On the other hand, by 2050 I'd expect some sort of virtual reality with direct neural input to be common, and used for both work and entertainment, and to be a serious social problem.

Interactive "feelies", in other words.

>>Technology is about allowing us to achieve our wishes.

>-- but it's not about "becoming as Gods", etc.

I would absolutely say that it has allowed us to become more god-like! We now have the ability to communicate over vast distances instantaneously, to command tremendous forces, to forestall death to the point where we've had to carefully redefine it, and so forth and so on.

Traditional godhood has often struck me as being nothing more than a reflection of what humans would like to be like and which we aren't. I think that the driving force of technology is, in fact, enabling us to approach those ideal images of ourselves.

>Which, you must admit, seems to be the emotional driving
>force behind a lot of Singularity-worship.

I don't really think that the emotional motivations are relevant to the technological question any more than the mythical motivations of those who persued the dream of flight were relevant to the empirical question of whether or not it is possible for us to fly.

>People who just can't face personal extinction and the
>ontological emptiness of the universe.

The question of indefinite life extension is, I think, another empirical question. Are there physical constraints that would prevent us from achieving this? I'll be the first to admit that I don't know, but I would be rather surprised if there were.

As for the ontological emptiness of the universe, I don't think that the idea of transcending our base humanity is going to address that question whether or not that transcendance is feasible.

> It makes my skeptic's nose twitch. Goshwow always does.

I understand that. Skepticism is a healthy thing. I certainly am not inclined to swallow every futuristic speculation wholesale. That said, I think that the primary questions are ones of physical law. Do the laws of nature forbid us from using technology to become something more than merely human? I haven't heard a good empirical argument that says that it can't.

>>I've been following the idea of a singularity from the
>>mid-eighties. Aside from Vinge's "Marooned in Realtime"
>>conception (which is quasi-mystic) of a singularity, I
>>don't think that many people really imagine a singularity
>>as being like that.

>-- well, since Vinge _invented_ the concept...

Come now. "Marooned in Realtime" was a fiction. I think that Vinge will be the first to assert that it wasn't intended to be a blueprint of the singularity or a prediction of how it would happen (should it happen). If you read Vinge's writings, he demonstrates a respectible skepticism towards his own ideas and has offered a list of conditions which might prevent a singularity.

As for the conception in Realtime, I called it *quasi*-mystic for a reason. In it, humanity has disappeared from the scene. Vinge does not assert that humanity has literally transcended to some other plane of existence. The disappearance is simply a literary metaphore by which he indicates the fundamental unknowability of the singularity. I doubt that it's intended to be taken as a literal prediction.

>>In fact, I would say that the advent of writing is a good
>>example of intelligence amplification that's already
>>happened.

>-- oh, come now. That's like saying cars enable us to run
> faster.

They allow us to achieve a greater velocity, which is much the same thing.

Do you disagree that someone with access to the tools of literacy is better able to organize and utilize their intelligence? Again, I offer the example of a mathematician with a pencil and a ream of paper vs. one who insists on keeping everything in his own head.

>Of course. However, again, if I don't have to hold all that
>information in my head all at once, it's much easier for me
>to make better use of that grey matter.

>-- not really true. You're talking about different brain
>functions.

Intelligence spans a variety of brain functions, including memory. Even if literacy simply allowed us to enhance our capacity to retain information (by moving some of it outside of ourselves) this would represent a *quantitative* improvement to our intelligence. Please do understand that I have made no assertions about qualitative improvements.

Be that as it may, being able to use artificial means to leverage our intelligence is no small thing. You might argue that a climatologist who uses supercomputers to perform his modeling is no more intelligent than one who doesn't, but his effective ability to consider alternative models is better than a climatologist who is only relying on his naked intelligence.

To use your running anaology, you might well insist that the former isn't *really* thinking and faster or deeper than his collegue, but he's still getting to his destination faster and more efficiently.

Again, the central hypothesis of the singularity, per Vinge, is that once a truely greater-than-human intelligence arrives on the scene, history as we know it ends because that even will lead to a positive-feedback explosion of intellgience with the end result something utterly beyond human conception. The fundamental question is whether or not human being can ever produce such an initial intelligence.

Even without structurally altering our brains, it is not obviously ridiculous to suppose that we could *quantitatively* leverage our native intelligence enough to achieve the creation of something that is *qualitatively* more intelligent.

Will it happen? Well, I think that seriously trying to predicting the future beyond a very narrow distance is a genuinely superstitious act, particularly when we don't understand all the parameters to the question. On this subject, I remain agnostic.

>I don't really think that the emotional motivations are relevant to the technological question

-- they are relevant to people's appraisal of technological possibilities; the will to believe is a powerful force.

