Submitted by Scarro_Lamann t3_xyxpbt in singularity
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Scarro_Lamann OP t1_irjhdvv wrote
Yeah, I'm at a coin flip on this every day. I think this is as likely as anything else, and since it's observable it's a totally legitimate stance
[deleted] t1_irkc5cu wrote
I think you’re on to the right idea.
[deleted] t1_irlh3n2 wrote
If god were defined as all knowledge and all power with infinite existence, would a more knowledgeable, stronger human that lived for 10,000 years be much closer to being a god?
beachmike t1_irnhllp wrote
Living a million years, a million times stronger, and a million times smarter than today's humans is still light years from the Judeo-Christian God concept (omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and eternal).
HeinrichTheWolf_17 t1_irjm6b4 wrote
God is just a label, what we're really after is the ability to manipulate our conscious reality in any way we see fit for ourselves, that to me would be godlike (basically the Q or Comic Version Doctor Manhattan).
It's also worth noting that John Smart has this idea of a sort of 'migration' out of this dimension, this is one possible answer to the Fermi Paradox, perhaps when civilization advance to a certain point they don't explore space but pack up and leave this reality altogether. Perhaps space is NOT the final frontier...
Scarro_Lamann OP t1_irjnmpf wrote
Well, right, that's why I'm using God as a label
Nmanga90 t1_irjdfca wrote
Yeah what’s wrong with that though? A true god would have no desire to expose itself to humans at all and probably wouldn’t even interact with reality at discrete points in time.
Imagine if you decided to pay attention to a small area of your desk and you noticed colonies of differing bacteria. And then you noticed that one colony of bacteria was surrounding the other and exterminating them. Genociding them. Why would you care? You might argue that this god has evolved from us so it would care, but we also evolved from bacteria or at least something resembling it and we could not give less of a fuck
Scarro_Lamann OP t1_irjhh9u wrote
No no, what's wrong with that indeed-- I welcome the idea as much as any other
Mr_Hu-Man t1_irm20aj wrote
Personally I cry every time I inhale knowing that I’m killing millions of microbes 😭
StarChild413 t1_irpl4k6 wrote
If it's truly that direct a parallel between us and the bacteria, part of why god (if you're saying it's a separate entity and not following OP's logic which would also mean we were somehow the bacteria too) wouldn't intervene/would look like they wouldn't care is because they couldn't communicate with us in a way we'd understand and any physical intervention could just wipe all of us out not just the aggressors
beachmike t1_irl4ggm wrote
Read "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.
It's the best science fiction short story ever written.
Mr_Hu-Man t1_irm1mx2 wrote
Adding it to my list
[deleted] t1_irm9e1o wrote
Another related shorter short story is Answer by Fredric Brown.
Freds_Premium t1_irpzxbc wrote
thx for suggestion. just wish it were longer.
beachmike t1_irq0g5w wrote
A wonderful project for a top sci-fi author would be to take "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov, and turn it into a novel or series of novels.
HeinrichTheWolf_17 t1_irmpel9 wrote
In short, previous universes achieve a higher state of existence and create more universes for future civilizations to follow in our footsteps, and advance enough to join with us.
sumane12 t1_irj97pb wrote
God created the universe, the universe created man, man created AI, AI created ASI, ASI reversed entropy, ASI became god....
beachmike t1_irl4dnm wrote
See "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.
It's the best science fiction short story ever written.
ThulsaD00me t1_irk9bmo wrote
The ‘verse’ in The Singularity is Near that struck me the hardest was Kurzweil’s declaration that once a Being’s ability to think is at a scale of quadrillions of thoughts per second, time becomes arbitrary, because simulating all of existence within one’s mind in a very short period of time makes the passage of time almost irrelevant, and at that point the Being has attained Godliness.
Mr_Hu-Man t1_irm1mcp wrote
I love this, damn!
Off topic but have you read Speaker For The Dead? There’s a section of that book that effectively explores this idea with an AI assistant. It blew my mind when I read it.
beachmike t1_irni03h wrote
Not even close to "Godliness" in the Judeo-Christian way of thinking. Their God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and eternal.
DukkyDrake t1_irjggyj wrote
>if we became God (or close to it)
It was just a metaphor.
Scarro_Lamann OP t1_irjhp8m wrote
I understand that. I don't mean biblical God. I mean metaphorical God! My question is: what's the difference in a singularity event?
