>At 11:39 PM 4/7/99 -0700, you wrote:
>>Is the Singularity inevitable? In other words, is it going to happen
>>anyway, regardless of what any particular person does or does not do? Or
>>is it contingent, i.e. something that may or may not happen?
>
>Well, on some level, it's trivially contingent: we have enough nuclear
>weaponry to destroy all human life on earth umpteen times, etc.
>
>But Singularity somehow, someway, with a species that may not even be our
>own? Totally inevitable.
>
>-Dan
Well, in the universe, sure. "Statistically inevitable" or something of the sort. But here on earth? I hardly think its inevitable.
(Note that I'm not denying the high likelyhood of "Singularity somehow, someway," but inevitability seems another order of magnitude altogether.
-- Jason Spencer spencer@ualberta.ca http://www.ualberta.ca/~spencer/