Singularly narcissistic
Francis Sedgemore, Wednesday 14 July 2010
To those that have, nothing is enough.
Forget the enlightenment and rationality, what turns on the captains of high-tech industry are not wealth, political power and cultural hegemony, but rather age-old myths such as the Fountain of Youth, and the quasi-religious concept of ‘human transcendence’.
(cartoon from: Toothpaste for Dinner)
“Ultimately, the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence. This is the destiny of the universe.”
Bestselling futurologist Ray Kurzweil believes that by the 2030s, the world’s smartest, most resourceful people – aka the new Master Race – will achieve virtual immortality by “backing up their brains”. Immortality, eh? Kurzweil has obviously never had a hard drive or flash disk fail on him. In the real world there is no shortage of bad sectors.
As far as I’m concerned, Kurzweil and the selfish, narcissistic über-humans of Silicon Valley can shove their technological dystopia where the sun never shines. This example of biological wetware is entirely comfortable with his own mortality.
Feed the writer! 
Wednesday 14 July 2010 at 15:01 GMT
[...] disovered the below article courtesy of Francis Segemore who introduces us to the piece thusly: Forget the enlightenment and rationality, what turns on the [...]
Wednesday 14 July 2010 at 15:02 GMT
Ah, Ray Kurweil, the nerd’s answer to Deepak Chopra, and with about as much relevance to reality.
Wednesday 14 July 2010 at 15:03 GMT
damn keyboard and failing brain – “Kurzweil”
Wednesday 14 July 2010 at 15:09 GMT
Francis, I was busy using your words to introduce this piece on my blog, but it didn’t make sense when cropped, and so I ended up lifting virtually everything.
Hope that’s OK, if not I’ll remove….
Singularity University: Singularity holds, human beings and machines will effortlessly and elegantly merge
Wednesday 14 July 2010 at 15:47 GMT
It’s interesting that some of Kurzweil’s fellow Singularitists (?) regard him as being a bit too extreme. But from what I can see, they are all completely bonkers.
Wednesday 14 July 2010 at 15:47 GMT
Stuart – that’s fine; no worries.
Wednesday 14 July 2010 at 23:38 GMT
Some people call the course Ray Kurzweil says we are on “the road to the Singularity” personally I prefer the term The Irrevocable Convergence which is where humans and machine intelligence pull level and then merge. I have no doubt that within 50 years (probably considerably less) that machines will become conscious due to a massive expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) what we must keep in mind that even if this fails to happen and it takes 100 years to reach the stage where machines become aware the introduction of non biological intelligence into ourselves within the next couple of decades is pretty much inevitable, first through simple neuro implants and later through nano technology. Whether the Irrevocable Convergence arises or not we will achieve a rate of progress which is incomparable to anything we have ever seen before. To get this in perspective just consider that in the nineteenth century more technological breakthroughs were made than in all of the nine centuries preceding it. Then in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, we saw more advancement than in all of the nineteenth century combined. In this century we will achieve 1000 times more than we achieved in the whole 20th century which was itself a period of progress never before seen. The merging of human and machine intelligence is an inevitability because you only need to look at how attached we are to our iPhones and Blackberry’s to realise that we will ultimately be unable to resist moving increased processing capability directly inside the body.
Thursday 15 July 2010 at 07:48 GMT
Dr Johnty – This is a teleological dream, and one based on dodgy assumptions and gross extrapolation. Conscious machines within 50 years? We still have no fundamental definition of consciousness, and the best guess we have is that consciousness is a slowly emergent property of complex systems. That being so, there is no line to cross, no spark of mind and self-awareness.
Thursday 15 July 2010 at 18:27 GMT
Notwithstanding some of Kurzweil’s views (many of which I disagree with) I think it is fair to assume that some degree of human augmentation/alteration is likely to happen one way or the other, including a degree of (if not immortality) then engineered negligible senescence).
