Singularity: The Post-Human Era

Singularity:
Since the rise of Homo sapiens, human beings have been the smartest minds around. Sometime in the next few decades, we can expect technological advancements to break the upper bound on intelligence that has held for tens of thousands of years. The Singularity presents the human species with some difficult issues, to which almost no one is paying attention because they're too busy watching television.

Calvin: I imagine bugs and girls have a dim perception that Nature played a cruel trick on them, but they lack the intelligence to really comprehend its magnitude.
~ Bill Watterson

Like the sponge cells and the slime mold amoeba, you and I are parts of a vast population whose pooled efforts move some larger creature on its path through life. Like the sponge cells, we cannot live in total separation from the human clump. We are components of a superorganism.
~ Howard Bloom

God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.
~ Freeman Dyson

You cannot "serve" God. You don't serve entities. You serve purposes. Asking "What is the meaning of life?" and getting back "God" is like asking "What is two plus two?" and getting back "Spackling paste." It's not even a religious issue. It's a category error, pure and simple. When I ask what two plus two equals, I expect a number. When I ask what the meaning of life is, I expect a goal. That doesn't mean that God can't exist and be a goal in some sense I don't understand at all, because the Universe is a weird place; but it does mean that equating God with a goal will lead you to make a lot of silly mistakes by trying to "serve God" the way you'd serve another human being. If you're religious and you want to be really hubristic, you can say: "Serve God? Of course not, but I serve the same purpose God does."
~ Eliezer S. Yudkowsky

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

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. Any intelligent machine of the sort . . . would not be humankind's "tool", any more than humans are the tools of rabbits or robins or chimpanzees.
~ Vernor Vinge

• Question: Can an AI, starting from a blank-slate goal system, reason to any nonzero goals?
• Answer: Yes.
• Logic: Either life has meaning or it doesn't. >> Gotta be one or the other. >> But we don't know which. >> If we don't know, we should figure it both ways. >> If life is meaningless, nothing makes a difference. Even bemoaning the pointlessness is pointless. >> Since nihilism has absolutely nothing to say, only the "meaning hypothesis" is relevant. >> It doesn't matter whether the probability of the "meaning hypothesis" is 1% or 99%. As long as it's not 0%, the relative value of choices and goals is the same as if the probability were 100%, absolute certainty. >> When it comes to making choices, you can assume that life has meaning and work from there. >> We know a goal exists; let's translate that knowledge into an actual Goal object and try to achieve it. >> Some methods are pretty useful no matter what you're trying to do. For example, "think about how to do it" or "pay someone else to do it" or "try to create a superintelligence which can figure out what G1 (any goal) is and do it". >> All done: We have something specific to do.
• Conclusion: In other words, it isn't necessary to have some nonzero goal when the system starts up. It isn't even necessary to assume that one exists. Just the possibility that a nonzero goal exists, combined with whatever heuristics the system has learned about the world, will be enough to generate actions. We don't have direct access to the real meaning of life. But whatever it is, it's a good guess that the Minds on the other side of Singularity have a better chance of achieving it, so the Singularity is the interim meaning of life. You don't have to know what the meaning of life is in order to work towards it.
~ Eliezer S. Yudkowsky

Trying to speak about the ultimate reality is like sending a kiss through a messenger.
~ Anonymous

Calvin: You know, I don't understand why humans evolved as such thoughtless, shortsighted creatures.
Hobbes: Well, it can't stay that way forever.
Calvin: You think we'll get smarter?
Hobbes: That's one of the two possibilities.
~ Bill Watterson

The Origins of Separation

When Ananda saw the Buddha, he prostrated himself at His feet, weeping bitterly and saying that, since the time without beginning, though he had heard much about the Dharma, he still could not acquire the transcendental power of the Tao.

Earnestly he asked the Buddha to teach the preliminary expedients in the practice of Samatha, Samapatti and Dhyana which led to the enlightenment of all Buddhas in the ten directions. There was also present a great number of Bodhisattvas, as countless as sand grains in the Ganges, and great Arhats and Pratyeka-Buddhas who had come wishing to hear about the Dharma. They all waited silently and reverently for the holy Teaching.

