Quote: Original post by Prune
Perhaps it's time, as various esteemed geneticists have suggested over the decades, to take hold of the reins of our evolution.

Well and good, but there is one major problem with this idea: how do we select a fitness function? How do we decide what genetic makeup is desirable? And, just as importantly, who is going to make this decision and then enforce it?

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
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It's practically impossible to say whether humans are devolving, evolving, or not.

I know that humans are getting more out of shape and lazier. It's hard to say what the long-range effects of this will be (100,000 years from now). I mean, survival of the fittest doesn't really apply much these days IMHO. In today's world of modern medicine, most humans live to reach child-bearing age. In Prune's post-apocalyptic scenario, living to reach child-bearing age would not be such a near certainty anymore. Survival of the fittest would apply once more.

I personally dream of a technological singularity where the physical body is just a manifestation of a computer-based (really) intelligent being. If that were to happen within say 5000 years, then we'll never really get to find out if we humans are currently devolving, evolving, or not.

Quote: Original post by taby
I personally dream of a technological singularity where the physical body is just a manifestation of a computer-based (really) intelligent being. If that were to happen within say 5000 years, then we'll never really get to find out if we humans are currently devolving, evolving, or not.

Singularity and other nonsense sprouted by the likes of crackpots like Ray Kurzweil has been largely debunked.

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command
Well and good, but there is one major problem with this idea: how do we select a fitness function? How do we decide what genetic makeup is desirable? And, just as importantly, who is going to make this decision and then enforce it?

I agree, these are significant issues to resolve and they will be very difficult to resolve. But I simply see no other alternative. They will be addressed at one point or another, sooner rather than later, and it's better that we try to make an impassioned study of them now so that we are prepared and informed when the issues hit the public eye and individual trait selection practiced by parents-to-be moves into mass corporate and state action.

Quote: Original post by Prune
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How you can deny the mere possibility of silicon-based human existence is beyond me.

There has been no drastic breakthrough in computing or neurology that definitively shows that we will never be able to "upload our consciousness". Sure, the idea is pure speculation at this point, and very far-fetched, but everyone knows that. You want to debunk some speculations? Start with flying cars and the cure for AIDS. They're way more important.

The idea of a posthuman existence didn't come from Ray Kurzweil, and neither did the idea of the singularity. Read up on the definition of the technological singularity by Irving Good some time. It's from 1965, when Kurzweil was only 17 years old. Nice strawman, fuckface.

Like, believing in a posthuman existence is not the same thing as contemporary "new age" transhumanism. I don't burn tea leaves and do yoga. I simply believe in possibility of really smart computers in the distant future.

[Edited by - taby on September 15, 2010 1:11:33 AM]

Quote: Original post by taby
Nice strawman, fuckface.

Yes, that really helps your argument

I never denied that transferring human minds into machines is theoretically possible. I am simply stating that it is incredibly impractical and will be for a far longer time than you think. To think humans will exist for that long is incredibly egotistical and ignores the realities of extinction statistics for multicellular lifeforms.

Of course, if you're willing to make a bet, I'll see you over at http://www.longbets.org/

Quote: Original post by Prune
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You said that the technological singularity was debunked. Now you're not?

Oh, you're saying that Kurzweil's is debunked, but Good's is not. That's OK, because Good was the one who invented the actual idea.

As for my impatience, I said "within 5000 years", not "in my lifetime". You're on crack. Nice strawman, fuckface.

The thing of it is Prune, I don't even have to try when I argue with you. I just have to state the facts, and your lies fall like dominoes.

Quote: Original post by taby
You said that the technological singularity was debunked. Now you're not?

Singularity is based on the idea of accelerating returns; otherwise it's just technological progress. But accelerating returns has been debunked by empirical examinations, and historically accelerating growth has always been predicted and it has always ended and plateaued because limiting factors inevitably develop. In the case of technological singularity, complexity will be the prime self-limiting factor. Serious people don't take the singularity seriously. Gordon Moore, of Moore's Law fame, wrote about the singularity, "I am a skeptic. I don't believe this kind of thing is likely to happen." Stephen Pinker, one of the top evolutionary psychologists, wrote "There is not the slightest reason to believe in a coming singularity. The fact that you can visualize a future in your imagination is not evidence that it is likely or even possible....Sheer processing power is not a pixie dust that magically solves all your problems."

Quote: As for my impatience, I specifically said "5000 years from now", not "in my lifetime". What the fuck are you talking about?

I think you don't understand what longbets.org is.

Quote: Original post by Prune
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I'm sorry, who's idea was it exactly that a power law should be behind technological advancement? Was it the same person Good that I mentioned earlier? Actually it seems that the answer is no. Good was actually talking about intelligence/technology directly after we become posthuman.

The "plateaus" that you refer to are called "the top half of the sigmoid function", in case you ever want to try whipping that out on someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. The sigmoid function, ironically, is very useful for training artificial neural networks.

Anyway. You've admitted that posthuman existence is a valid concept. However, it's as if you're still saying that you don't believe that our intelligence will skyrocket at an accelerating rate once we hit that stage of our evolution. Of course there's a finite number of things to know in our universe, and so it's inevitable that the top half of the sigmoid function will kick in. That's how non-renewable resource consumption works, universally. What does the word singular mean to you? Does it not imply a oneness amongst all humanity (e.g., no more individual human bodies, only one system)? Sorry I threw in the word "technological" in there.

I'm thinking you don't know what 5000 years is, otherwise you wouldn't have harped on a moot point.

[Edited by - taby on September 15, 2010 2:56:45 AM]

Quote: Original post by taby
The sigmoid function, ironically, is very useful for training artificial neural networks.

Dude, I was writing ANN backpropagation while you were in kindergarten. Give it up, you're not going to impress anyone with sprouting random facts trying to showcase your hotshot knowledge.

Quote: However, it's as if you're still saying that you don't believe that our intelligence will skyrocket at an accelerating rate once we hit that stage of our evolution.

It will be limited by exponential complexity, and later on, by physics. The speed and storage capacity of any computation in a finite region of space is finite due to considerations like the Bekenstein bound. Study some QM and thermodynamics and come back.

Quote: Of course there's a finite number of things to know in our universe

No, only finite within our finite Hubble volume, which will contain only a finite amount of matter despite is light-speed expansion due to accelerating expansion of the universe; the universe itself, however, is accepted as almost certainly infinite, and so there are more than a "finite number of things to know". Study some cosmology and come back.

Quote: I'm thinking you don't know what 5000 years is, otherwise you wouldn't have harped on a moot point.

Man, you still don't get it. Just go to the damn site and look around. Most bets are beyond anyone's lifetime, yet many are by scientists, engineers, etc., and all have put often significant amounts of real money into it.