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You are wrong here, I don't understand how you can claim such a thing
Oil prices have gone up for a long time for example, that is not at all "roughly constant".
Solar prices continue to cost less, at an exponential rate too (halves every ~7 years IIRC)!
This is very important, but again it is hard to understand exponential trends:
When the cost of solar is under the grid price, it won't just cost less, people will buy solar and nobody will ever look back. Especially when it costs even less. So it will be a gamechanger.
On the solar issue, the price of the PV material itself may be going down, but the price of the infrastructure and assembly for holding the cells in place and extracting power is limited from below by material and labor cost of the frame and transformers/batteries .
If you add together a long list of costs, some of which decay exponentially, and others being roughly constant (after adjusting for inflation), you get something which does not decay exponentially but rather bottoms out at a value higher than zero.
So you admit that there are limits to parallelization applicable to real-world problems. Check.
Well obviously, cf. my example (driving a car isn't easily parallelisized ).
Also I don't have to prove anything as it is you that thinks that these real world problems that can't be parallelized (efficiently) will hamper the singularity in opposition of me that see the long (long long) trends leading up to the singularity.
As you haven't come up with even one, I'm just stopping my side of the debate until that moment.
Feel free to try to though but please think it over in terms of how it would impact the singularity as it is the subject here.
On the solar issue, the price of the PV material itself may be going down, but the price of the infrastructure and assembly for holding the cells in place and extracting power is limited from below by material and labor cost of the frame and transformers/batteries .
If you add together a long list of costs, some of which decay exponentially, and others being roughly constant (after adjusting for inflation), you get something which does not decay exponentially but rather bottoms out at a value higher than zero.
Your idea of "roughly" is kind of not roughly but enormous, gas prices more than doubles and that is, IMO much more than 'roughly'
You also forgot all the other energies because you stated that "The price of energy, adjusted for inflation, has been roughly constant for 100 years.".
You fail to see the exponential decline of solar prices, this is weird as when it will come essentially for free (made by home-3D printers for example) and you can just hook it into your local power grid, you don't think it matters??
Obviously there are base prices for some things like installing, but they too will get lower as more people will use them/buy them and it won't actually matter at some point in time when it will be so much cheaper to use solar than grid electricity.
You are essentially repeating Kurzweil's position. The other authors you mentioned differ on the details sufficiently that I feel entirely justified in saying you are appealing only to Kurzweil and not the others. The others agree that there will be technological advancement over the next 20-30 years that will catch most of the public by surprise (and for once I will agree with you 100% on that matter.)
However, neither the other authors you mentioned, nor myself, agree with Kurzweil on the specific timetable and technological milestones in question. On that matter, I claim you are (1) committing a fallacy of false precision, and (2) appealing to an authority figure beyond his field (Ray Kurzweil is a computer scientist, not a biologist, not a medical researcher, and not a doctor.)
He is the main go to guy when it comes to this and since I have read his books and seen many of his lectures I admit most of my ideas come from him.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ncole1
The price of energy, adjusted for inflation, has been roughly constant for 100 years.
When something increases exponentially, you seem very eager to leap to the conclusion that it will continue to do so, but when something is flat, you either change the subject to something related but different which is increasing exponentially, or you just deny the inference to the continued flatness of it.
In other words, your argument is based on cherry picking.
Here is another person who talks about this as well.
This came across my Facebook today on how wearable tech is going to change our lives and this is just the next step to when we actually merge with it.
Intel, the American multinational corporation, wants you to become a cyborg. In fact, they’re willing to help fund your project in becoming one! This all became a reality through Intel’s “Make It Wearable” contest, which challenged groups of people to register, innovate, and change the world with wearable technologies that’ll transform the human condition. Welcome to the future!
Well obviously, cf. my example (driving a car isn't easily parallelisized ).
Also I don't have to prove anything as it is you that thinks that these real world problems that can't be parallelized (efficiently) will hamper the singularity in opposition of me that see the long (long long) trends leading up to the singularity.
As you haven't come up with even one, I'm just stopping my side of the debate until that moment.
Feel free to try to though but please think it over in terms of how it would impact the singularity as it is the subject here.
No, you asserted that the poorly-parallelizable problems are not the ones relevant to a prospective singularity. You need to defend that claim, not shift the burden of proof to me, the skeptic.
In the absence of argument either way, we should be agnostic about the issue and simply say we don't know one way or the other.
I'm not interested in bickering about who said what first etc. I (IMO) also think all this bickering is cluttering up the real topic "Why hasn't the singularity gone mainstream yet".
I know that the whole computerized world is up to scratch when it comes to parallelization, might it be weather simulations, neural networks, fluid simulations etc. and that they could healthily benefit from huge parallelization.
So I believe this to be true:
A) Those simulations / neural networks etc. are what it will take to get to the singularity.
B) They love parallelization
So for me, this "proving parallelization" discussion is useless as I see (as any one else in the industry) that Practically, it works and it works wonderfully well!
For me, this makes most of your statements look like someone showing proofs that a car can't exceed 60mph because of some theory when they are soaring by at 200.
I don't think I will answer you again if you continue to try to debunk parallelization (I'm not saying you shouldn't of course).
That said, feel free to show (other?) proofs that the singularity can't be, maybe it'll show why it isn't mainstream yet.
I'm not interested in bickering about who said what first etc. I (IMO) also think all this bickering is cluttering up the real topic "Why hasn't the singularity gone mainstream yet".
I know that the whole computerized world is up to scratch when it comes to parallelization, might it be weather simulations, neural networks, fluid simulations etc. and that they could healthily benefit from huge parallelization.
So I believe this to be true:
A) Those simulations / neural networks etc. are what it will take to get to the singularity.
B) They love parallelization
So for me, this "proving parallelization" discussion is useless as I see (as any one else in the industry) that Practically, it works and it works wonderfully well!
For me, this makes most of your statements look like someone showing proofs that a car can't exceed 60mph because of some theory when they are soaring by at 200.
I don't think I will answer you again if you continue to try to debunk parallelization (I'm not saying you shouldn't of course).
That said, feel free to show (other?) proofs that the singularity can't be, maybe it'll show why it isn't mainstream yet.
Well, not all skeptics of a singularity necessarily are skeptical for the same reason(s).
Maybe it is not mainstream because most journalists are skeptical, but for a broad array of different reasons, some more legitimate and others mere whims or wild guesses.
In that case, it is viewed as science fiction and something belonging in those media, however reasonable or unreasonable the skepticism may be.
He is the main go to guy when it comes to this and since I have read his books and seen many of his lectures I admit most of my ideas come from him.
Here is another person who talks about this as well.
To use that speaker's own words, we anticipate "Contributions we can't predict".
If you can't predict it, how can you use it to justify the claim that "X" technology will exist by "Y" year?
Seems like a contradiction to me - if you can't predict something, then, by definition, you can't say what will happen when, since "to predict" just is to say what will happen and when it will happen.
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