TIL: Transumanism, singularitate şi viaţă veşnică

În fiecare zi se petrec atâtea schimbări sau descoperiri notabile în ştiinţă, tehnologie, psihologie, medicină, sociologie şi alte lucruri cu care se ocupăm cei de la revista Descoperă, încât adesea se întâmplă să nu am (şi cred că nici voi) suficient timp sau disponibilitate de a procesa şi stoca toată această informaţie în memoria de lungă durată. Din acest motiv mi s-ar părea binevenită o serie de monologuri săptămânale pe diverse teme de interes general extrase din conştiinţa colectivă, întoarse pe toate părţile până se sedimentează şi transformă în noi perspective - şi, în cel mai fericit caz, în noi discuţii. Dacă vă daţi pe reddit, probabil ştiţi deja ce înseamnă TIL. Dacă nu, acronimul de la today I learned se referă la lucruri noi pe care le aflăm zi de zi, care mai tot timpul se dovedesc a fi remarcabile.

The Singularity is Near-Sighted: Joseph Campbell's Vision for the Internet Age

It's a great irony of Western Civilization that the scientific revolution, which emerged in the 15th century as a telescopic rifle aimed squarely at the Church, has lately been spotted distributing apocalyptic pamphlets in the public square.

Despite rhetoric steeped in science, these philosophical tracts are founded on metaphysical assumptions, resulting in a kind of techno-religion, replete with promises of immortality and transcendence.

The following beliefs form the basis for this technological utopianism:

1. A projection of human consciousness onto machines;

2. A teleological world view whereby civilization is moving toward unity and global interconnection;

3. An implicit belief in the goodness of technology and the benevolence of machines.

Top Transhumanism CEO Says AI Singularity Will Go ‘Very Badly For Humans’

Promises of ‘immortality’ and a disease-free life have led many individuals to long for the hope of artificial intelligence and what is known as Singularity. It is essentially a merging of man and machine, the development of a ‘new species’ — a ‘borg’ of sorts. The subject recently made headlines when a major Russian scientist promised Singularity to the wealthy elite and ruling class by 2045 through the 2045 program, with artificial bodies available as early as 2015.

Singularity U Launches 2012 Class: Bring On The Future!

Last Friday evening, I had the pleasure of attending the Closing Ceremony of the Graduate Studies Program at Singularity University (SU). This event is the pinnacle of a marathon-like 10-week program, in which 80 of the most promising and talented individuals from 36 countries have been challenged to change the world. And the students did not disappoint. Innovations in global health, emerging technologies, infrastructure, education, employment, and poverty were presented to the distinguished crowd, and no doubt many of these ideas will translate into real companies and movements in the coming years.

Singularity review repost

The discussion of my repost on the silliness of generational tropes produced a surprising amount of agreement on the main point, then a lot of disagreement on the question of technological progress.

So, I thought I’d continue reprising my greatest hits with this review of Kurzweil’s singularity post, which I put up in draft from at Crooked Timber and my own blog, producing lots of interesting discussion.  Again, seven years old, but I don’t see the need to change much – YMMV

Startups and the Singularity: Which Boston Innovators Are Believers?

Hollywood has Scientology. The tech world has the Singularity. I’m not conflating their beliefs or intellectual frameworks. I’m not calling them cults. I’m just saying, either you believe it or you don’t.

As it would happen, I was sitting around a table at a local startup shooting the breeze about what’s on entrepreneurs’ minds these days. The guys from Boundless, an ed-tech company that just opened its site to the masses this week, said there have been numerous lunchtime debates about something called the Singularity. My first reaction was that these guys have been working way too hard.

New Singularity in Space-Time Found

Einstein’s theory of general relativity explains gravity as a curvature in space-time. But the theory starts from the assumption that any local patch of space-time looks flat, Temple said. But mathematicians at UC Davis "...show that space-time cannot be locally flat at a point where two shock waves collide,” said Blake Temple, professor of mathematics at UC Davis. “This is a new kind of singularity in general relativity.”