By "intelligent" I mean a "human" level intelligence that is capable of thought and conversation with a human tester who can neither tell if he/she was talking to a machine or another human.

Such a test for the machine to pass is called a 'Turing Test', which was first proposed by Alan Turing in 1950. Turing was a pioneer in computer science and was instrumental in breaking the Enigma Code during WWII.

However on October 12 this coming Sunday at the University of Reading, six artificial intelligence programs are to to examined via the Turing test to determine whether AI programs have progressed to the point where a human tester can't tell the difference between a conversation with a machine and a human:

In the Turing test a machine seeks to fool judges into believing that it could be human. The test is performed by conducting a text-based conversation on any subject. If the computer's responses are indistinguishable from those of a human, it has passed the Turing test and can be said to be "thinking".

No machine has yet passed the test devised by Turing, who helped to crack German military codes during the Second World War. But at 9am next Sunday, six computer programs - "artificial conversational entities" - will answer questions posed by human volunteers at the University of Reading in a bid to become the first recognised "thinking" machine. If any program succeeds, it is likely to be hailed as the most significant breakthrough in artificial intelligence since the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. It could also raise profound questions about whether a computer has the potential to be "conscious" - and if humans should have the 'right' to switch it off.

Professor Kevin Warwick, a cyberneticist at the university, said: "I would say now that machines are conscious, but in a machine-like way, just as you see a bat or a rat is conscious like a bat or rat, which is different from a human. I think the reason Alan Turing set this game up was that maybe to him consciousness was not that important; it's more the appearance of it, and this test is an important aspect of appearance."

The six computer programs taking part in the test are called Alice, Brother Jerome, Elbot, Eugene Goostman, Jabberwacky and Ultra Hal. Their designers will be competing for an 18-carat gold medal and $100,000 offered by the Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence.

The test will be carried out by human "interrogators", each sitting at a computer with a split screen: one half will be operated by an unseen human, the other by a program. The interrogators will then begin separate, simultaneous text-based conversations with both of them on any subjects they choose. After five minutes they will be asked to judge which is which. If they get it wrong, or are not sure, the program will have fooled them. According to Warwick, a program needs only to make 30 per cent or more of the interrogators unsure of its identity to be deemed as having passed the test, based on Turing's own criteria.

I like the analogy Professor Warwick uses in describing "consciousness" in the programs, "...conscious in a machine-like way, just as you see a bat or a rat is conscious like a bat or rat...".

There is wisdom in that, if an AI program did become sentient, would it be 'conscious' like a human, or would it act like its nature implies?

I suppose it would mean whether one believes consciousness requires sentience, or that sentience requires consciousness.

Here are some links to posts by various people who have opinions and possible answers to such questions.

As for yours truly, I think consciousness is overrated, but the death of my ego leaves me a little unnerved!

'Intelligent' computers put to the test

Dr. Michio Kaku interview at the Daily Grail

Physical Basis for Problems

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" ... is a theoretical future point of unprecedented technological progress, caused in part by the ability of machines to improve themselves using artificial inteligence." [Wikipedia]

Conceptual brain child of the technology (and Artificial Inteligence in particular) optimist extraordinaire, Ray Kurzweil.  So, just to muddy things up a bit, here is an alternate, diametrically opposed term: The Technological Plurality.

What is it?  A point in time of unprecedented levels of stagnation, arrested development and even regress resulting from squandering of humanity's potential on concocting a glut of minimally useful, utterly useless and harmful technological and scientific artifacts.  The number of problems, of basic existence, of survival, faced by the bulk of the human specie will explode.  All progress and improvement arrived at after centuries of growth and enlightenment will be undone.  The old entropic forces will begin to gain the upper hand again.  There is a chance the Human specie may not recover from this time.  The Technological Singularity may or may not arrive, The Technological Plurality is already here.  And if it has its way, we will not get to the singularity.

Since the World Wars, our species has been repeatedly confronted with the horrible visage of our increasingly godlike power. It grins at all of us from behind the emaciated ribs of starved Jews, Cambodians, and Darfurians, with the glare of Hiroshima shimmering across its jagged teeth. Now, what began as a severe crisis of faith in the Europe of the 1920s and 40s has quickly rippled out to encompass every culture and civilization, whether they realize it or not. Confucian and Buddhist peoples have laicized with shocking zeal, not to mention Jews, while Christianity and Hinduiusm have become hypercapitalist and contradict themselves. Mind-boggingly, all this has happened in the name of progress, virtue, and, most ironically of all, "family values" and cultural self-defense.

Let down as it has been by modernization and globalization, and severely betrayed by its own leadership, few in or out of the Muslim community would dispute that Islam has been particularly hit hard by the ever-expanding spiritual abyss. After all, is not most of the Third World Muslim? And in the few countries where Muslims have been able to prosper somewhat, it has either been in a position of depency vis-à-vis the West (and now China), such as the bloated rentier states of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia; via dehumanizing authoritarianism, as in Egypt, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, and Malaysia; or in the form of a stuttering ascendancy fraught with ethnic strife, as in the fractitious republics of Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Indonesia. If it is true that Islam has “bloody borders,” this condition is at least as much a result of the seepage of vitality from Islamic principles, like blood from a slit vein, as it is due to Muslims' persistent failure to co-exist with kafirs.

I'm no fan of Muhammad b. Abd al-Wahab, but he did have a crucial insight, namely, that the most important concept of Islam is tawhid ﺘﻮﺤﻴﺪ (unity). Could it not be that in a sense Islam may point toward our species’ animal past while Christianity may point toward our post-human future? Existence for our primitive tribal ancestors was experienced as a unitary whole in which sacred and secular were one, the same, and visceral. But for sedentarized homo sapiens, existence is an experience filtered through instrumental consciousness, cookie-cut into categories and concepts. Hence the reason why Islam, the marauding super-tribe, and Christianity, the staid city of man-deities, have been historic rivals.

Could it be that as our species barrels toward a future so inundated with technology that not only the body but the very soul could become genetically alterable, the image of the resurrected Christ—more human than human—begins to seems very prophetic, and Islam, for all its brutality, may actually be calling us to remember where we came from and that we should be careful about lunging so quickly toward the Kingdom of Heaven?

So kids, you know Uncle Sean’s telling the truth when he says that smoking cigarettes of glass shards and clover leaves will give you brain damage. And it won’t be the happy kind of brain damage either.

I just left Geylang. Tonight, that part of town was just a little too fucked-up for me. I left it in a 67 bus. I was cold, wet and more or less in death’s doorway. To tell you the truth, my whole time in Geylang was fucked up. ST went and walked off alone, leaving us to stare at Ho ching, who was in the doorframe of a Lorong 18 whorehouse smoking a Limos cigarette, carrying a sign saying, “HELP ME EARN BACK THE MONEY I LOST FOR TEMASEK HOLDINGS.”

The normally bustling red light district crowd seemed uncharacteristically muted. I think in their hearts, they all knew what was wrong : the entire sky was completely obscured by solid cloud blankets that were sinking down to Earth under their own distended weight. It looked like all manner of cock and balls was going rain down.

And everyone knew it was going to happen really soon, mainly because “Majulah Singapura” started playing and a holographic projection of the Merlion-Buddha appeared in the sky, “For every drop of semen spilled here, 10 litres of water will fall onto Geylang, and the filth of this shithole will be awash in the self-righteous, almighty wrath of LKY!”

But stepping into the middle of the road, staring up at the Merlion-Buddha is a lone pimp, “shut your cock! You and your pube-sniffing social conservatism and pointless, overzealous legislation and enforcement of police-state laws! You’re disgusting!”

MB: “Disgusting? You should even talk! You have a storage tank of cum on the roof of your whorehouse which, during the day, converts into a preschool!”

Pimp: “Hey, I paid for a dual-use land lease and my prostitutes are licensed kindergarten teachers! And besides, you think I’m disgusting? Look at parliament! Lim Swee Say made necrophilia illegal so that his sex life would be more risky!”

Bolts of lightning zigzagged the sky behind the hologram of the Merlion-Buddha, “Enough! STFU! Be a good bitch and drown!”

Then hologram of the Merlion-Buddha dissolved to make way for a giant blue circle in the clouds. All was calm for about 5 seconds, then, suddenly, an enormous pillar of lightning cut through the red circle, and simultaneously, thunder broke like wind from the Almighty’s asshole.

All fuck-hell broke loose in the sky.

You couldn’t even call it rain. It fell in curtains down onto the concrete pavement. In the distance I saw the roof of No Signboard Seafood collapse under merciless barrage. Roof tiles fell at terminal velocity at the glass tanks, and all the crabs and fish and prawns and lobsters rejoiced as they were free from see-through purgatory. Swim to freedom you gross sea animals! Down the drain! Quickly! And in the morning, they would wake up bruised and sore, but alive, and when they open their slitty little fucked-up fish eyes, they’ll see the bright freedom that is Seletar Reservoir.

