From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Oct 31 1999 - 15:35:19 MST
hal@finney.org wrote:
> We've had super-exponential growth for a long time. Have we passed
> through a Singularity already? A cave man given a vision of the future
> up to our time might have trouble wrapping his mind around the changes.
> By some definitions this could be taken to mean that we have already
> passed through a Singularity. Hal
A cave man? Modern humans are brain boggled by the changes that
have come in our lifetimes. In fact, I see this as a limiting factor to
technology. People are unwilling to change faster than a certain pace.
Alex Bokov's concept of local maxima will become very important
soon, as we see evidence of just such things all around us. Talk to
people, see how very many people reject the idea of extending life
out to just 500 years for instance. You might be amazed at how many
will state that they *do not want* to live that long, even if they could
do so with good health!
Your notion of having passed thru a singularity of sorts has occurred
to me as well. Not in the Yudkowskian sense of singularity, but if
viewed from a distance we are in the midst of a sudden and violent
explosion. spike
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