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Sorry, I got to the end of this, and realized this comment was long as crap after Asian. This is a topic that is sorta near-and-dear to me. =P

I don't know if WA quite passes the Turing test. It can now understand language, it seems, and answer direct questions. Having the processing power to self-assemble that knowledge into propositions and questions of its own is the next step. Still, I agree, this is a big deal.

I also agree with every word you say on the Singularity. In my mid-teens to mid-twenties, I was really big into the idea. Had all of these "Star Trek" notions of technology solving all of our problems, and a 'brave new world' of 'boldly going where no one has gone before".

But the more I look into the actual effects of technology on the lives of humans...well, I become less convinced that it has done us anywhere near the amount of "good" we attribute to it. Largely (all though by no means always), the "good" for which we credit it was just it finally cleaning up its own damn mess.

Not that I am saying I am against technology, per se. I just feel that most of our current technology -- and most especially the orientation of the science which births it -- is towards control and domination; as opposed to understanding and cooperation.

Sustainability and respect for the Earth and the processes of nature are not memes that are a part of our current ideology of Science is how I would put it in my own inner dialogue.

This is the big transition that science and technology need to make. We need to understand that we are living in a pathological society. And the thing about pathologies is that they usually arise from the inability to process or integrate a past experience (in our case, in my opinion, this being around the time of the last major climate change event. I go in to more detail in my blog here).

What that means is that sometimes you have to regress in order to progress.

Unfortunately, however, we have ourselves in a position where to regress to our last sustainable way of living would also basically mean that hundreds of millions would starve to death, as the natural unworked land cannot support anywhere near this population. So we need to come up with something, and fast. The solar, wind, and hydro power options are a good start (although they have their own problems, particularly wind and hydro, due to their tendency to kill wildlife. I also wonder about the albedo effect of the number of black solar panels that would be necessary to really start making it a viable replacement option).

I also found a great gardening method that I think has profound applications. Its such a simple thing, but when I think about the 'what if it really took off', well..it gives me hope. It is at least a step towards a sustainable method of providing food for the multitudes we now find ourselves to be, while simultaneously drastically reducing our waste.

Back to the topic, however, the other problem with the technology angle is the dissemination of that technology. If the ability to become Godlike is actually achieved by technology, I can assure you that only the most wealthy will be able to afford it.

They won't just open free 'Become As Gods' clinics all over the world to 'upgrade everyone'.

And the implications of the already-have-everything-Elite now suddenly having the power to have even more control...well, No. That's all I can say to that. Its unsustainable, it opens the doorway to too many utter catastrophes...and is completely unnecessary to have a happy, contented, healthy life.

The Singularity is a dead-end meme that does us no good, and whose pursuit and manifestation do quite a bit of harm.

"You must *be* the change you wish to see in the world."
Mahatma Gandhi

I dunno about further down the path. =P I personally don't think there really is "one path", but multiple lines. If you see in me some lines that appear more developed, well, know that I see lines in you that are more developed. The absolute value is identical. ^_~ (And, once again, I get to the end and realize I've written a dang novel. =P Sorry, literally a topic I could go on about for days.)

And I feel exactly the same about Eisenstein. He's the person I recommend #1 right now (used to be Wilber, though I still recommend Wilber too. The two of them compliment and balance each other perfectly, as far as my interpretations go.)

Yes, the point I became uninterested in the Singularity was about exactly the point at which I realized that all of the nifty gadgets we create aren't just passed out for everyone to benefit from. Indeed, we rarely actually benefit. For example, production technology doesn't reduce the length of the workday, although it could -- no, what it does it require that much more to be produced...while simultaneously enabling the loss of jobs.

We work about as hard and for as many hours, usually at a task even more tedious, and are simply required to produce more for 'the boss' per days work.

And the actual majority of world's populace gets nothing from it but swamped by 'industrialized countries' raiding them for their resources, and messing around with their governments to try to get contracts and bids. These people live in a squalor that your average hunter-gatherer would never dream of, stuck there by memes like 'borders' and 'nationality' and 'race'. Back in the old days, the whole tribe would have high-tailed it to better hunting grounds as soon as the food started to look low.