DukkyDrake t1_irl90iw wrote
>"Evolution creates structures and patterns that over time are more complicated, more knowledgable, more creative, more capable of expressing higher sentiments, like being loving," he said. "It’s moving in the direction of qualities that God is described as having without limit."
>"So as we evolve, we become closer to God. Evolution is a spiritual process. There is beauty and love and creativity and intelligence in the world — it all comes from the neocortex. So we’re going to expand the brain’s neocortex and become more godlike."
Sounds like he's referring to the potential of the uploaded mind and not physical power over the universe.
PandaCommando69 t1_irkrvs5 wrote
The difference is* God made it (the universe). We're just getting the ability to manipulate it. We'll have some godlike powers, but still not be God ourselves. Maybe demigods would be a better description.
*If you believe that someone had to have created all that is.
Jalen_1227 t1_irl0ig0 wrote
No, there’s absolutely no evidence of a creator and so believing in one is illogical and irrational
Clean_Livlng t1_irktvqz wrote
It's possible that the past no longer exists, and all we have is the ever-present movement and happenings of the universe. It's possible that it's always been like that, the mechanisms and gears of the universe turning away. Whatever was before the Big Bang (unless something can come from absolute nothing. By that I mean no physical laws, mechanism, causality, or potential for anything to happen. Intuitively it doesn't make sense for anything to be able to arise from nothing, if it can then it's not coming from nothing).
It's a common misconception that we have evidence that there wasn't any 'before' The Big Bang. What's actually true is that we think we can never know, so thinking about a 'before' isn't useful when it comes to science.
Unless you have a good reason to believe something can arise form -absolute nothing- (no zero point energy, no space/time, no physical laws, no fields, no quantum foam, no pre existing supernatural energy etc) then once you've eliminated the impossible, you're left with there being a 'before' the Big Bang. That it wasn't the creation of all that is, merely pre-existing physics at work that provided the materials to fuel it, and the laws to guide how it happened.
You have no evidence the past exists. Only memories that you can access in the present that you can take as evidence it did happen, unless they're false memories.
​
If there are a finite number of states (although incredibly numerous) the universe can be in for a given area of space, then the past is in our future. The area of space we're in, or the entire universe, will eventually return to a state it's been in previously.
So those moments in the past are in our future as well. Given an infinite string of events stretching before us, and an infinite number of times the universe has been in this exact configuration (i.e. This second I'm typing) any state like that is neither in the past or the present. The state is timeless.
e.g. ("..." represents an infinite string of states which eventually repeat. And "The Present" is whatever state of the universe you travel to or focus your consciousness on as a God)
... The Present ...
So time travel to you as a god would be like flipping through a book with a lot of pages. There are a limited number of unique pages, or states/times you can go to and all of them take into account any way you could interfere with the state and how it would affect future states, in addition to all the interfering you've ever done in the infinite past etc.
I wonder if it makes sense that you could manifest yourself twice at the exact same state of the universe, it would depend on the mechanisms that underlie how you work as a god.
If you arrange matter, energy, and all the working parts of reality there are in a configuration they've been in in 'the past', that's identical to travelling in time. There is nothing else that exists apart from you and that configuration of reality.
It's just you and a massive Rubik's Cube that you're turning to form different states the universe can be in. If you interfere with one of those states, no matter what you do, you're just changing the configuration of the massive Rubicks Cube.
That's your future, just you and those finite number of states everything that exists can be in. Finite, but unimaginable numerous since the states are everything that's possible to happen.
I'd say that we can never obtain evidence that this is true, but could assume that any alternative is impossible. We'd have no guarantee that assumption was correct, even if we couldn't think of a reason why.
It could be that there are an infinite number of states the universe/reality can be in, and that every state that's happened can be travelled back to, and that every time a consciousness does this is changes all the states that are in that past's future, erasing infinite consciousnesses from reality and replacing them with new ones with different pasts.
​
If this doesn't make sense, in my defence I've been awake for too long without sleep. But in this sleep deprives state, it makes perfect sense to me that reality must always have existed in some form, and that it's possible that for an area as big as our visible universe there are a finite number of states it can be in.
beachmike t1_irnitzb wrote
If you could travel back to a previous state of the universe, you would change the state, which is a logical contradiction. Therefore, you cannot travel back to a previous state of the universe. The idea of branching-off into different timelines does not seem to create any paradoxes or logical contradictions, however.