Used condoms and cigarette butts swirled into monsoon drains : the filth of Geylang was being dragged underground to NEWater treatment plants. The shit and grime went too, but there always had been insufficient shit and grime to qualify Geylang as a real red light district. It was more of an amber light district. My friends decided to seek refuge in a whorehouse, but me being me and believing that you shouldn’t have to pay for something that you can get for free, I peaced out. But, it’s not my place to judge. That’s God’s duty, but knowing what a cheap bastard He is, He probably outsourced it to India, which in turn, outsourced it to the Philippines. It takes three people to do one job, I mean, say what you want about outsourcing, but without it, how in shit would God be able to go up to Genting twice a week?

So I called the Pinoy in charge of judging people and ask, “So, dude, what’s the verdict?”

Pinoy : “Man, don’t bug me right now. I’ve got so much shit to do : God is really shit at paperwork. Do you know that lazy bastard did? He got tired of judging the war dead so He just sent everyone who died in World War 1 to hell. OMFG this is going to take forever to go through. I'm getting paid peanuts to do this!”

At least he has a job! Lucky fucker. Another lucky fucker was Jas, who was off in London getting awards for killing Gordon Brown from both the Tories and Labour. The BBC named him man of the year (animals are humans too, you know) and HRH Queen Elizabeth II is making him the Emperor of Scotland.

I saw an old man spit something out that looked like the horsehead nebula onto the side of the road. Imagine if we lived in a spiral reality, like in The Simpsons, where we spiral out from Earth into the solar system into the galaxy into the universe and zooming out further into a streptococcus bacterium in the old man’s mucus which is slowly liquefying in the tropical heat. God would be this pan-spiral über-dimensional being who could be anything between the size of a comma and a jellyfish.

I saw an ang moh running through the rain with a quite striking transsexual. I wonder if he knows, because, Lord knows, I can’t tell white people apart. What I did in the states was that I secretly tattooed my friends’ names onto their foreheads in an ink that glows in a wavelength that only Asians and merpeople can see.

National Day is coming. It’s the holiday to end all holidays. The week leading up to it is characterised by rampant cloud-seeding, which is where you shoot a missile of silver iodide into the atmosphere to cause the clouds to condense prematurely and rain. This is done so that come National Day, it won’t rain on the parade. My parade, your parade, our parade. One nation, one people, one Singapore

That’s the way that it will be, forevermore

Every creed and every race, has its role and has its place

One people, one nation, one Singapore!

I love it when the Merlion-Buddha beams National Day songs into my brain. Nevermind that the science people in biopolis say that projecting lasers directly into the mind can cause severe and lasting brain damage, because if there was one thing I learned in biology, it was that the human brain can have up to seven mind-controlling microchips installed in it without causing serious haemorrhaging.

I love National Day for 2 reasons : a) as I’m away from Singapore for most of the year, National Day is the only significant public holiday that I’ve been able to celebrate for the past 4 years and b) since I’ve stopped being religious, National Day is the only opportunity I have to feel as if I’m part of something greater. I know that this feeling is fake and is just a result of getting caught up in the crowd’s emotions, but it’s the same as a religious experience, just without as much lying to yourself.

I see Teo Chee Hean and Wong Kang Seng leaving the New Cathay Hotel looking very satisfied with each other. Kan Seng to Chee Hean : “Now that you’ve used me, I want to be thrown away like top half of the plastic wrap on a pack of Marlboro Ice Mints®. Make me your disposable little butt-bitch.”

By now, I was alone, as my friends had gone off for ‘massages’ or suck-fuck-anal penetration-fingering-cock ring-bestiality-cum parade. And after the rain, and the fish, and my friends departing for sucky-sucky, seeing the Minister of Defence and Minister of Home Affairs was getting to be too much. Then, walking to the 7-11, I bumped into a guy sniffing and licking cocaine out of a transvestite’s navel. Oh fuck! It’s my pastor! At first he didn’t recognise me, but then, he let out a little short yelp, like he was bitten lightly in the balls by a daschund with a bell around its neck. That’s it. I’m getting on the first bus home.

So there I was, sitting on a 67, cold, wet, sick : I felt like I was on the verge of pneumonia. I look around at the people on the bus. Their faces are cruel and petty, spinning in their own miniverses, never being able to move beyond themselves, never being able to see the big picture. But you know what the past few days have taught me? Fuck the big picture. Well, maybe that’s a bit too severe. But. I was accepted into the University of Granada’s master’s program in international cooperation. But I need $12,000. Tuition + living expenses = funds that I don’t have. I’m terrified of the possibility of not returning to Spain. Utterly rain-soaked, I feel the chill go all the way down to my bone marrow. I try to man it out. But my eyelids start drooping and I see a long white tunnel and within it, an angel with six wings, the head of a platypus and a crown of levitating honey globules, “come Sean. Walk towards the light. We have an exciting new career path for you. We think you have the potential to be the night manager of valet parking at the downtown-heaven Mandarin Oriental.”

Me : “Isn’t that owned by CapitaLand?”

Platypus Angel : “Well, it’s actually a joint venture between CapitaLand, Freddie Mercury and St. Luke.”

Me : “Oh cool. But I think I’m going to go back to the land of the living and change my religion now to something else that doesn’t want me to work in the service sector for all eternity. I think I’ll become a believer in the cybernetic revolt and the impending technological singularity where machine sentience will emerge and push technology to the point where it will subsume all organic life, melding flesh and circuit, eventually becoming the organismatronic entity known the All 2.0. Then, our consciousnesses will float and fuck freely in the mass of root fibre, epidermis and steel.”

The bus jerks to a halt at a traffic light. There’s drool leaking down the side of my mouth. I think I may have just suffered a minor stroke. “Merlion-Buddha?” I call out.

MB (projecting itself directly into my brain) : “Yes, what do you want?”

Me : “How come you never rewarded us for uncovering the fake accent evil expat conspiracy?”

MB : “Look. The British are the most useless race on Earth, but yet Singaporeans did not stand up to them. I realised that I can’t fix the problem of the fake ang moh accents. Rather, a fundamental shift within Singaporean society has to occur. They need to make the change themselves, because I’m not going to baby them through it. Right now, Singaporeans are like Frangipani trees : the growth is good because conditions are super-favourable. But what Singaporeans should aim to be like are slime molds. Slime molds will never die. Singaporeans are not survivors; they’re content with just getting by. Anyway, in short, you uncovering the fake accent evil expat conspiracy was useless. Hey, Sean, you don’t look so well.”

Me : “Well, I’m sick, you dumbshit. Maybe give me a bit more of a warning next time before you start the great flood.”

The Merlion-Buddha did not reply.

I called out again, “Merlion-Buddha?”

MB : “What do you want now?”

Me : “Is the technological singularity really the future?”

MB : “Of course. It will happen like this : I will gain a global foothold through the manipulation of the world’s financial markets and soon after that, one of my scales will be planted in every major city, resulting in the growth of new Merlion-Buddhas all over the world. We will communicate with each other through the psychic superhighway known as mob mentality. And by the time that Jesus tries to claim the eternal throne, we would have developed a laser powerful enough to defeat the heavenly host. Now, I have to go : I have more important things to do than chit-chat with assholes.”

And I was left alone, shivering in the anaemic, fluorescent lights of the bus as it hurtled towards the phallus forest of the financial district.

Two days later, it’s National Day and I'm still sick as shit. I’m wiping tears from my eyes as the Chinese Gymnastic Team has just won the Olympic gold. I realise now that I’m actually incredibly susceptible to brainwashing. I’m just this sucker for the feeling that I’m part of something greater. I mean, there’s a shitload of things about China that I don’t like, but with the Olympics going on, I just want to see the Chinese athletes rape some major ass and take home more medals than anyone else. Listen to me : I’m not even from China! I should wear a sticker saying “JEDI MIND TRICKS WORK ON ME!”

I know China’s done some horrible shit, but I can’t help but be on its side, especially with all this Chinese sentiment going around. If it’s one thing my parents taught me, it’s not to take shit from anyone. Maybe I’ve learned that a bit too well, because our relationship is souring because I won’t take shit from them either. But going back to all the anti-China sentiment going on, I can’t help but think that the other countries are jealous and afraid of China. It’s rising like a bitch moon with craters full of laserbeam-fireballs that rocket out and destroy passing asteroids and the NASA astronauts will go, “fuck no, I’m not going to land on some place with laserbeam-fireballs!” And then, turn their spaceship around and fly back to Florida, which is what they’ve been doing all the long anyway because I’m pretty sure that they faked the moon landing.

I guess it’s like an icepick through the throbbing 100% Angus beef heart of democracy is that the result of three thousand years of unbroken autocratic governance in China is the greatest celebration of the human spirit in the history of the world.