On the singularitarians more generally I have to agree that they are frustratingly unrigorous when it comes to talking about things like intelligence and consciousness. I’ve argued with a few on the Internet at various times and they always seem startlingly ignorant of topics like a) the philosophy of the mind, b) the current state of neuroscience, c) the current state of cognitive psychology, d) anything by Roger Penrose, e) “artificial intelligence” as an actual field (multiple fields, really) of inquiry, rather than as a vague, science-fictional concept.
I am not expert in any of these areas, but I am at least aware of my (and humanity’s collective) ignorance on many of these subjects.
But I see nothing intrinsically wrong with trying to augment/modify/improve the human condition as it stands, and see the various developing attempts to do so through genetic selection/engineering, cyborganic implants, or nootropics as reasonable continuations of the general project of giving (all) people the opportunity to be happier and more prosperous.
Friday 16 July 2010 at 11:20 GMT
That we are self aware is quite apparent. But ironically, the entity to which this self awareness is apparent, has no abiding state, it’s in a state of flux, there is no abiding ‘self’.
Our sense of self is an artifact, useful for propagation of our genetic material, no doubt, but an artifact.
More ironically yet, one of the all too common characteristics of this ‘self’ artifact is self indulgent solipsism. Something the Buddhists understood a while back in their concept of Anatta.
>by the 2030s, the world’s smartest, most resourceful people – aka the new Master Race – will achieve virtual immortality by “backing up their brains”.< Obviously complete tosh.
Friday 16 July 2010 at 11:34 GMT
Quite, Nick.
Talking of anatta, I just looked at the Wikipedia page for this, and was struck by the following…
…which is either a quote from Peter Harvey’s “The Selfless Mind”, or a paraphrasing of such.
Healthy self-development/improvement should be based on a a mature sense of perspective. Which is something that futurologists such as Kurzweil do not possess, despite their job descriptions.
Friday 16 July 2010 at 11:45 GMT
>I just looked at the Wikipedia< Ahhhhh…Wikipedia;'tis truly the mark of Beelzebub!
Friday 16 July 2010 at 11:51 GMT
I go along with the first part of this, but have to question the meaning of the second.
Human progress is a very good thing. As we progress as a species, we are living longer, healthier lives, and it is reasonable to assume that life expectancy will continue to grow. But to what degree, and over what timescales?
Friday 16 July 2010 at 15:42 GMT
Engineered negligible senescence, from Wikipedia:
“Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) is the name Aubrey de Grey gives to his proposal to research regenerative medical procedures to periodically repair all the age-related damage in the human body, thereby maintaining a youthful state indefinitely.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence
Friday 16 July 2010 at 17:01 GMT
A few years ago there was an interesting TV documentary about Aubrey de Grey. Among other things the programme discussed a number of personal issues that drive de Grey to do this work on engineered negligible senescence.
Saturday 17 July 2010 at 17:17 GMT
Clearly Aubrey is concerned by the fact his wife is in her mid 60s and appears in many ways to be as interesting a character as he is. Nevertheless I believe Aubrey is motivated by a need to make a difference to humanity in general and he is extremely committed and focused to achieve his objective. Aubrey additionally has an amazingly broad understanding of the subject matter and the challenges which we face. It is very clear to me that this is a very genuine and non materialistic individual who will let nothing stand in the way of his attempt at bringing the end of aging to fruition. I believe he will achieve significant positive results within the next decade in mice the knowledge aquired will then be transferred to humans and hopefully end the horrific descent into senility and old age of the millions of people who linger in retirement home and suffer the indignities that come with the passing years. If he is succesfull 100.000 people per day would be saved. I can’t thing of a more worthy goal to which anyone could dedicate their time and efforts.
Thursday 22 July 2010 at 12:42 GMT
I have tried to imagine that cyber world populated by e-brains of Bill Gates, Larry Ellisson etc and, of course, “captains of industry” and politicos.
Switched immediately to the subject of cyber euthanasia and need of a cyber Dr. Kevorkian…
Thursday 22 July 2010 at 12:47 GMT
No, Snoopy! We need Bill Gates in the UK to support our social services, now that the LibCon government has decided to abolish the welfare state.