Hence, as Charlie pointed out, the deranged over-optimism of AI types, something that has been with us for 50 years and more now.

>The question of indefinite life extension is, I think, another empirical question.

-- it _could be_ an empirical question. In fact, take a look at all the geeks who firmly believe they're going to bre "uploaded" to immortality, which is about as likely as the Second Coming. Or the ones having themselves or their heads frozen.

You would not believe the hostility that results when you debunk 'em.

>Do the laws of nature forbid us from using technology to become something more than merely human?

-- no; but then, they don't forbid us from terraforming Mars, or building a Dyson Sphere, either. I'm not holding my breath.

The madness of the Singularity types is that they expect all this stuff to happen in time to rescue _them_ from the common ills of humanity.

>Come now. "Marooned in Realtime" was a fiction.

-- true, but my impression is that it's very much what Vinge expects and strongly desires. He pulls back from it, not being a fool, but the magnetic attraction always pulls him around again.

Meanwhile, something that's actually likely to happen, and to be tranformative: lie detectors that really work.

"Intent to deceive" seems, according to some research I've seen, to involve specific and detectable brain activities.

So, imagine a world a decade hence in which you can sit someone down under a light. You ask questions. If he/she lies, the light turns red. No fallible tension clues; this is right from the brain and can't be controlled or faked. Th subject has to tell you the truth, or at least what they think is the truth.

H. Beam Piper had a machine like that in one of his stories; he called it a "verdicator". In the scene I'm thinking of, the interrogator was standing by holding a pistol by the barrel. He explained that every time the light turned red, he was going to hammer the subject's teeth in...

>>I don't really think that the emotional motivations are
>>relevant to the technological question

> they are relevant to people's appraisal of technological
> possibilities; the will to believe is a powerful force.

Again, that's not something that particular concerns me. If you want my own appraisal, a singularity, if it is to happen, will most likely happen well outside of my lifetime.

>Hence, as Charlie pointed out, the deranged over-optimism
>of AI types, something that has been with us for 50 years
>and more now.

I don't think that it's deranged as much as an example of betting on simplistic models of the mind. The AI folks were universally hopeful that the simpler models of cognition -- the sort that could be modeled top-down without much effort -- would be the right ones because, frankly, it would have made their jobs much easier.

I will agree that trying to make *predictions* at this point is thoroughly daft. As I stated ealier, we don't even have a basic model of what cognition *is* at this point. As I've also said, I think that the most important function that AI research has provided is to offer empirical demonstrations of what intelligence *isn't*.

>The question of indefinite life extension is, I think, another empirical question.

> it _could be_ an empirical question.

It absolutely is an empirical question regardless of how many soft-headed optimists there are out there who are approaching it with all the intellectual rigor of alchemists searching for the philosophers stone.

>In fact, take a look at all the geeks who firmly believe
>they're going to bre "uploaded" to immortality, which is
>about as likely as the Second Coming. Or the ones having
>themselves or their heads frozen.

/shrug

I'm not in that crowd, nor am I particularly interested in their wishful thoughts. Never the less, I see nothing in our current knowledge of physical law that would, a priori, preclude technologies that allow for such to *eventually* arise. Again, I would be very seriously surprised if such arrived on the scene during my lifetime.

>You would not believe the hostility that results when you >debunk 'em.

Sure I'd believe it. I would guess that you would have found similar hostility from those persuing demonstrably idiotic ideas concerning powered flight in the run-up to Kitty Hawk.

>Do the laws of nature forbid us from using technology to
>become something more than merely human?

>-- no; but then, they don't forbid us from terraforming
>Mars, or building a Dyson Sphere, either.

I rather suspect that they do forbid the latter, but I won't quibble.

>I'm not holding my breath.

I apologize if I gave the impression that I was.

>The madness of the Singularity types is that they expect
>all this stuff to happen in time to rescue _them_ from the
>common ills of humanity.

Sure. I agree that there's a lot of unmerited optimism. If that's your complaint, then I have no disagreement. My impression was that you felt that the entire topic was concerned with a technological impossibility and that you felt that the emotive reactions of some towards the question disproved the technical aspect of the question.

>Come now. "Marooned in Realtime" was a fiction.

>-- true, but my impression is that it's very much what
>Vinge expects and strongly desires. He pulls back from it,
>not being a fool, but the magnetic attraction always pulls
>him around again.

Unless Vinge does us the service of dropping into the discussion to englighten us, I don't think that there's much use in speculating on his true beliefs. Suffice it to say that what I've read and heard in various interviews doesn't lead me to agree with your assessment. We will have to agree to disagree on this point.

