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Seems throughout this entire thread you have done nothing but make statements out of both sides of your mouth.
I can see why it would look that way. That is because my goal with posting in this thread is not to win a debate but to better understand the upcoming singularity and the implications it will have on society. At least as much as I can. That is why if you read this thread from the start you will see some of my positions change and evolve as I have learned more. A good example of this is the dates 2045 and 2030. When I first read about the singularity I only knew of the 2045 date. Then later as I read more on it I came across the 2030 date and at first was confused. Then as I studied it realized that they were both correct and why. I have even learned a lot from our conversations as it has made me look at the singularity from different perspectives and that has caused me to better understand certain concepts then I did before. This is not the end as I plan on doing research and studying until we finally reach the singularity in 2030. So I am sure more of my positions will evolve over time.
Therein lie the frustrations of Kurzweil’s brand of tech punditry. On close examination, his clearest and most successful predictions often lack originality or profundity. And most of his predictions come with so many loopholes that they border on the unfalsifiable. Yet he continues to be taken seriously enough as an oracle of technology to command very impressive speaker fees at pricey conferences, to author best-selling books, and to have cofounded Singularity University, where executives and others are paying quite handsomely to learn how to plan for the not-too-distant day when those disappearing computers will make humans both obsolete and immortal.
One of the things I noticed early on is most of the principals he talked about were not new. I knew about Mores law and I knew the gaming and program industry used it to forecast out 2-4 years out to know when the best time it was for them to enter the market. What Ray did was take those accepted principals out 20 - 40 years. Something that had never been done before. Now if for whatever reason computers stop advancing exponentially everything he talks about will not happen when he says it will. However as much as I have read what his critics say none have been able to show why computers will stop advancing exponentially. At least anytime soon.
I listened to the entire segment and they have no clue what Ray Kurzweil talks about. Ray Kurzweil does not want to kill himself nor does he say anyone else should.
This interview with him talks about what he means better:
Good point. Sometimes when I post I am not as precise as I should be. I should of kept my response to his comment better about computers and when they will stop advancing exponintially. After 2045 the models on how fast computers will advance break down so there is no way to know for sure or if they will ever stop advancing exponentially. Now not know when computers will stop advancing exponentially after 2045, or if they ever will, and knowing I will live to see 2100 and for a very long time after that is much different.
The models do not break down till 2045 and in fact that is what Ray uses to help define the singularity at 2045. Its a term taken from psychics and its impossible to see pass a singularity and that is why they used it as its impossible to see what life will be like after 2045. I use 2030, along with people like Vernor Vinge, because I think its more of a average persons date.
It's a term taken from psychics??? Yikes! You mean physics, don't you?
Let's back up just a moment to make sure we're on the same page. What do you mean by the following words:
- Advancing (in relation to computers). In what way are they advancing?
- Moore's Law. What is Moore's Law really talking about?
- Exponential. What does that mean to you?
- Singularity. what does that mean to you?
These are terms you most frequently use. Once we can make it clear, then hopefully it'll be much easier to understand without being such vague terms. And, no, I don't want more videos of Ray. I want to hear your views. Just a very brief description is fine.
It's a term taken from psychics??? Yikes! You mean physics, don't you?
Ugg my spelling again...
I sure hope this improves after I am merged with computers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NightBazaar
Let's back up just a moment to make sure we're on the same page. What do you mean by the following words:
- Advancing (in relation to computers). In what way are they advancing?
Today's generation of computers are twice as fast as the last generation. The next generation will be twice as fast as this generation and the generation after that will again be twice as fast. That has been going on since the first modern computer was built in 1890 and shows no signs of stopping now.
To use an example my I phone is thousands of times faster then the computers that took up entire buildings in the 1960's and thousands of times cheaper and smaller. That is a billion fold increase. That is why I say my I phone has thousands of times more processing capability then all of NASA did when they went to the moon in the 1960's.
- Moore's Law. What is Moore's Law really talking about?
Here is the definition: Moore's law is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years.
That has been the traditional definition. However if you ask the average person, who knows what Mores law is, they do not associated with the integrated circuit anymore but just the fact computers double every 2 years. Plus today its less then 12 months.
- Exponential. What does that mean to you?
I will use a example to show you.
Someone takes 8 steps linearly 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. They get to 8.
Someone takes 8 steps exponentially 1-2-4-8-16-32-64-256. They get to 256.
That might not sound like a big deal but it is. If you take 30 steps linearly you get to 30 but if you take 30 steps exponentially you get to over 1 billion. That is a huge difference.
- Singularity. what does that mean to you?
I think the "average person's" definition will be when a person merges with computers enough to where if someone from say the 1960's was brought to that time they would not understand how it had changed life. I say that will be in 2030 as by then 1 computer that is the size of a blood cell will have thousands of times more processing capability then all of NASA in the 1960's and we will have millions if not billions inside our bodies augmenting our immune system and cognitive ability. So the impact that will have on all of our lives will be more then someone from the 1960's could understand.
Now I do understand Ray Kurzweil's definition and I think on a engineering level he is right as well as by 2045 one computer that costs $1,000 will be a 1 billion more times intelligent then all the humans on the planet today and the impact of that will mean that all the models break down. That is why I go with a range of 2030-2045 to be the most consistent I can be.
This has happened before just never as fast. For example if someone from the Stone age went to the Bronze age they would not understand life. If someone from the Renaissance went to the industrial revaluation they would not understand life. So people make this out to be some cosmic event its not. Its just the next technological jump society will make. We just happen to be the lucky, or unlucky depending on your perspective, people living at the cusp of the change.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NightBazaar
These are terms you most frequently use. Once we can make it clear, then hopefully it'll be much easier to understand without being such vague terms. And, no, I don't want more videos of Ray. I want to hear your views. Just a very brief description is fine.
I hope I made sense with out using a Ray Kurzweil video.
Last edited by Josseppie; 11-23-2013 at 05:43 PM..
Top Government Scientist: Computer Technologically Will Stop Advancing In 2025
Quote:
Robert Colwell is basically the guy who builds computers for DARPA, who you might remember is responsible for all the military’s insane futuristic products, like death rays and a robot who can bust through a wall and steal your car. And he’s convinced that commercial processors are going to stop getting faster about a decade from now:
[It takes] huge amounts to build the fab plants, and yet more…to pay for the design teams to design new chips. Intel makes these investments, which are in the [billions of dollars], because they expect to reap way more [billions of dollars] in profits in the following years. But if there is doubt that those profits will arrive, and possibly if they just doubt they can come up with the necessary silicon improvements, they may not want to make the investment at all.
In fact, the next-generation of CPUs, including Intel’s forthcoming Sandy Bridge processor, have to contend with multiple walls–a memory bottleneck (the bandwidth of the channel between the CPU and a computer’s memory); the instruction level parallelism (ILP) wall (the availability of enough discrete parallel instructions for a multi-core chip) and the power wall (the chip’s overall temperature and power consumption).
Of the three, the power wall is now arguably the defining limit of the power of the modern CPU. As CPUs have become more capable, their energy consumption and heat production has grown rapidly. It’s a problem so tenacious that chip manufacturers have been forced to create “systems on a chip”–conurbations of smaller, specialized processors. These systems are so sprawling and diverse that they’ve caused long-time industry observers like Linley Gwennap of Microprocessor Report to question whether the original definition of a CPU even applies to today’s chips.
What he is talking about is the end of the current paradigm, the integrated circuit. No one disputes that. However, paradigms come and go and so will this one and we will go to the next, the 3D self organizing molecular circuits and computers will continue to advance exponentially.
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