X-Message-Number: 21607 Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 21:58:56 -0400 From: Francois <> Subject: Musings on the Singularity This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --Boundary_(ID_xIEozekQWSx1NrxiHrYAuw) Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Sometime in the not too distant future, humans should create true artificial intelligence. Being based on machines instead of flesh and blood, that intelligence will have the potential to quickly expand to an almost limiteless degree of speed and creativity. In order to survive, it is very possible that humans themselves will transfer their own minds into this new realm, creating hybrid entities that will bring together the best of both world. I have no doubt that new kinds of problems will also emerge from this new mode of existence, but its very nature precludes us from ever coming up with meaningfull speculations about it, except in the most general terms. This process has been called the Singularity, and it will result in a "humanity" that will, for all intents and purposes, have all the attributes of the Divinity. The question that comes to mind is, why has it not happened already? I mean, we live in a big universe, a universe that contains plenty of stars, planets and, presumably, lifeforms. If we limit ourselves to what we know for a fact, then we should focus our attention on stars like the Sun. We know that such stars can have planets on which intelligent life evolves because here we are. In our Galaxy, there are millions of such stars. Their ages currently range from a few million years to about 8 billion years. Younger stars have not yet stabilized and older stars were formed at a time when not enough elements heavier than helium were available. Again, if we limit ourselves to what is known, we can ignore any star younger than the Sun. Intelligence would not have had time to evolve on any of their planets. The older stars however are a completely different matter. Lifeforms on their planets would have had a big evolutionary headstart on us, a headstart measured in millions and even billions of years. We seem to be very close to reaching the Singularity, so why do we not observe the results of such an event happening a long time ago on at least one of those other stars? This is far from a trivial question. As I said, once a civilization succesfully goes through a Singularity, it acquires Godlike powers and attributes. Some have postulated that such a civilization enters a mode of existence that makes it effectively invisible to us. It is simply too different from us to be recognized as a civilization. I disagree with this. Whatever ultimate form they settle into, they will still be sentient living creatures and, as such, will perform the three following functions. They will process information, they will process energy and they will replicate. We can recognize all three in whatever form they occur. Furthermore, their advanced technology will permit them to completely process their native solar system into an habitat better suited to their needs. Their increasing numbers will then require them to seek new places to live. Neighboring star system will therefore be processed in the same way, and then they will expand outward at near the speed of light, completey converting their own Galaxy, then neighboring Galaxies, and ultimately the entire Universe into habitats and artifacts. That is the mindbogling but inescapable end product of the Singularity. Now, obviously, our Galaxy has not been so colonized. The stars and other objects we observe in it are completely natural and unprocessed entities. This means that nobody has reached the Singularity stage anywhere within our Galaxy. Astronomical observations allow us to reach the same conclusion for a volume of space billions of lightyears in radius. There are billions of galaxies in that volume, and in all that immense territory nobody has managed to reach the Singularity stage. This is a very puzzling observation since that vast volume contains many suitable worlds with a considerable headstarts on us. What happened? One possibility is that no civilization can successfully go through a Singularity event. All, without exception, are destroyed by it. This is a rather pessimistic view and it does not bode well for our own chances. Another possibility is that life is a very unlikely event that happened only here on Earth. But what we know about life suggests that it appears easily and quickly wherever conditions are suitable. Intelligent life could be different though. Its existence depends of evolutionary processes that may not have a strong tendency to achieve it. After all, Earth harbored life for billions of year before a sentient creature appeared on it. Still, I consider it unlikely that the evolution of sentience would be THAT difficult to achieve. Or maybe, the Singularity did occur, a long time ago, and the Universe has indeed been processed by the resulting Godlike intelligences. In that case, why do we still observe a wild universe? It could be because we live in a computer emulation of such a universe, set up for our own benefit by these more or less benevolent Entities, something they would have done with all the planet harboring lifeforms that they would have encountered. That's an interesting concept in and of itself. I'm sure there are many other possibilities and I will not try to make an exhaustive list here. My aim in writing this was mainly to show that our imaginations are often deficient when it comes to charting the future. Cryonic people unconciously expect to wake up in a world not too different from our own, something that looks like the StarTrek universe maybe. But the world they do wake up into will in all probabilty be very different from that simple expectation. Musings like these are needed to open up our minds to the possibilities and to prepare us to the shock they will inevitable endure. Francois --------------------------------------------------------------------- No lifespan shorter than eternity is acceptable --------------------------------------------------------------------- --Boundary_(ID_xIEozekQWSx1NrxiHrYAuw) Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21607