>Meanwhile, something that's actually likely to happen, and to
>be tranformative: lie detectors that really work.

I can't decide which I find more frightening: that governments are currently using pseudo-scientific equipment to "detect" lies or the prospect that they may get a lie detector that actually works as advertised.

>On the other hand, by 2050 I'd expect some sort of virtual
>reality with direct neural input to be common, and used for
>both work and entertainment, and to be a serious social
>problem.
>
>Interactive "feelies", in other words.

You know, Mr. Stirling, it's interesting for me to compare what you find plausible and implausible with my own estimations.

I would bet that this sort of VR technology will be one of the 50-years-from-now technologies for a very long time yet to come.

Of course, there are two primary sins that all futurists commit: over-estimating the rate of change and under-estimating the rate of change, the classic example being everyone predicting moon-bases by the year 2000 without anyone predicting that computers would become small, cheap and ubiquitous by the mid-80s.

Ultimately, futurism is just mental masturbation (not that there's anything wrong with a bit of harmless self-stimulation). Invariably, the actual future will confound and frustrate our expectations of it.

"I would bet that this sort of VR technology will be one of the 50-years-from-now technologies for a very long time yet to come."

-- why? We've already got proof-of-concept examples of artificial sensory inputs; the synthetic retinas, for example. And there's a very strong incentive to develop this stuff; it'll be unbelievably profitable, for starters.

"Invariably, the actual future will confound and frustrate our expectations of it."

-- "a lot of the time" rather than "invariably".

Eg., I can predict how many 20-year-old people will be around in 2025 with some accuracy (barring catastrophe) because they've already been born.

From there, predictions diminish. Eg., Germans or Japanese might suddenly start having lots of babies, and screw up longer-term demographic predictions, but thats very unlikely and in any case would take a generation or two to have a big impact.

>I can't decide which I find more frightening: that governments are currently using pseudo-scientific equipment to "detect" lies or the prospect that they may get a lie detector that actually works as advertised.

-- well, it would certainly change the world.

Can you imagine a political debate with a "verdicator" light over the candidates' heads?

Or during speeches?

>I will agree that trying to make *predictions* at this point is thoroughly daft. As I stated ealier, we don't even have a basic model of what cognition *is* at this point. As I've also said, I think that the most important function that AI research has provided is to offer empirical demonstrations of what intelligence *isn't*.

-- 100% agreement there.

Andrew: on perceptrons, see this discussion of the controversy.

Steve: I'd be surprised if surgically-implanted computer interfaces that you plug yourself into ever take off. (On the other hand, one that's inserted via keyhole surgery, implants itself in the right place, communicates via ultrawideband radio, and has a built-in firewall is another animal. Dunno about you, but for me any lack of a firewall would be a deal-breaker :)

Incidentally, I'm pretty certain that I can guaran-damn-tee you that I can hoax any lie detector there is, or ever will be: all I need to do is to convince myself that everything I say is a lie, and it'll be delivering so many false positives the data stream is junk.

>Incidentally, I'm pretty certain that I can guaran-damn-tee you that I can hoax any lie detector there is, or ever will be: all I need to do is to convince myself that everything I say is a lie, and it'll be delivering so many false positives the data stream is junk.

-- I don't think so. The activity in question is pre-conscious; it's a product of your intention to deceive. There are a number of brain functions which flag a decision before you're conscious of making it, IIRC.

Charlie: I'd be surprised if surgically-implanted computer interfaces that you plug yourself into ever take off. (On the other hand, one that's inserted via keyhole surgery, implants itself in the right place, communicates via ultrawideband radio, and has a built-in firewall is another animal. Dunno about you, but for me any lack of a firewall would be a deal-breaker :)

-- what I had in mind was artificial sensory input -- replicating what goes into your brain through the various sensory nerves. Initially they'd be surgically implanted but eventually some other form of contact.

Essentially, you switch it on and instead of the 'real' input, you're getting either input from another location, or simulated, 'fictional' data.

It could be used for very intense teleoperation scenarios (artificial 'bodies' for soldiers, engineers in hazardous environments) and also of course for entertainment. You get to _be_ Aragorn or a Lensman or whatever.

Think of the porn potentialities, just for starters... 8-).

Edited by author 07-11-2005 04:47 PM
"The activity in question is pre-conscious; it's a product of your intention to deceive." Exactly. You make everything you say a deceptive lie, adding double meanings to it in your own mind before you let a word out. A lie detector that gives nothing but positives is useless; if you don't actually ever tell the truth then they've got nothing to calibrate it against.

(And yes, I'm pretty sure I can tell you "my name is Charlie Stross" and convince myself I'm lying to you at the same time. Now, doing it the other way round would be a neat trick ...)