So where's the benefit, really? That we can achieve an even more unsustainable population, and so that population can be inundated with as many 'neat-o' things as possible? With our level of production capacity, we could have it so everyone in the world worked about 10 hours a week and had everything in the world they needed, plus a little to have fun with.

Why don't we do that?

Well, because some people are harboring memes which tell them that they should have more than they need. And not just a little more -- a bit of leisure, pleasure, and (dare I say it) luxury isn't too much to ask...indeed, I'd say it's almost a need, as far as a happy life.

No, these individuals want to swim in pleasure and novelty. They want their life to consist of nothing but leisure, and to be served by others so they never need lift a finger again unless they just want to.

For that, 95% of the world's population must work, day-in and day-out at tasks the majority of them find meaningless, and even degrading. They must submit to a yolk of labor and a collar of responsibility, held down by chains of debt.

Not because they need to.

Because others think that is a worthwhile price for their personal luxury.

And what makes everyone agree to this? This bone we are tossed that, if we are just good little workers and do our time, why, we ourselves can be just like them!. We can have everything we want at our fingertips, too! We can be waited on, hand-and-foot, just as we once waited upon others. What a marvelous dream!

Except that we, too, then become the enslavers of our people.

There's room at the top, they are telling you still...
But first, you must learn how to smile as you kill --
If you want to be like the folks on the hill." John Lennon

As I said, I have no problem with technology, per se, when maturely used to meet actual human need, designed with respect for the Earth and sustainability in mind.

I do have a problem with selfish technology bent upon control based on some hubric notion of 'progress' or what have you, which inevitably does nothing but make human lives less fulfilling, more tedious and bogged down, and less healthy / more precarious.

And, most especially, I have a growing issue with the idea that, "oh well, yeah, I mean...all of that is true enough, but one day we are gonna hit this point where technology will just fix everything, including itself, and from then on it's gonna be peaches and cream."

All we have done is made life more difficult with the excuse of trying to make life easier.

"You must *be* the change you wish to see in the world."
Mahatma Gandhi

Hey thanks for writing about this Psychegram, yeah I've also been into the singularity for awhile and then educated in more 'conspiracy' stuff. Whatever you want to call it.

I think of the singularity not as just this point of attaining artificial intelligence that improves in a feedback loop, but also everything leading up to it... that is very real and has been happening ever since bacteria formed. Think about it, nobody really know's whats in a black hole just how the space is warped around it. I'm especially interested by this process of capital shrinking down and becoming not only super-cheap, but also interconnected and more about the pure information. We're participating in this right now, at an accelerated rate. Like Kurzweil says, its not about whether or not it happens at this point... its all about how and when it happens.

I think that given the nature of the singularity it's hard to predict outcomes, but it just seems like a race to me... the elites are racing to shut down society, use technologies for surveillance, and stop the general population from participating. New technologies lead to unpredictable results and new possibilities, usually a shakeup in power, which is very bad for the elite. At the same time these psychopathic elites are racing to develop these technologies for themselves. At a certain point they truly wouldn't need us (I doubt they're even close). That's one thing that bothered me about The Matrix... the idea that machines would use humans as batteries and construct this virtual world around it is just so ridiculous on its face. But like most sci-fi it's just an allegory of today blown to ridiculous proportion.

As far as death goes, in this world... nobody deserves to live forever who isn't first ready and willing to die. I've stopped fantasizing about eternal life and find that I actually fantasize about death. If I die honorably in battle, then I will enter Stovokor.

Or as Adama says in Battlestar Galactica: "Its not enough to survive... One has to be worthy of survival."

I think our main problem is that we autistically separate technology and society, and have this myth that technology just improves our lives... when in fact it is only an extension of ourselves and with or without it, we are still ourselves. So we are sold on this dream but all its really doing is distracting us from the shit pile that we usually need to deal with first. Sometimes it deepens the shit pile, and sometimes we get new tools to clean up the shit pile, but we still have to clean up the shit pile. Regardless of what technology we are using, our flowery language, we are still using it to do very mammalian, very simple things. Food and shelter. The tribe. The hierarchy. What we are doing here is attempting to create a tribe, a community. Of course there is some technology that we rationally would be better off without. But once again humanity needs to mature before it can make those kinds of decisions and actually enforce them.

Cheers,

Meade