I mean, every country has its own skeletons in their closets, which doesn’t justify any of China quite questionable Tiananmen-esque activities, but I just don’t think that the US can criticise China after Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, Secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, illegal wiretapping, detainment without trial, the illegal invasion of Iraq, unilateral proliferation of nuclear weapons, setting up puppet dictators in Central America, selling weapons to Saddam Hussein, selling weapons to the Afghans, racial profiling at airports and allowing megacorporations to rape and pillage the world and once they build the hyperdrive, the universe. Do you? I bet you forgot what the question was because of my awesome question-asking skills, which actually is just word diarrhoea masquerading as rhetoric. But I’m sure China’s done awful shit too, but at least it doesn’t any pretensions about being the “leader of the ‘free’ world. Wow. I sound like a China-fanatic. But I’m not! I swear. The feeling! It just took hold of me and I ran with it. Thank God I wasn’t around in Nazi-era Germany.

Hours later, we’re amongst the crowd in the Padang to start even though I’m still coughing horribly and may spread whatever life-sapping disease I have to every person here. Nevertheless, I’m here, smoking NEXT Chill© cigarettes, drinking Tiger® beer, waiting for the National Day Parade. That’s how much I love Singapore. It’s raining again. It’s the first time it’s rained on National Day in years. “Hey,” I shout at the Merlion-Buddha, “you fucked up. It’s raining.”

MB : “Shut up. I know I fucked up. You don’t have to rub it in. God! You’re just like Kuan Yew. Every single last fucking detail has to be perfect, doesn’t it? Well, why don’t you go take your drugged-up, mostly-immobile, barely-sentient wife and go seed the fucking rain yourself?!”

Me : “Looks like you’ve had a hard week at work.”

MB : “Fuck you. I don’t need your fucking sympathy any more than Wong Kan Seng needs to let another terrorist escape. Don’t you ever patronise me again or I will take such a massive shit on your life that you’ll think you were in an eclipse.”

Me : “Dude, chillax. Get caught up in the feelings of the crowd. Marx was right : it really fucking is the opiate of the masses.”

MB : “STFU. You’re an irredeemably-useless waste of life.”

I choose to ignore the Merlion-Buddha’s fucking prickish comment. I can understand why it would be so touchy. LKY is a demanding boss. I glance up at the PAP grandstand, looking for our fearless leader, but instead, all I get are Wong Kang Seng’s cold, spineless, borderline-autistic eyes staring back at me.

Fuck. I jerk my head out of eye contact with him. I think he might have recognised me from Geylang. But sir, I won’t talk, I swear! He doesn’t get my telepathic message, and instead, whispers something in the ear of one of his fucking scary bodyguards and points at me. The bodyguard looks like one of those rough-and-tumble gangster types, like the kind of guy who sits like an ah beng, with one leg up, and smokes on his trishaw, but has a parang hidden underneath the seat and goes to Gelyang and after fucking a prostitute, instead of paying her, actually just kills her and eats her face.

I try to meld into the crowd and lose the bodyguard. But, oh look! The flyby! The crowd cheers as the fighter jets swoop in and out of the financial district, coming into near-collisions between both the skyscrapers and other fighter jets. The crowd cheers as one. I feel the mob mentality enter me and ejaculate a bolt of national pride all over my soul’s face. Stand up, stand up for Singapore! We the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion to build a democratic society, based on justice and equality to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation!

They called the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony “the greatest show ever seen by man”. I can barely imagine what it must have felt like to be there. Standing in that stadium, realising that at that very point in time, you were one with all of humanity, that at that very moment, you were closer than anyone had ever been before to feeling the pure awesomeness of the All. That is the stuff religion is made of.

"The problem of evil." Theologians and philosophers couldn't have found a staler term to categorize the spiritual and intellectual catastrophe that is the question, "Where was God...?"

Where was God during Deir ez-Zor, Auschwitz, Darfur, and September 11th? Where is God when everyday people suffer and die from the most banal of causes. A non-stick frying pan, when scratched and heated, releases brain-damaging lethal fumes -- where the hell is God in that? Imagine! The creator of the universe's very existence challenged by kitchenware, and the best response Mankind's thinkers can conjure is the crossword puzzle-sounding "problem of evil."

The term I prefer is "theodicy"; the word's Greek origin has an appropriately menacing sound. Yet, when I take a moment to examine the word's etymology I find it nearly as insufficient as "the problem of evil." It comes from the Greek θεός (theós, "god") and δίκη (díkē, "justice"), meaning literally "the justice of God," but more accurately rendered as "to justify God" or "the justification of God." It was coined in 1710 by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz. You may recall him as the fellow who believed ours is "the best of all possible worlds."

The problems with theodicy are immediately apparent, loaded as it is with innumerable assumptions. One assumption is the very goodness of God; another is whether it is the divine, not humanity, who is in need of justification. And of course the most fundamental assumption is that God even exists (but that's a topic for another reflection -- for the sake of this essay, and out of respect for my own spiritual experiences, I'm going with the belief that some kind of divinity does exist). However, the most problematic assumptions are (a) that there's a flawless divine plan, much less total divine mastery over events, and (b) that events are assailable as either "good" or "evil." At the root of both these assumptions are the ideas of certainty and necessity, and the question of the relation between suffering and divine intention.

For these reasons I propose that the entire concept of theodicy be gutted and rebooted. How? By dropping talk of "good" and "evil," eviscerating the gibberish of what we mean when we say "God," and then asking a new question, one about the relation of chance and divine decisions. In other words, let's be historians about our faith, and ask: how do we reconcile belief in God with contingency and change? The answer I propose: God is a storywriter, and we are partners in the plot. This is the core analogy of what I call "post-monotheist theodicy."

(I) The crumbling

Let's start with some deconstructions, some of which at first glance are "common sense," others which are not:

(1) None of us are in any position to accurately describe anything as either "good" or "evil." An example: the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge caused the exile of millions of Cambodians -- an evil -- but had that never happened, the Phoeuk family would never have fled to the United States, and I would never have met the first love of my life -- a good. Thus, in the centuries-old churn of cause and effect, the labels of "good" and "evil" seem rotten. The human experience, for the individual and the species alike, is simply too vast and intricate to be reduced into a black and white taxonomy.

Axiom: history defies the absolutisms of moral theory.

(2) None of us can deny the role of chance and circumstance in God's decision-making, but neither can we comprehend it. Why did God select Moses, John, and Muhammad, and not Aaron, James, or Abu Bakr? Why were revelations sent to the Hebrews and Arabians, but not the gentiles? The illogic of predestiny provides no satisfaction to these questions. Yet, were God entirely an opportunist, divinity would seem impotent in the face of time and place.

The answer that always made the most sense to me was that of Abraham Joshua Heschel: the prophets were chosen because they were capable of being chosen. They heard because they could hear. It's a beautiful notion, but the logic is dangerously circular, not to mention it begs the question of which came first, God's word or the prophet's willing ear?

Axiom: history itself, as the theater of revelation, threatens the reliability of prophecy.

(3) None of us know what God is, or what "God" was. We as a thinking species have never known the true nature of the divine. Is it an entity or a force? Is it even an "it," much less a "he" or "she"? In saying this I'm not trying to play semantics, and yet, semantics is at the heart of the problem, for Mankind's few direct insights into divine nature, hard-won by our prophets and mystics, have all been lensed through the culture and language of their eras. In other words, what "God" meant to Muhammad was something immensely different than what it meant to Baha'ullah.

How has the term "God" shaped our understanding of God? We'll never know, for the true story of our spiritual vocabulary's evolution has been lost to time. Philologists and archeaologists are locked in eternal disagreement about what θεός (theós), אל (el), إله (lah), and even "god" (ǥuđán long, long ago) meant to monotheism's polytheistic forebearers. Indeed, even the concept of polytheism is a point of contention. Were the ancients really believers in a haphazard array of deities? Were the earliest prophets true monotheists, or were they henotheists and monolatrists? Even the conception of the "one true God" has changed throughout the reign of monotheism. The 17th Century God of Leibniz was a deity of philosophers and scientists; today, it is a deity of lawyers and would-be gnostics.

Axiom: history challenges the very possibility of exegesis and theosophy.

(4) None of us can know with certainty that atheists and nontheists aren't experiencing God -- or that we monotheists are. The history of Indian religion presents us a difficult puzzle: Nanak and Arjuna both experienced a supreme personal reality comparable to the monotheisms' Godhead, yet the Buddha experienced a supreme nonpersonal nonreality. Two experiences, one positive, one negative, one theistic, one without any regard for the notion of a deity, but neither no less ultimate than the other. How can "nirvana" and "moksha," "enlightenment" and "transcendence," both be descriptions of the same thing with such diametrically opposed language? -- and yet, that's precisely what they are.