The Buddha said to Ananda: You and I are close relatives. Tell me what you saw in the assembly when you made up your mind to give up all worldly feelings of affection and love to follow me?

Ananda replied: I saw the thirty-two excellent characteristics and the shining crystal-like form of the Buddha’s body. I thought that all this could not be the result of desire and love, for desire creates foul and fetid impurities like pus and blood which mingle and cannot produce the wondrous brightness of His golden-hued body, in admiration of which I shaved my head to follow Him.

The Buddha said: Ananda and all of you should know that living beings, since the time without beginning, have been subject continuously to birth and death because they do not know the permanent True Mind whose substance is, by nature, pure and bright. They have relied on false thinking which is not Reality so that the wheel of Samsara turns. Now if you wish to study the unsurpassed Supreme Bodhi to realize this bright nature, you should answer my questions straightforwardly. All Buddhas in the ten directions trod the same path to escape from birth and death because of their straightforward minds, with the same straightforwardness of mind and speech from start to finish without a trace of crookedness. Ananda, when you developed that mind because of the Buddha’s thirty-two excellent characteristics, tell me what saw and loved them.

Ananda replied: World Honoured One, my love came from the use of my mind, my eyes seeing and my mind admiring them, so that it was set on relinquishing birth and death.

The Buddha continued: As you just said, your love was caused by your mind and eyes but if you do not know where your mind and eyes really are, you will never be able to destroy delusion. For instance, when the country is invaded by bandits, the king, before sending his soldiers to destroy them, should first know where they are. That which causes you to transmigrate without interruption, comes from defects in your mind and eyes. Now tell me where your mind and eyes are.

Read More

About a Box

the box is blue, jaded azure blue, with rust marks left behind,
graciously by the 52 seasons that it has seen.
the box is my home, the best one i have ever had and probably ever will.
i sleep in the box after dark, whose roof during the day is a busy table.
a riot of givings and takings that is the the business of the world.
i am the receptionist in this riot, to a few hundred passers by.
the blue box is the center of my world, a perfect semblance of 6 walls.
if i were a lizard, i would change the ceiling everyday.
and sleep on the opposite side, and move everything else around,
so that it looked the same,
from the abritarily chosen vantage position of wherever i lied.
a sleep experiment in varying gravity.
lizards are lucky. i cant afford vantage points.
lit by a bulb, with electricity borrowed from
the high voltage power lines passing overhead, this box is also my school.
i think so, from what i know about schools.
its a place where you learn things about the world, things about things.
where you learn how to live better, and about right and wrong,
about who we are and where we come from.
and learn to dream about where we could be going.
i learnt everything i know about the world i live in, right here.
and i know where i am going.
every night for thirteen years, after the day was done,
and the box was rubbed clean of all the day's excrements,
i have looked at the sky, and in brighter nights, the moon,
reflected in the glazed surface of washed dishes. and i have wondered.
i have heard from the elders, that the sky is not a thing,
it is just a blanket of air, a huge fluffy blanket.
that thought is a nice one, before going to sleep.
it reminds me of back home when i was a kid,
the feeling of sharing the blanket with my brothers and sister.
it makes me feel small, all over again.
after i left home, for years i could feel nothing but rage,
but now there are so many colours to it,
that i don't know the difference. i feel i don't feel anything anymore.
sometimes i am so automatic, like the movements of the sun,
the movement of my hands, serving one body after another,
leaves an emptiness in my heart that is pure bliss,
almost happiness.
if only i had something to compare it with, i could be sure.
i am like the box, boxes feel nothing. they just stay, inches above the ground.
they are home to things that you can't see from the outside.
now i hear the sharp ugly sound again, someone outside is kicking the box.
in the biting early morning cold, it is the watchman trying to wake me up.
i'll pretend i am sleeping, for just a little longer.
no one can see what's inside, from outside.
the walls are warmer. the blue is black.
shivering, i hug my folded blanket tighter. its nice to feel the cold.
to feel. for many more years to come, and through changing colours,
i know the box will keep me alive. and free.