Singularity

No, this is not a post about dating, and no, its not about cosmic phenomena or the love poems I wrote to my wife with the same name (don't ask) . Its about our next evolutionary step. I mentioned it a bit in my previous post where quoted "rapture of the nerds".

Human singularity or super-intelligence:  what is it really?  Wikipedia lists it under technical singularity, and that it is a mixture of man and machine to a point where we move to the next step of evolution through super-intelligence. It goes over the history and does a great job of explaining the basic concepts. (Wikipedia is just getting better over the years, and despite critics, has become this wealth of decent information.) But in short it is our use of machine intelligence to increase our own. Over the centuries the mind hasn't changed, but computers have, so the Singularity will be that point where computers have gotten so much better at thinking they help us past that point of the unknown. And our technical development will move even faster then it does now, so much so we will be masters of the Universe, and thinking back to before the Singularity will be like looking back at early hominids.

Whether its a meld of human and machine, or we have machines work for us, (There is also the debate on it involving nanotechnology, but that has been argued that it would involve super-intelligence) its a point where we can no longer predict what will happen after it.  Predictions of when it suppose to happen go from 5 years to 100, and some even give a date of 2040. When you think about it though, and you look around, it doesn't even seem possible in 30 years. Hell, the way things are going I don't see it happening in the next 100 years. Well what's going on? If you look at the rate of technological growth we should be there soon, but something is slowing us down. Hell we should be on Mars already, or continued to explore the moon.

It could be a lack of resources, at least in the terms of space exploration, but as technology marches on we find alternative materials to do the same thing we have done in the past. So, what else? No, its not Windows, despite what Year Zero says.

Most major innovative shifts in the last century have been to fill a need, but at the same time there was an urgency. War, disease, mass demand, all played important parts in invention. You can see it today, with the push to cleaner energy, of course its slow as hell because all the oil hasn't quite dried up, and developing nations (most of the world) don't give a rats ass about the environment, or can't afford to. When the need is great, as in War, then monetary thoughts are pushed aside for a working solution and advancement that insures victory. Or the massive consumer demand for a particular product (smartphones) thus insuring monetary momentum in funding research and development.
Indeed, pay-off's and success during these time period also lend its simultaneous to other R&D and all of science and technology benefits.

And the opposite is true as well; during times of peace (relative) or economic recession (there are theories that one is responsible for the other because we really don't know how to finance peace), you see a drop in innovation and research in general. An example is world wide cuts in research grants (sucks to be a research biologist these days).

All this is really a lack of long term thinking, the end result is a slow down towards the Singularity event, and true lasting innovation.
So what do we do, how do we speed up progress?

We don't, not unless you can change everyone's thinking, or we bring back the monarchy, and they promise to bring it about. Because the way the world works now, we can't think beyond the next 10 years. Oh sure with better education and a better society, we could start thinking maybe 20 years ahead but not dynamically. We need long term projects, a return to basic 'what if' research. To do that we need people in power for a long time, and a continuing flow of income. While competition/free business economy does work to an extent, its very limited and it is short sighted, it only works for quick innovation, or most likely, adaptations of existing elements. Even if we never reach singularity, we need to be constantly striving to ask the important questions and to gain knowledge, even if its for the sake of knowledge.

You may say who cares, who gives a fuck if we end up like the Borg or the Confederation, why should I care if I, or my grand kids, make it to the next step. Well besides the fact that we could actually save this planet, it will lead us out to the stars and insure the survivability of the human race. Also, everyone will have cool super powers and live forever (actually not sure about the super powers, but who knows) with super-intelligence problems of disease, the environment, resources, women, and space exploration  will all be solved (kidding about women they work just fine). The truth is, and by definition, we really aren't sure what happens after that point, that event horizon of the singularity, but isn't being human wanting to see what's on the other side?

Teleportation

“That’s what I mean, it’s the way it works, its batshit crazy!” “First off it’s suppose to teleport you across the world in one shot, but instead of moving you, it actually destroys you and recreates you?” “Then if you want to return, it’s the same thing but faster because it just basically updates what it has in memory, so once you get in this thing it will refine the “info” that is you till your specs are down pat.” “I don’t care how safe you say the information is this is an opening to potential Doppelgangers.” “No, fuck that, you go play BrundleFly I am walking, biking, skipping, even FLAP MY ARMS, but I am not committing suicide by matter/energy conversion!” 

This is going to be my rant when they finally get teleportation working, well working on the current thinking. Of course I am ignoring the fact that I will be dead by the time they actually get this to work (unless some freak lab accident makes me immortal or a super hero). Sure they can destroy a particle with a laser, and send that info to another particle and it will gain its properties, but for large things you need matter conversion. Matter conversion is real Star Trek shit, to have matter changed into pure energy or data in the terms of the teleporter, and that ain't happening any time soon.