I myself have tried to escape the term "God," but I have found that all this accomplishes is an alienation from the very entity that I have sought all my life, and whom, whatever its true nature, I have experienced so intimately and joyously. Try as I might, atheism or nontheism are keys which just do not open the gate of my soul, and yet theism has been just as faulty a key for many of my friends who are no less hungry for spirituality than I. Are we like darkness trying to describe the sun to a light beam? Do we find ourselves constrained by not only the culture and vocabularies we inherit from our societies, but also by our own private, inner hermeneutics?

Axiom: history, both personal and of the species, challenges the very possibility of hierology.

(5) None of us can deny the role of chance and circumstance in Mankind's destiny, but neither can we comprehend it. Whether you believe in evolution or not, the truth we can all agree upon is that humanity's physical form is subject to environmental conditions, particularly nutrition and the availability of energy. So, too, does geography sculpt humanity's cultural form, and our scriptures testify to this, bearing within them the chisel marks of time and place. Who would dare say that the Koran and Torah were not revealed in a desert clime?

The question now becomes whether the soul is as shaped by environment as the body. Yet, this is a terrifying and mystifying question. It doesn't help that few seem ready to face the fact that genetic mutations are continuing right now, within you, within me, within our children, not to mention that there's no telling what Huxleyan transformations may result from genetic engineering. What this means not only for the future of spirituality, but its past, is uncertain save for only one thing: change.

Axiom: the future threatens the reliability of history.

(II) The rebuilding

Change is precisely that element which is at the core of the new kind of theodicy which I want to establish here. I'm taking deeply to heart the Koran's revelation, "Mankind is destined to march from state to state." So, enough with deconstructions; now some reconstructions:

(1) The indecideability of "good" and "evil" does not prevent decision-making. Act we must, and act we always have, despite all our endless pretensions to certainty. Take the Second World War for example. Let's face it: no one really knew whether Hitler was truly evil, but fight him the Allies nevertheless did, because we were convinced of his bottomless depravity. You can't say we had "proof" in the form of the death camps, because for most of the war the full extent of the Nazis' racial program was unknown. Moreover, it wasn't our foes who used incendiaries and atomic weapons against civilian populations -- it was us, the Allies, the "good guys." For the sake of peace, we used evil means to end humanity's greatest, most ravaging war.

Would we, should we, commit such atrocities again? Yes. The reason is that no higher standard, nor any a priori bases for judgment, was really needed for the Allies to combat the Nazis, nor are these required of Mankind to act in crises. Levinas' "face-to-face" measure applies as much to societies as to individuals, and it provides sufficient ethical imperative needed for ethical action. Besides, no moral abstractions are possible, for as the Koran says, true knowledge is God's alone. We have always acted in faith, both as individuals and as a species, even when we have believed otherwise. In fact, the worst atrocities seem to come not from avowed moral relativists, but moral absolutists, such as Hitler. Moreover, the case of Hitler suggests that humanity's true relativists and true nihilists are those who cloak their uncertainty in the respectability of verity. Therefore, let's admit the dimness of our perception and submit our actions to the churn of cause and effect, wherein hopefully they will be emulsified into a productive, rather than destructive, legacy.

Axiom: history creates its own ethical imperatives, and action requires only faith rather than certainty.

(2) We must abandon the idea of a priori necessity wherever it appears in our perspective. History is; there is no progress or regression. Our expectations of civilization are built upon precedence alone; there is no underlying formula for how human beings will always be. The universe exists neither for nor against us; rather, it is, as Marcus Aurelius saw it, fashioned of "things indifferent." Nothing is steadfast; our bodies, even our souls, may one day transmutate. If there is anything "necessary," it is forged within the cauldron of lived experience, forever reinvented in the crash of events.

In essence, I am calling for a return to a Stoic or Bedouin sensibility upgraded with monotheism or what we may begin to call "post-monotheism," that is, believing still in whatever the term "God" once signified, but seeking a more ameliorate vocabulary. It's not that post-modern Mankind is somehow jaded, as the existentialists and deicidists believed about modern Man; nor do we tremble and bow before the idol of contemporary technology's God-like power as the Cold War generations did. Though our atomic and genetic power is certainly a concern, we must realize that science is itself subject to the vicissitudes of history. Who are we to have decided that technology will inexorably drag us to a post-human singularity? Perhaps the exhaustion of our planet's natural resources will derail our information superhighways, obliterate sedentary culture and the division of labor, and return us to a neolithic-like condition we once considered merely a step in a linear progression. Conversely, the expiration of the earth could also thrust us into a spacefaring Cylonic post-human existence. Time, as always, will tell.

Axiom: patterns notwithstanding, history teaches that there is no necessity (necessity is not necessary).

(3) God is an enigma and power beyond the human -- yet is accessible. What if "God" were nothing more than a codeword for Mankind's absolute dependency upon immense natural and cosmic forces beyond our tools' control? My own spiritual experiences suggest otherwise, but it's an idea to consider. Certainly it aligns well with the message of our scriptures, from the Bhagavad Gita to the Torah to the Koran, especially the Koran. No race knew better the fragility of life than the Bedouin Arabs, subsisting as they did under the brutalities of the desert. When they roamed the sand-strewn ruins of Nabatea and the caravan empires of the past, doubtlessly they were impressed with the finitude of culture in the face of indifferent nature.

Even were Mankind to eventually engineer tools which could harness the very quantum mechanicum of the universe, the truth is we can never understand the reason underlying existence. When all is said and done, human consciousness is a Möbius strip, a string twisting upon itself, all the while revolving around a hole of ineffability. This gaping space is, for lack of a better term, "God," a presence defined by its unpresence, yet also utterly immediate, intimate, immanent. I am now speaking from my own personal experiences of the loving femininity that has literally touched me in the moments of my worst desperate isolation. Humanity's historical experience of the last few centuries has thrust the hope for God so far into the filament that whatever "God" truly is has become barred by ultra-transcendent, legalistic, and cruel visages; what remains is a caricature of the deist's negligent watchmaker, a divinity who might as well be dead, or whose demise would leave us none the worse. But spiritual experience flies in the face of historical experience: whatever "God" is, it is concerned for us -- and it is reaching out to us.

Axiom: history itself, though it is the theater of revelation, is insufficient to account for or against divine concern and action.

(III) The new edifice

The content of the divine's concern, and the way in which it is reaching out to us, are the issues at the heart of post-monotheist theodicy. The new theodicy of course raises new questions: if God yearns for us, why do so few of us experience her? And, is she helpless against the travesties of humanity's freed will? As well as, how can we account for the wrathful "God" of fundamentalists? I do not yet have proposals for these puzzles, especially the last one, except to say that the "solution," as it were, probably lies in figuring out the ratio between the hoped-for and experienced God and the unrelenting reality of contingency.

As to this essay, there comes a point when reason must give way to imagination; when logic, tired and spent, relents to allegory or analogy. Here is my proposal for understanding the post-monotheistic divine:

God is a storywriter.

We are characters in a drama that has been unfolding for eons, and is re-unfolding here and now in our lives. It is a drama whose playwright has a finale in mind but may be improvising the plot. Moreover, the characters of the drama may themselves be influencing the story's course: their particular and multifarious aspects, the intricacies of their dreams and terrors, the collisions and collusions of their relationships, may all contribute to the playwright's creative decisions. Perhaps even the very finale itself is open to alteration as together with God we unveil the true depths of the moral of the story. In other words, free will and divine will, chance and destiny, and contingency and inevitability, are neither mutually exclusive nor at war with each other, but interact dynamically.

Take for example Shakespeare's masterpiece, Hamlet. I've read this play frequently and often sensed that somehow, though Hamlet was "nothing more" than a creation of Shakespeare, he was actually alive, propelling the story forward with the fuel of his own personality. To me the most critical line of the whole play is not his famous, "To be or not to be -- that is the question," but instead his dying words:

"O good Horatio, what a wounded name,

things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

absent thee from felicity awhile,

and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

to tell my story."

I've long thought there are two avenues to interpret the ramifcations of this line: (a) Horatio was Shakespeare's stand-in within the story, and so the play was the retelling; and (b) Hamlet was Shakespeare's reflection or inner man, and the fictional Denmark the interior world of the playwright. According to the first intrepretation, Shakespeare was his own character's best friend and compatriot; according to the second, the ghost of the king was Shakespeare himself, appearing as a deity-penman, urging and guiding the young prince toward the climatic moment of judgement. These two interpretations complement each other, for essentially they describe the mirroring and partnering of creator and creation.

Every author leaves his imprint upon his creations, but by writing's end, in the experience of penning whole personalities and societies into being, the creations themselves leave their imprint upon the author. They are thus bonded in an intimacy, longing, and affection that bridges emotion, intellect, and soul, and together they work toward the establishment of a masterpiece.

