moore’s Law, unless one sees it in relation to some other futurist theories, such as Ray Kurzweil’s Technological Singularity, or Terrence McKenna’s Novelty Theory.

All three theories are similar, in that they look at trends of occurrences in the past and, finding a pattern, extrapolate that pattern, maintaining certain assumptions, until a particular point in the future.

Moore’s Law was originally an observation about the number of integrated circuits in a computer, and the fact that that ratio has been increasing exponentially and will continue to do so, until some point in the future.

Although Moore’s law deals with computing power, it says nothing about artificial intelligence. That is where Kurzweil’s Technological singularity comes in. The theory is that once AI is a reality, AI will increase to the point where an AI machine will actually design and produce a more advanced AI, increasing exponentially until it reaches a technological-evolutionary point known as “the singularity”. Currently calculated speculation places this point somewhere in the 2040’s.

The Novelty Theory, also know as Time Wave Zero, states that every great change in the history of the universe has been as a result of “novelty”, or something that never existed. Some examples: technology where there was none; economy where there was none; agriculture where there was none; Life where none existed before; organic compounds where none existed. These novelties, according to McKenna, are occuring at an increasing rate, and even the rate of increase is increasing.

Yes, more in line with McKenna. Not ready to embrace Kurzweil yet.

Perhaps most remarkable of all McKenna’s discoveries was the fact that the only point in the entire wave that has a quantified value of zero (time wave zero, meaning that the occurrence of novelty reaches infinity) is precisely 11:11 am UMT December 21, 2012 A.D. (Sound familiar?) In the final one-half second before time wave zero, there are predicted to be 13 of these species-changing novelties.

If we were take McKenna’s theory and overlay it with Kurzweil’s, it is a possibility that one of the novelties in the time wave might would be in sync with one of the events of the path to singularity.

@Yetanotheruser

How disappointing that others don’t join this thread…

Yes I’m extremely familiar with both theories… and their implications.

Much of my work was fostered by McKenna. I wish he were around to consider my expansion of it. I suppose you have done the same with your interesting proposition that 2012 will possibly genesis the first steps toward Kurzweil’s theory. That is a valid notion and I have not considered it.

My problem with Kurzweil is a bit different though. I don’t necessarily believe that AI will become aware and sentient. But I do leave open the possibility that AI may be used as a vehicle to express an immaterial sentient entity that is already among us. It may have the appearance of “becoming”, but I lean more towards “revealing”.

What says you?

I hope others will join this fascinating thread.

Kurzweil’s hardware might be ready, but the software? I have many doubts.