Clean_Livlng t1_irppxo0 wrote
>If you could travel back to a previous state of the universe, you would change the state
It depends on what's happening with that 'travel'. Are you rearranging the present to resemble a state it was in in the past? Or Actually going back in time' as shown in scifi films? In that case, you wouldn't be able to because as soon as you did, you'd never exist as you are in order to go back in time.
Unless it causes branching which avoids this. I wonder if you could ever travel back to the exact moment and branch that you came from?
When travelling back in time, you wouldn't be on Earth any more since Earth would have been in a different position back then. So you'd find yourself where Earth was 50 years ago (if you go back that far), looking at our solar system from a great distance.
Perhaps there are many frozen time travellers in our wake. You'd need to work out exactly where our solar system was during the time you wanted to travel back to, travel there first, and then travel back in time. Or the other way around.
SensibleInterlocutor t1_irjvjnc wrote
The source is eternal
GraffMx t1_irk3xak wrote
You can learn more about this: Acausality, timeless identity. At LessWrong.
PandaCommando69 t1_irks2x6 wrote
That's a really good site actually, I've just started reading over there a bit ago. Definitely recommend.
SnooPies1357 t1_irk72z8 wrote
maybe hell is possible too.a heaven for masochists
Select_Team t1_irkcy19 wrote
Infinity is already here and now, with time an illusory subset of it
bezelshrinker4 t1_irke24j wrote
He’s using God as a metaphor for neo human consciousness
You seem to be using a more literal meaning of that word
sunplaysbass t1_irkk16w wrote
We’re gonna go higher and higher
UnionMountain4680t t1_irlbtnf wrote
Why should God care about logic?:)
kid_destiny_irl t1_irj6nay wrote
Intuition scary eh
Scarro_Lamann OP t1_irj6uge wrote
Aye
Gilded-Mongoose t1_irjashz wrote
Perfect Watchmen/Dr. Manhattan plot, innit?
Shelfrock77 t1_irjfqpv wrote
what year will post singularity happen and what will be the difference between singularity and post singularity ?
Scarro_Lamann OP t1_irjh40i wrote
Chalk that up to poor semantics. I mean at-singularity event, at point of singularity itself. I'm sorry if that wasn't apparent to you! My bad, truly.
[deleted] t1_irkc1iw wrote
I think that potentially the answer is that time is not linear. It is perceived by humans as linear. It might be thought of more as interdimensional. “Your past can’t be your future,” and so on. You end up in a new timeline when you travel. It’s difficult to describe without spherical Venn diagrams.
priscilla_halfbreed t1_irkqor4 wrote
I feel like if you go into our future, then back in time, you enter into a different version of the current.
Like imagine a tree. we are at base of trunk right now. We live our lives and go up the trunk and into a branch. If we then time travel into history, we don't turn around and travel back into the same trunk.
What happens when time is reversed is that the tree is also reversed, so you turn around while on the branch, and the tree itself turns around as well, and you are still going along branch paths even tho its supposed to be the past
World_May_Wobble t1_irl242q wrote
godlikeness or Godlikeness?
Kurzweil's method of forecasting, useful though it is, doesn't give him any unique knowledge about the physical limits the cosmos will impose on us. For example, his forecasts can't tell you whether it's possible to travel to the past.
red75prime t1_irmk46f wrote
> But should the past still exist somewhere, why not?
Physics of our universe can place limitations on time travel. For example, closed timelike curves allow travel no further back than a point in time when the "time machine" was created and, most likely, you cannot alter the past using them.
whatTheBumfuck t1_irmo6fl wrote
I think you're taking his analogy a little too literally. A super intelligence can't really travel back in time, they can only simulate it, maybe near perfectly.
eve_of_distraction t1_irnekmu wrote
Look into Advaita Vedanta. 🙂
Ashamed-Asparagus-93 t1_irluwmo wrote
This question made me immediately think of the time travel problem (if it's ever possible then where are they) which there's sort of an answer for.
That answer being it hasn't happened yet. In other words 20+ yrs from now once ASI takes over and once we're godlike THEN visiting the past is possible.
Plenty of counter arguments can be made of course
BinaryFinary98 t1_irjf0ut wrote
I dont think time is traversable in this manner, or maybe even knowable. All events past and future seem to just sort of exist at once, not flow in any sort of direction. A greater intelligence would probably understand this much differently than a bunch of monkey brains like us, but that doesnt mean they could travel through it if it just isnt that sort of thing.