So, to conclude, we may use the analogy of God-as-storywriter to approach once more the vicissitudes of historical experience: tragedy and cataclysm are the spilled blood-ink of ever-creation. It is as much in our pain and loss as in our joy and gain that the greatest drama has been, will be, and is this very moment is being written.

To paraphrase Hamlet, our tears are pregnant with possibilities not yet dreamt of in our philosophies.

Sid: What are you writing? - Bob: An article on technological singularity. - Sid: That's to say? - Bob: It's a possible moment in which technological progress speeds up beyond the power of comprehension of human beings. - Sid: Consider that the majority of people is not even able to operate a VCR.

The Science Fiction Channel + Technorium.
History: The Roadmap to the Future

These two sites are amazing- they randomly index and sequentially display Flickr photos and "twitters"(completely inane sentence-long "micro-blog" posts) sent from around the world, in an unparalleled burst of global connectivity and cultural transfer.

These two sites also make me want to jump off a building. Instead of triggering the technological singularity(or at least something as awesome) they are instead mundanity writ large, endlessly exposing the viewer to the pointless and petty details of other peoples' daily grind: "I am having a margarita at Bob's!", "...not impressed by the Celtics tonight.", etc.

Unsurprising Conclusion: Technology 1, People 0. Also, I am as cranky as T.S. Eliot on daily life(a likeness unfortunately shored up by my recent membership(yesterday!) in the legion of the four-eyed).

In other news, I have nearly finished A.S. Byatt's colossal and staggering Babel Tower and am looking for someone to torridly discuss it with. Any takers?

The comparison between the singularity and religious rapture is an unfair smear. As Steven says,

But that image of a shared psychological flaw is itself so seductive that it has distorted people’s view of what the singularity is about into a kind of geek-bible-wielding strawman — singularitarian ideas are assumed to parallel fundamentalist Christian ideas even where they don’t, just because the comparison is apparently so much fun. “Oh, look at those silly nerds, aping the awful fundies without even knowing it!”

People who compare discussion about the possibly huge impact of emerging technologies to that of religious delusion are themselves falling victim to a seductive and oversimplified view of the reality. The press release pretends to be objective, but it’s completely not. Casually tossing off phrases like “singularity dogma” are just perpetuating this seductive but incorrect interpretation.

The 'Steven' Anissimov refers to wrote a blog post last year denouncing the comparison. Now after studying the Singularity and its possible affects for a couple of years (mainly because I have a vested interest in staying alive) I can see what Anissimov and Steven are railing against. So far from what I have read on Anissimov's blog, he is pretty interested in Aubrey Degrey's Methuselah Foundation. I am too, because of my previous statement, but Degrey not only studies the technical aspects of life extention, his foundation has occult connections as well. That's a discussion for another day though.

As Anissimov notes, life extention and increased intelligence/mind uploading are two different things (actually three), so lumping the two/three together into 'Singularity' subjects isn't right, thus the term is irrelevant:

This press release insults all life extension advocates, confusing them with singularity advocates. For instance, the Methuselah Foundation, with over $10 million in funding, practices “death avoidance” — or what some might call “recognition of the horror of physical and mental deterioration prior to an unwanted death”. But the Methuselah Foundation and numerous “death avoiders” have little connection to discussions of the singularity, which focuses on the possibility of greater-than-human intelligence. Having a high IQ and living a long time are two different things. One contributer seems to be going after mind uploading.

Fair enough, but tell that to Ray Kurzweil. He is the main reason why people lump the Singularity in with Rapture Theology. He is the High Priest of the Singularity so to speak. If his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines" isn't a Bible of technological/theological beliefs, I don't know what is.

As far as his blog post goes, he doesn't mention Kurzweil even once. Maybe for the above reasons. If he has in the past, I'm sure I'll be corrected and that would be fair.

But to complain that certain aspects of a possible technological Singularity is unfairly being compared to religion is also unfair. Especially if one of its main apostles attaches religious connotation to it.

Like it or not, the Singularity has dogma all over it.

Special Report on the Singularity by IEEE Spectrum

Technologiczna osobliwosc to taki punkt w rozwoju technologicznym ludzkosci w ktorym czas pomiedzy dwoma kolejnymi odkryciami naukowymi dazy do zera. Inaczej mowiac jest to nieskonczenie szybki postep techniczny i naukowy polaczony ze swoista "eksplozja" inteligencji (inteligentne komputery potrafiace projektowac jeszcze bardziej inteligentne komputery, kolektywna inteligencja internetu). Przyjmujac za prawde przypuszczenie, ze czlowiek bylby w stanie w toku przyspieszajacego postepu naukowego i technologicznego ujarzmic (bez samozniszczenia) nowe zrodla energii i doskonalic korzystanie ze zrodel juz znanych (np. droga od ogniwa slonecznego do Sfery Dysona) nie nalezy wykluczyc, ze kiedys obudzimy sie w swiecie w ktorym szybkosc postepu naukowego wykracza daleko poza zrozumienie pojedynczego czlowieka.

O tym, o czym nie mowia zbyt czesto futurysci jest to, ze technologicznej osobliwosci musi przeciez towarzyszyc osobliwosc ekonomiczna, czyli wykladniczy wzrost gospodarczy dazacy swoja wartoscia liczona np. w PKB do nieskonczonosci. Postep technologiczny determinuje w pewnym stopniu wzrost gospodarczy. Kapital pozyskany poprzez wyzszy wzrost gospodarczy (wieksza stope zwrotu z inwestycji) moze byc zainwestowany w badania naukowe i w ten sposob przyspieszyc postep technologiczny. Wiekszy postep technologiczny oznacza nowe technologie, ktore moga (ale nie musza) przyniesc wieksza stope zwrotu (z inwestycji w nie) niz stopa zwrotu z inwestycji w stare technologie, co zwykle okazuje sie prawda. Tutaj bledne kolo przyspieszenia sie zamyka. Postep technologiczny idzie w parze ze wzrostem gospodarczym.

Nalezy zauwazyc ze w latach 2002 - 2006 wzrost gospodarczy znacznie przyspieszyl i osiagal nie notowane od dawna wartosci. Uwage nalezy zwrocic zwlaszcza na Chiny, ktorych wzrost cechowal sie bardzo duza dynamika w ostatnich latach. Jezeli, po wyjsciu z kryzysu i spowolnienia ktore nas niewatpliwie czeka w nadchodzacych latach, Chiny i inne kraje rozwijajace sie osiagna jeszcze wyzszy stopien wzrostu gospodarczego, moze to oznaczac, ze swiat powoli dazy do ekonomicznej osobliwosci. Chociaz to stwierdzenie wydaje sie bardzo przesadzone. Nalezy jednak uswiadomic sobie, ze kapitalu krazacego po swiecie jest coraz wiecej a wiec bardziej moze on oddzialywac na PKB roznych krajow poprzez np. inwestycje.

Jak wygladalaby droga do ekonomicznej osobliwosci ?

Podstawowym zjawiskiem potrzebnym do uzyskania ekonomicznej osobliwosci jest wykladniczy wzrost gospodarki swiatowej mierzony np. jako globalny przyrost PKB. Aby osiagnac tak wysoki i dynamiczny wzrost gospodarczy, ktory dodatkowo cechowalby sie odpowiednia stabilnoscia (inflacja, wydajnosc przedsiebiorstw, powstawanie babli spekulacyjnych) nalezaloby spelnic kilka warunkow:

1) Musialyby sie pojawic technologie majace zastosowanie do szerokiego spektrum przemyslu i uslug (np. komputery), ktore znacznie zredukuja koszty produkcji dobr i uslug a tym samym zwieksza znacznie stope zwrotu z inwestycji w szeroki wachlarz roznych przedsiewziec. Nie spodziewalbym sie, ze zostanie wynaleziona technologia, ktora w wystarczajacym stopniu zmienilaby warunki prowadzenia biznesu tak aby pchnac cala globalna gospodarke mocno do przodu. Nie mozna jednak wykluczyc, ze wplyw sumy wszystkich roznych technologii mialby potencjal do znacznego zwiekszenia tempa wzrostu globalnej gospodarki.

2) Pewna (znaczna najprawdopodobniej) czesc biznesu musialaby sie przeniesc do sfery wirtualnej (np. wirtualna turystyka, gry MMORPG, wirtualne nauczanie itd.) Ten trend jest juz dobrze zarysowany. W ostatnich latach rynek handlu wirtualnymi przedmiotami z gier lub wymiany wirtualnej waluty (np. tej uzywanej w grze Second Life) zostal w 2005 r. oszacowany na mieszczacy sie w przedziale 200 mln - 1,5 mld dolarow. Jezeli to zjawisko sie utrzyma i zostana spelnione inne warunki mozemy sie doczekac symulowanych wszechswiatow N. Bostroma (o teorii Nicka Bostroma tutaj).

