Submitted by sonderlingg t3_ybh3k3 in singularity
DukkyDrake t1_ithplg5 wrote
Reply to comment by Effective-Dig8734 in What will singularity lead to? by sonderlingg
Agricultural and technological revolutions were not rapid uncontrolled change.
Effective-Dig8734 t1_ithq40b wrote
Not quite singularity level but they were quite rapid , and you said that these changes have been historically universally bad. But if not even a industrial revolution counts as such I don’t get where you’re getting you’re opinion from. Change can be good or bad, when it comes to technological change it has almost always been universally good for humanity, except for things like something like a nuke , but even then it could be argued nukes ultimately benefited humanity.
DukkyDrake t1_itj280d wrote
I think you need to brush up on singularity theory, you're comparing very different things and timelines.
I bet you don't have a nuke in your basement, what if you could and it would cost you no effort or money.
Ex:
>Molecular manufacturing raises the possibility of horrifically effective weapons. As an example, the smallest insect is about 200 microns; this creates a plausible size estimate for a nanotech-built antipersonnel weapon capable of seeking and injecting toxin into unprotected humans. The human lethal dose of botulism toxin is about 100 nanograms, or about 1/100 the volume of the weapon. As many as 50 billion toxin-carrying devices—theoretically enough to kill every human on earth—could be packed into a single suitcase. Guns of all sizes would be far more powerful, and their bullets could be self-guided. Aerospace hardware would be far lighter and higher performance; built with minimal or no metal, it would be much harder to spot on radar. Embedded computers would allow remote activation of any weapon, and more compact power handling would allow greatly improved robotics.
Effective-Dig8734 t1_itked5f wrote
As I said earlier you’re only focusing on selective negatives, im saying it will be overall positive, but there will likely be negatives as well. Like with smartphones how there is many negatives and positives, but the positives outweigh the negatives. I can’t say anything for certain I’m just saying that based on the past it is more reasonable to assume it will be positive
DukkyDrake t1_itktg3q wrote
I'm saying it's the rate of societal changes that is usually bad, nothing to do with specific technologies. When it comes to specific tech being bad post singularity, history has no lessons to teach. A smart phone being bad or good doesn't quite relate to every random person on the planet getting access to tech that could end human civilization. Better smartphones or whatever is no good to anyone if they are not alive to enjoy it. It's completely unreasonably to equate the singularity with anything that came before.
Effective-Dig8734 t1_itkuws2 wrote
No it’s is reasonable because it refers to the point in which technological advancement becomes unimaginably quick, this says nothing of the rate that social progress will move, but typically quick technological change usually means social change will be quicker. I disagree that quick social progress has been bad, I think that society will change at whatever rate is necessary, that’s the way society works, there’s no “we can’t keep up with technology so we fall as a society scenario” in no way does very very quick technological progress mean very very quick social progress, however it can be reasoned that there will most likely be a lot of social progress and it will happen quite quickly.
DukkyDrake t1_itnn0dn wrote
When I say societal changes, I refer to the large societal level structures that enable society to function. If the supply chain for food stuffs stops working, how long do you think you could survive after the shelves at your local supermarket goes empty. That sort of thing.
If changes occur in days or weeks and not on decadal or centuries timescale, parts of your society could stop functioning before the tech that permit some workers to walkaway reaches everyone. That's why fast societal level changes destabilize society and endangers its ability to support its populational. It's almost always bad, the only sorts of thing that causes fast societal level changes are usually actual revolutions/wars. Industrial revolution wasn't quick, that played out over the course of almost a century. Collapse all those changes down to a week or 2 and you might be closer to the mark.
That's also why there can't be a Ubi before AI replaces most job, the desperate low way wage workers could just walkaway resulting in civilizational collapse.
>I think that society will change at whatever rate is necessary,
Society isn't a monolithic thing, it's a bunch of individuals doing their own thing. It's structured in such a way where there are only a few degrees of freedom that allows one to survive easily. Basically, get a job, earn money, buy food and shelter. Increase those degrees of freedom with tech that allow survival independent of society, most people would walk away. Tech never spreads uniformly and instantaneously. You need society to survive until you reach a state where you no longer do, transitioning from one state to the next is fraught with peril.
>this says nothing of the rate that social progress will move
The Technological Singularity has everything to do with that rate of change on human society, else no one would really care. The Singularity isn't a future point where companies are simply selling new fancy consumer products faster and faster, this event won't be in the control of baseline humans.
>is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization
> "centered on the accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue"—John von Neumann
>The concept and the term "singularity" were popularized by Vernor Vinge in his 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity, in which he wrote that it would signal the end of the human era, as the new superintelligence would continue to upgrade itself and would advance technologically at an incomprehensible rate.
Effective-Dig8734 t1_itnsvge wrote
The main problem with this is that you are assuming all change is bad. Which mind you, the thing up for discussion is whether this change will be good or bad. I’m saying it is more likely to be good than to be bad. I don’t see how you’re jumping from fast technological progress to society stopping. It seems like you’re saying that there will be a time difference in between when the first workers start to get “replaced” and the last workers do. However this is something that will most likely happen Far before the technological singularity.
It just seems to me that we are not actually getting to the root of the argument which is whether it is more likely to be positive or negative for society, historically the industrial revolutions and things of that nature which are a type of scaled down singularity have been extremely positive for society
DukkyDrake t1_itnwmz5 wrote
> The main problem with this is that you are assuming all change is bad.
No, I just never worry about the good cases. The good case is the default state, one only need concern themselves with the bad cases.
>I don’t see how you’re jumping from fast technological progress to society stopping.
How can you not see that pathway. The biggest is fast technological progress creates a super intelligent agent and it accidentally kills everyone.
>which is whether it is more likely to be positive or negative for society
One cannot predict what the world looks like after the singularity, hence the name.
One can theorize about the kinds of tech the avg person could get their hands on, just about anything permitted by physics, and what would do with it. It would take just 1 person to make that choice.
>historically the industrial revolutions and things of that nature which are a type of scaled down singularity have been extremely positive for society
Did those past events, which played out over decades, provide each human on earth access to superhuman competence & labor?-No.
There is no point considering any good when superhuman competence & labor could allow an endless number of maximally bad events. Some prankster is bound to create that suitcase containing 50 billion flying insect bots 200 micron in size, each carrying a 100 nanograms payload of botulism toxin.
Effective-Dig8734 t1_itkv5mc wrote
But sure it could just be a coincidence that in the last 100 years we have had vast global social progress which seems to coincide with our standard of living increasing, poverty decreasing and overall connectivity
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