From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Jun 28 2001 - 02:25:25 MDT
On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Yes, it is an exaggeration, and no, I am not kidding. I fear the concept
> of trying to get a Singularity movie produced, something I have heard
> proposed on several occasions.
I don't think it can be done. Outside of a small group of individuals
who really grok exponential growth I doubt the concepts can be translated
into common human experience. The common person simply isn't experientially
equiped to deal with doubling times of 20 minutes let alone 2 milliseconds.
Rather than thinking of it as an exploration of the Singularity,
I would think of it more as a documentary of the negative consequences
of luddite thinking. Something along the lines of Schindler's List
perhaps.
> Yes, you can write an excellent script for an excellent movie that would
> be a tremendous boost to the future.
Only if you have some personal attachment to particular futures.
What you really are talking about is spin control on the path
to a subset of 'desirable' futures. One could argue that even
if a 10 km asteroid hit the Earth tomorrow, knocked most of life
back down to the < 1 kg level it would eventually crawl itself
back up and perhaps past our stage. One could also argue that
even if the sun disappeared into a black hole tomorrow, that
someplace else in the galaxy, life is significantly past our
point and our singularity transition is nothing more than the
cinnamon you put in the frosting on your cake. I would suggest
that the future will be what it will be whether one manages to
put the proper spin control on Hollywood movies or not.
[This would be the place for people to interject what they feel
are concrete examples of where "movies" actually changed the
course of history (other than American Graffiti).]
> Look at what happened when A.I. passed from the hands of Stanley "A
> Clockwork Orange" Kubrick into the hands of Steven "E.T." Spielberg.
> Wouldn't it be ironic if the *original* A.I. script was secretly the
> brainchild of Jeremy Rifkin? That could be exactly what happens to us.
The reviews I'm reading seem to indicate that Spielberg has perhaps
covered new ground both for himself and for our perceptions in these
areas. Of course it is rare that a film makes a transition between
two such prominent directors. The A.I. script clearly has one foot
in the Rifkin camp since the assumption for the plot is that the
world is in a heavily resource constrained civilization (e.g. no
nanotech enabled migration into space). I guess the reviews will
start trickling in tomorrow....
Robert
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