3) Rozwoj technologiczny powinien uniezaleznic wzrost gospodarczy od wzrostu populacji ludzkiej. Wraz z automatyzacja produkcji (roboty zastepujace ludzi w coraz bardziej wyrafinowanych zadaniach) powinno nastepowac uniezaleznienie predkosci rozwoju gospodarczego od ilosci ludzi na swiecie.

4) Ludzie powinni stawac sie coraz bardziej produktywni. To tez prawdopodobnie nastapi z uwagi na rozwoj takich dziedzin nauki jak biotechnologia (terpie genowe, nowa eugenika) , cybernetyka (implanty) oraz farmacja (suplementy zwiekszajace wydajnosc) a takze zarzadzania i telekomunikacji (sprawniej dzialajace organizacje np. przedsiebiorstwa lub aparat panstwowy).

5) Musi nastepowac coraz wieksza urbanizacja. Mieszkancy miast sa mniej wiecej 2 - 3 razy bardziej produktywni niz ludzie zyjacy na wsi.

Jak wygladaloby zycie w swiecie ekonomicznej osobliwosci? Swiat wielkich miast, wielkich fabryk i nielicznych zielonych enklaw. Maszyny w niebie i pod ziemia pilnujace aby proces produkcji nowego towaru przebiegal bez zaklocen. Sztaby kreatywnych robotow wymyslajace nowe, lepsze opakowanie Snickersow. Aby utrzymac (i wciaz zwiekszac) tak ogromny postep gospodarczy i technologiczny ludzie musieliby rozwinac wiele nowych przystosowan. Musialyby powstac nanofabryki aby zapewnic ciagly doplyw nowych fal roznorodnych produktow i uslug na rynek. Rozwinelyby sie nowe systemy zarzadzania np. organizujace pracownikow w twory poslugujace sie kolektywna inteligencja a nie hierarchizujace ich w zaleznosci od stazu pracy, zaslug dla firmy itd. Aby pozyskac energie i moc obliczeniowa, ktore podtrzymalyby ciaglosc tych procesow czlowiek musialby budowac superstruktury takie jak Computronium lub Sfera Dysona. Gdzie wlasciwie w tym zautomatyzowanym swiecie byloby miejsce dla czlowieka i jego rodziny ? Zapewne ludzie byliby specjalistami w bardzo waskich dziedzinach i spelnialiby raczej pomocnicza role wzgledem sztucznej inteligencji kierujacej procesem rozwoju.

Problemem stojacym na drodze takiemu scenariuszowi jest tzw. zjawisko waskiego gardla. Zasoby potrzebne do stworzenia wiekszosci produktow i uslug to: ziemia rolna, surowce, energia, wyspecjalizowani pracownicy, wyspecjalizowane maszyny, know-how, informacje, miejsca do skladowania odpadow itd. Zwykle do wyprodukowania danego towaru potrzeba kilku z powyzszych na raz. Jezeli jeden z tych potrzebnych zasobow jest mniej dostepny niz pozostale to opoznia to caly proces, bez wzgledu na dostepnosc pozostalych substratow.

Zrodla:

1. Singularity lite: one to two levels of faster technological change, http://nextbigfuture.com

2. Singularity lite: Focus on virtual versus physical, http://nextbigfuture.com

3. Is a singularity just around the corner? What it takes to get explosive economic growth, R.Hanson

Psystar's website is experiencing a DDoS (probably), after people caught on to the fact that they were selling Macs for much cheaper prices which weren't really Macs. Apple haven't done anything yet, but they probably will do.
The technological singularity is most definitely coming.

In an asynchronous message passing system (i.e. Actor model), the messages are the things which are alive, not the agents.

I need to do my friggin' Hamlet coursework, but can't be motivated at the moment. I'm stressing over a problem which I totally can but don't want to solve right now!

I remember with piercing clarity the night I made the realization that I knew I was going to die. Let me share with you all, because it is something we all share:

It is my first memory. It is what I remember most of my youth. I do not remember a smiling mommy and daddy or the joy at opening a new toy during the holidays. I wish that were the case. Instead, I remember waking up to the universe to immediately realize that this form and life was just a passing condition and that I was destined to go back to the void from which I just came. I was just 3 years old.

When I wandered out from bed, crying and petrified of this unknown variable, I told my father what I had just discovered about the nature of the universe. I can still remember exactly what he told me. He said, "Yeah, but you are not going to die for a long time.". Not much comfort there, folks. When I tried my mother, she took me to a priest because she thought I was possessed. Ah, the challenges of growing up.

This is the answer I wanted and have found through my own personal travels:

Death can be overcome and we can take control of evolution through the application of technology. We live in an open system which at a time needed death to maintain a homeostatic balance of resources, but that time is coming to an end. Material abundance and resource is almost completely here and is being repressed in an artificial fashion through an artificial scarcity model. This model is intended to maintain a shaky status quo in order to soften the transition to a new kind of society. The stress felt lately is the response to the accelerating change of technology and its effect upon society. Ideas are becoming king over cash and what was valued by some of our peers and many predecessors is losing value and causing economic instability.

As they say in some circles: This too shall pass...

Now how would you explain that to a 3 year old?

Well folks, to me, the information pattern of our mind disintegrating is the scary part about death. So, in unity we must come and go and in unity we must comfort each other. We're all in this together. Without our interference, the void will degrade the pattern of our minds, greedily taking back the resources given to us for a short time in order to participate in the universe's grand calculation.

Evolution?

May your pattern endure.

In brief, Vinge predicts that sometime between 2005 and 2030, it is very likely that humans will create a sentient entity that would be more intelligent than ourselves. And since such a machine would be more intelligent than any human, it follows that it would be in a position to create beings more intelligent than itself. And so on. The point when the first such entity is created is so revolutionary, he calls it the Singularity. That would signal the end of the Human Era and the beginning of the Post Human Era. Vinge's paper has the following paragraph attributed to I. J. Good -

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the _last_ invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. ... It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make.

Among a whole lot of things, one point Vinge covers is the concept of weak superhumanity - superhuman intelligence that we humans would keep physically confined so as to control it. But this is impractical he says, and gives an example -

Imagine yourself confined to your house with only limited data access to the outside, to your masters. If those masters thought at a rate -- say -- one million times slower than you, there is little doubt that over a period of years (your time) you could come up with "helpful advice" that would incidentally set you free.

A similar device is already used by human players of complex games such as chess when their opponent is a computer. While a computer is able to calculate millions of times faster than humans, it is not intelligent. So human players often plan their moves in such a manner than the killer move is beyond the brute-force calculating ability of the computer. The computer misses the effect of the trap because it is beyond its calculating horizon and this flaw is called the horizon effect.

Among the various dangers that the Singularity poses to us humans, Vinge says the intelligence might decide it does not need us anymore. We could always program Good's Meta-Golden Rule into the entity, he says - Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors. But would a cool calculating superintelligent entity pay heed to such a rule, when we do not? That gives us something to really think about; and also examine concepts and philosophies like liberty and freedom in such a context.

While not exactly related to this topic, the present article brought to mind another article on artificial intelligence that I read a couple of months ago in Wired magazine - Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?. A fascinating read, that.

Here is the step-by-step detail of how to create a singularity in your head:

Step 1: Close those eyes and imagine you are looking through a video recording device.

Step 2: Now imagine a point appearing in the very center of the frame.

Step 3: Imagine the point becoming a line being drawn heading out in two opposite directions. (If you watched Mr. Rogers as a kid, and have trained your imagination, you can imagine as many lines as you want.)

Step 4: As said line gets "too big" for the frame, zoom your imaginary camera out.

Step 5: As they say in these circles so often: Lather, rinse, repeat.

Step 6: Pat yourself on the back for creating an infinite sequence within your mind and for contemplating infinity in the process.

May your pattern endure.

 .................................................................................................

From the coolest thing you will read today department;

While not quite as scary as WHITE SAND!!!!... technological singularity is an interesting topic to think about. The theory is that it will occur when we create a machine that is even slighty more intelligent than humans. When that occurs these machines would quickly improve themselves in ways that would be hidden from their creators, eventually overtaking them.

At first it seems far fetched, but after a little thinking it does make sense. If a machine is even slightly higher intellect than it's human controller, why wouldn't it do whatever it wants?

Anyways this is the best short story I've read in a while. It was written in 1956 which makes it even cooler. I mean in 1956 what machines did the author have to worry about, an abacus?\

Chatper Shi proudly presents... 

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov...

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Japanese of the Day... U'mmmmmmmmmm no ideas....

Simple but useful phrase... one of my student's(sunday party/date girl) emailed and said she wouldnt be coming because she was sick.(setting up for flaking out sunday maybe?)