I should finish the above as a dialogue in some story. But the truth is once I finish the conversation I have no idea where to go with it. And there is a lot of work involved in getting a book right. I mean you need to develop characters or readers will just lose interest. And I mean ALL the characters, because that is just plain sucky if it’s just a few of them. Leave the poor reader to struggle through paper thin characters, feeding their apathy till they lose all interest in the whole book. And you have to write a lot of sentences, sure we all moan when we get the 300 page novel from our favorite author. Sure it sucks that we don’t get more of a story, but think of it from the author’s side. He busted his ass to get the 300 pages, and he probably handed in an even bigger manuscript but it got hacked up by editors. (By the way, I am not asking for true empathy, I mean you do pay for the books).

Ok back to quantum physics; teleportation came up today because I mentioned to Max about the technique of Compressed Sensing. I enjoy talking science and other nonsense with Max, I don’t have any real projects with Max, but it is an enjoyable and time wasting exercise. Compressed sensing is a mathematical method to remove noise from images. It can also be used to remove “noise” from data, with less points than other methods. So, you could use it to help find true positive and true negative hits in high throughput data. Based on that, I thought that an improved version of the math could do a better job. But Max isn't just interested in talking about imagine enhancement and things that were related to work, he started questioning the universe in general. We talked about quantum entanglement ( a subject he often asks me about because he knows my Dad is a Quantum Physicist and compressed sensing is linked to it), and how it relates to teleportation, but the earliest element of entanglement that we will/might see is communication. I made a statement that we haven’t really tested entanglement to its limits, he was of the opinion that it was instantaneous and an amazing way to communicate. And if it was magic I would agree. We (I mean scientist in general, I am not part of the cool physicist club) think that its faster than light communication, how its doing it is not certain, but while it might be faster then light, it probably has an upper limit on speed. So I said “what if we had it at the other end of the universe, would it be instantaneous?” So this started us on the nature of the universe, i.e. expansion/contraction.

I don’t know what the current thinking is, but Max couldn’t believe in an ever expanding universe. He felt that it should be more cyclical and that contraction should happen and a new big bang happens eventually. He couldn't reconcile the heat death of the universe, and that it all just fades away. Unfortunately for Max, the universe doesn't placate to our sense of the esthetic, while I agree with Max emotionally, I said that regardless, if heat death is the final outcome then that is it. Max wasn’t convinced, saying that heat death doesn't follow general basic conservation (not of mass, just of everything, like universal recycling). Anyway I wanted a coffee and Max wasn't going down stairs so I said “ ok, think then of multi-dimensionality, what if the heat death of this universe, feeds into the function or birth of the next?” He seemed a bit more happy about that (so freed, I ran off to get a coffee before getting back to work).

Its funny, but I always seem to be discussing physics and what's even funnier is none of us are physicists. Sure Max is a computer scientist, but Nick is a Lab technician like me, and Dan, he use to work in the warehouse of a big department store. And these are just a few, these are critical thinkers, that just read and decide to learn anything they are interested in. Sure they may never be experts and some, like me, have no math skills, but they learned and thought about stuff, the universe, and everything (probably why physics comes up, because it is about everything). And its infectious and habit forming; once you start researching one subject, you easily get sidetracked to another. Thanks to the internet you can lose hours of your time learning new things, or just get bogged down in silly crap, but its all there, and its exciting. My Dad (the real physicist) always wanted me thinking, I couldn't just hang out with my friends, I had to be doing something, like playing D&D, or studying (guess which I picked). I needed to engage my mind, add data, and develop my thought processes. At the time I thought it was stupid and I did what I could to do the opposite. For the most part he was right (hope he never reads this), if you continually work your mind (even playing video games, keeps your brain active) then its habit forming, and almost no situation you are in is boring, its like big kids imagination.

But I also think he was trying to do, besides help my intellectual creativity, was avoid running on automatic. So many people today just run on automatic and accept all that is told to them, they stop learning. They go through life following the well worn tracks in the trail and never really think. Oh sure some of them are decent members of society and perform vital functions, but they have the same mindset as as factory workers in developing countries. While they suffer through the drudgery of factory work, worrying about survival and where the next meal is coming from, they don’t have time for critical thinking. While the rest of us no longer have these hardships, we are still in that mind set, of day in day out repetitions and we go on automatic. Its a survival trait, so we focus on the task at hand, but it limits us from really seeing the world. I guess this is all a science fiction version of David Foster Wallace’s talks and writings on learning and educations. His commencement address “This is Water” says it way better than me. He calls it falling into our default mode.

There was a cute short film of the speech, but his "literary Trust" pulled it off line. The funny thing is it probably reached more people then the full text and helped get more exposure for his work, but hey, its not directly making them money (assumption) so its gone.

Maybe, if we all think more, and really think, we can achieve all the crap we keep spouting about (world peace, blah blah). Move us closer to the singularity event (rapture of the nerds) that will change us forever. Hell, maybe even teleportation.