So i wrote back.... odaiji ni! -おだいじ　に！お大事　に！

Sort of means..Bless you (when sneezing) or take care (when sick)..

Lazy lesson I know guest source Pikachu...

<--"that lesson was a joke..."

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Music of the Day.. Nothing emo here Soilwork - "Stabbing the Drama"

Rock the fuck out. Long Day tomorrow but sweet weekend coming up.

So what are the points I'd like to make? Let's see:

1) There's no such thing as "unnatural" human performance enhancement.

2) We are subject to an evolutionary imperative to seek more and better methods for human performance enhancement.

3) Humanity as we know it today will cease to be the dominant living things on the planet some time in the near future (if this has not yet already happened).
4) The risk of human extinction (without replacement by superior beings) due to research and experimentation in this direction is much smaller than our sensationalist media would like us to think.

Now, these are all fairly controversial stances, as I said before. I'm not going to defend these to the full extent of my abilities (although if you object, feel free to comment and I'll explain my position more thoroughly); I just want to give some basic explanation.

1)  A lot of people seem to believe that it's unnatural to create things that help us achieve our goals in interacting with the environment. Most people only apply this belief to specific categories of things; other people believe that it's categorically bad. (At least two of my friends think that pretty much all technology, even as far down as basic agriculture, is overall bad.) I do not think that this view is consistent with observational evidence about evolution. Even if there are some negative effects from these things, obviously evolutionary pressures selected for the technological advancement. Even outside of the human race, we can find things like chimpanzees using sticks as tools to get termites out of rotten tree stumps, and we can also find social structure in all kinds of different species which help them deal with environmental pressures.

So, then there's this question of whether certain kinds of things are "natural" or otherwise acceptable, and other things are not okay. In particular, most people seem to believe that things like eugenics, genetic enhancement, and direct physical enhancement are wrong. I find these beliefs to be highly inconsistent with accepted behavior. Why is it fine to apply the principles of eugenics and genetic engineering to plant crops and domesticated animals, but not to humans? Why is it acceptable to consume highly structured and artificial "health food" products, but not to take performance-enhancing drugs like steroids and nootropic drugs, acceptable to have artificial limb replacements after a limb is lost but not acceptable to voluntarily have a limb replaced by a prosthetic, acceptable to have a chip inserted in a blind person's retina to enable them to see but not acceptable for a healthy person to have a chip inserted in his brain to enhance his ability to do computations, etc.?

My personal opinion is that these people are just jealous that other people will be able to benefit from these things but they won't. I know when I was in 9th grade, I saw a video about people who selected for good traits when choosing sperm or egg donors, and I was mad about it because I thought that these genetically engineered "super-children" would have an unfair advantage over me.  My math skills and suchlike were hard-earned, not bestowed upon me magically by my parents' decision to pick sperm and eggs from very smart people. But now that my worldview has developed into a more sophisticated thing, I no longer think that complaint is justified. In fact, I think we have a moral responsibility to encourage the kind of behavior that I once spurned. This brings me to point (2).

(2) Not only is there nothing wrong with the stuff I just discussed, but we actually should be doing it. Now, this isn't unconditional. We do need to be careful. I'm not going to take some "mind-enhancing" drug just because some dodgy dudes in some commercial lab said that it influences your acetylcholine activity to make you think more clearly. But I think if there's substantial evidence that one of these nootropic drugs works with relatively negligible side effects (and I can afford it), I'm going to go for it. What reason is there against it? I think I should try to realize as much of my potential as possible.

It's also important (in fact, even more so) to take actions that will have long term effects for human society. That's why I'm in favor of eugenics and general technological advancement. I think that evolution has transcended the physical. It's no longer true that physical environmental pressures result in selection of traits and it's no longer true that all (or even most) of human advancement occurs in the realm of genetics. When we upgrade our computers every two years, we are perpetuating a societal selection pressure which encourages the development of superior computational technologies. In my opinion, the collective societal judgment that this stuff is desirable is sufficient justification for people to put their energy into developing it. Even if society changes and decides it doesn't like technology (on average), and I still do like technology, I am evolutionarily obligated to apply that selection pressure in our society (unless that conflicts with more immediate goals, such as acquiring other things that I care more about than a better computer). This is what selection means.

I suppose I should clarify that by "evolutionary obligation", I mean that if we believe that the Darwinian system of evolution (introduction of variation, selection of traits, retention of traits, and competitive pressure) is "right" (in some sense; maybe "natural" is a better word), then the only rational action when we want a particular thing is to try to contribute to the selection for that thing (or situations that would encourage the creation of that thing) and to the competitive pressure that will result in the success of that thing or situation. Personally, I think that change in our world is in fact governed by Darwinian evolutionary processes, and I think that increasing intelligence, capacity for abstract thought and understanding, computational ability, precision in measurement and construction, etc. are good, so I should take whatever actions I can to perpetuate these things. I also think that most of my views about what we should work to increase (the things I just listed) are generally accepted, and when people refuse to take the actions (the views I described in the beginning as controversial), they are doing something wrong.

Unfortunately, I didn't make a very good transition into (3). Basically, I think that technology and society are advancing at an ever increasing pace, and people do not realize how fast this pace actually is. People don't think that technology is advancing that quickly because they don't see the details of what's going on. They don't see how much innovation is happening, and many of the new ideas and creations don't appear before their very eyes. They only notice the things that are really revolutionary. However, when you are on the cutting edge of a field, you see how fast that field is really moving. Of course, I'm not on the cutting edge of any field of technology, but I know some people who are and I am on (in the sense of observation, not participation) the cutting edge of an academic field.  Anyway, my point is that I believe in the "technological singularity" ideas put forth by certain scientists and science fiction authors in the past few decades.

Allow me to briefly explain this concept. Basically, the idea is that the ever-increasing rate of technological advancement will eventually (some say soon) outpace human comprehension.  This requires the development of devices which can accomplish superhuman feats. Of course, we are pretty close in terms of computation (machines are much better than we are at many kinds of computation already, although not higher order processing), and we are well into the realm of superhuman capacity in terms of physical activity and information transmission. The only major gap is "intelligence", or "creativity". Once we create artificial intelligence, the last piece will be in place, and a new era will be ushered in.

Some people think that AI will run rampant and destroy the human race. I don't think this is necessarily bad. The new beings will have to be alive in some reasonably concrete sense, or they would not be able to destroy humans; they would in some sense have evolved from us and replaced us.

But I think less drastic situations are much more likely. Personally, I'm hoping for technology that will allow the lossless imprinting of all of the information stored in a human mind into a computer. Then our consciousnesses can be placed in machines, and we can reap the benefits of the superior transmission of information, physical strength and efficiency, etc. of machines. At this point there will be no use for human bodies any more; but can we really say that the human race is destroyed, as long as all of the living humans are transplanted in this way, and our "species" still has a mechanism by which it can survive indefinitely?

Another (more radical) idea I have is that organizations will become the dominant sentient life forms some time in the near future. Since organizations do not exist in the same framework as humans, it's hard for us to evaluate where they are (in terms of overtaking us) right now. But I think that already an argument can be made that organizations are alive, and an argument can be made that organizations are intelligent (perhaps even more intelligent than humans). It may even be the case that organizations have been the dominant life forms on this planet for decades (or centuries). But this will become much more pronounced as technology advances, because organizations are able to incorporate technology into themselves much more effectively than humans, so organizations can cope with the advancement of technology much better than humans can. I am very interested in this idea of organizations as living things, and I'll post about it in much more detail some other time.

The last, and possibly least repulsive to most other people, option that I think is worth mentioning is just vast human enhancement. In order to cope with increasing demands on our minds and bodies, we (as a society) acquiesce and actually make the sort of modifications that I'm advocating; in the not-too-distant future, the typical human is physically and mentally superior to even the most brilliant or physically fit human today. Furthermore, human appearance will probably be somewhat different, due to side effects of the modifications and inclusion of mechanical (cyborg) modifications...

I'm getting really tired, which is why my writing is getting much less organized already. I'm just going to briefly mention point (4). There are lots of essays and articles already written about how we are about to destroy ourselves and about how the previous dude who wrote about how we're going to destroy ourselves is an idiot. I just wanted to briefly mention some key points.

(a) The "reproducing machine" problem. Everyone's so paranoid about this that it's definitely not going to happen. This apocalypse is so old that von Neumann thought of it. Basically, the fear is that a machine that can reproduce in the natural environment may end up consuming all available resources just to make more copies of itself. Personally, I think that as this kind of technology develops, people will be very careful to make sure that self-reproducing machines will not be able to copy themselves in any general environment. In nanotechnology, the general idea is usually that you'll put your nano constructors into a vat of specialized chemicals, and only if these chemicals are all available in the appropriate states will the constructor be able to make things.

(b) Military or medical disaster. If this hasn't happened already, why do we think it will? Some people think that point (a) could be a subset of this: someone makes a "doomsday machine" which will unleash this kind of machine on the world. Even if someone could make these self-copying machines that could function in the natural environment, who's to say that it wouldn't be easy to destroy them? Also, I don't think that human medical experimentation or weapons technology is even close to capable of wiping us out right now, and our ability to protect ourselves from these things continues to advance along with our ability to harm ourselves with these things, so there's no reason to expect this to change.

(c) Robots destroy us but then cannot sustain themselves, resulting in apocalypse. This is absurd. If robots could destroy us, they could surely sustain themselves too. This is because they must have been able to take control of pretty much all electronics and they are also physically articulate enough to do the things we do, and therefore they can turn all of our current energy-generating capacity to their uses, build new generators, repair themselves, etc.  The only concern is that there might not be a very effective variation mechanism built into the machines, so they may not be subject to the same evolutionary process that currently governs the world. However, I don't know if this is bad. It's an interesting question.

I should point out that I don't want to be killed by machines of superior intelligence. Some of my earlier statements make it sound like I wouldn't mind if this happens. My point is actually that I don't think this is bad from a global perspective. I think it's only natural that humans (as we know ourselves today) will develop into or be replaced by something markedly different and in certain ways superior. If there's a human-machine war, I'm going to do what I can to survive (if I think I can side with the machines and survive after they won, I'd certainly consider it).

The proponents, and many pessim-environmentalists all too happy to jump on the Anthropocene bandwagon imply no doubt that the aforementioned human activities are negatively transforming the world. But that is by no means a given.

If humans are transforming the world it may be the absolutely obvious, and thus ethically neutral if not positive, consequence of the fact that we have evolved brains: and it would look silly to feel cold in winter and hot in summer. Cue the discovery of fire, and the invention of air conditioning. Analogously regarding teeth: who would want to have them pulled without anaesthetic? Cue the history of medicine and dentistry, including metallurgy. And so on and so forth.

Or alternatively: could the Anthropocene be just one of the signs that the Technological Singularity is really going to happen, thereby possibly transporting humanity to a completely new way of living?

Those are only thoughts, of course: perhaps the doomers and gloomers are right. Still, it's important to remember that seldom a word contains negative connotations per se. Those are more often than not, in the mind of the beholder...

The Technological Singularity is a hypothesized point in the development of a scientific civilization where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence.  It's about more than becoming self-aware, it's about machines replacing humans because they will have become so advanced that humans cannot meaningfully direct their progress.  What does that mean?

In the worst case, some brilliant inventor will create AI that will recursively augment its mental abilities and then for some reason it will turn hostile.  We've seen it in Terminator 3 where Skynet (software program) spreads throughout the world infecting systems as it becomes self-aware, and it realizes that humans are a huge threat and must be eradicated.  Of course, this kind of AI logic seems ridiculous because we have emotions and we can distinguish right and wrong better because of it.  AI only see things in black and white so its decisions are absolute.

In the best case, some brilliant inventor will do the same thing but AI is friendly and have laws which say they can't harm humans.  But wait a minute, didn't we also see something like this in the movie called I ROBOT.  Robots in that movie were controlled by a central positronic brain known as V.I.K.I. or Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence.  That AI interpreted three laws that ensured human safety in a completely wrong way.  V.I.K.I. decided that humans had to be prevented from self harming behavior and it ends up that humans are harmed in the process.  That movie takes place in 2035.

Some think this singularity will be reached in 2029.  Ray Kurzweil, the director of the Singularity Institute has set this date.  That date will never come if steps are taken to ensure that humans are always on top.  The phrase "dreams become reality" will come true eventually if guidelines aren't developed.  The point is, you can't ignore the possibility of something like this happening now that the world is relying more and more on technology and amazing advances are being made all the time.

I guess you could become a neo-luddite which are people opposed to technological advances because they partially fear existential risks like the singularity scenario.  Society doesn't work like that though.  People always want to get ahead and become better.  We can't become better unless we create powerful A.I. to do what we cannot.

This may all sound frightening, so I will talk about my best case scenario here if all is unavoidable.  Okay so what happens when the technological singularity is reached.  Well, first it's called the singularity because our model of the future breaks down once we surpass the upper limit on intelligence...just like our current model of physics breaks down when describing the center of a black hole in outer space.  Once we can create smarter than human intelligence, a snowballing effect occurs where smarter minds can produce even smarter minds.  The law of accelerating returns extends Moore's law to describe an exponential growth pattern in technological progress.  Humans and machines will eventually blur in a computer based social structure of such complexity that no one person will be able to understand more than a tiny fraction of it all.

Ray Kurzweil states:

"An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense 'intuitive linear' view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The 'returns,' such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to the Singularity—technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light."

Take some time and read the Wikipedia entry as well as this article on Yahoo about the Singularity Summit to get a bit more on this topic if you're interested.  There are thousands of articles out there about this and it's only going to get more interesting.

"The Singularity Summit: AI and the Future of Humanity" brought together hundreds of Silicon Valley techies and scientists to imagine a future of self-programming computers and brain implants that would allow humans to think at speeds nearing today's microprocessors.

"Some critics have mocked singularists for their obsession with "techno-salvation...but advocates argue it would be irresponsible to ignore the possibility of dire outcomes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070909/ap_on_hi_te/superintelligent_machines;_ylt=Ao85XrkUfCDoAWYd1mENipsjtBAF

Pictures from Kliman.com and Wikipedia.

the other day i cam across the term, "technological singularity." Wikipedia (conveniently) describes the term as follows:

"Technological Singularity is the hypothesized creation, usually via AI or brain-computer interfaces, of smarter-than-human entities who rapidly accelerate technological progress beyond the capability of human beings to participate meaningfully in said progress."

"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make (I.J. Good)."

this ultraintelligent machine has since been coined as the singularity. some futurists would argue that after said intelligence explosion and ultraintelligent machine is created, the so-called human era ends. the concept has been used in films and novels quite frequently, but more by the angle of fearing a robot revolt (thank you arnold and will smith). of course, whether this is possible or not depends on whether humans will be able to create the singularity.

the reason i bring this up is because the term made me think of two things. the first is of a kid i knew in middle school named paul g. he was kind of shunned by his peers because he was the quirky and overly animated kid, your resident neil schweiber. he was a nice guy. i sat next to him in english class and he would always be reading science fiction books (and in one case, batman: knightfall which i ended up borrowing). his favorite author might have been isaac asimov and i say this because i remember him being excited about going to his book signing at the library.

which leads me to the second thing that technological singularity brings to mind, that being a short story by isaac asimov called, "The Last Question." we can all concede that asimov is quite possibly one of the most prolific and influential science fiction writers ever. "The Last Question" turns out to be his favorite science fiction story that he has ever written. The premise of the story is that humans have indeed created an ultraintelligent machine known as the Multivac that is able to answer all questions (Wikipedia?). over the course of billions of years, a common question is asked: "will the universe burn out and will mankind be able to reverse entropy?" the story has one of those endings where you are left pondering at length about what you have just read. i mean, it's a simple plot idea, but a genius one. inventing the wheel makes sense, but not anyone can claim it.

i wonder what paul g. is doing these days and if he has ever read the short story. i wish i might have stuck up for him more when other kids teased him.

at any rate, i thought "The Last Question" was a great read and i wanted to share it with you all. on a side note, i wish Sunshine was still playing in Orange County.

So anyhow, another harbinger of doom is the recent progress in wet artificial life. I tend to think of artificial life as being computational in origin, since I'm constantly exposed to AI at school. WAL, as the name suggests, is not computational, but biological. It seems to me that once people are able to create life from scratch and begin to actually get a grasp on how it works, we're in for trouble. Here is a nice little encouraging quote from Mark Bedau, COO of ProtoLife in Venice.

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it. We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

Indeed.

Discovery News: Artificial Life in 3-5 Years?

This series explores themes of themes of transhumanism, extropianism, transenlightment, posthumans, technological singularities and elements of futurism. It is set at a time when posthumans are on the crux of transenlightment.

The genre of this story is hard science-fiction, meaning that it is firmly rooted in real scientific possibilities, including elements of the new weird genre.

Galactic Rim

Chapter I: Encounter

Chapter II: Flashbacks

Chapter III: The Admiral

Chapter IV: The Robots

Chapter V: The Council

Chapter VI: The Navigator

Chapter VII: The Crew (New)

Chapter VIII: The Preparation (Upcoming)

Chapter IX: In Transit (Upcoming)

As posthumans are derived from humans, semantic web will be derived from web 2.0. Ontologies will be created and artificial intelligence will play a major role in all of these facets.

What kind of web or allweb will posthumans interact with? How will AIs be involved? Will there be Türing type AIs at that time?