Comment on What is bunk?

Sat, 08 May 2010 20:28:07 GMT

I'm not sure that your comparison of the Singularity to these others works. Consider for example practical fusion reactors or space elevators. Both fit well with your rules that people would like to believe they are possible and the world would look very similar to what it looks like today even if they aren't. There's seems to be a major distinction between ideas like the Singularity or space elevators which contrasts with alien saucers or psychic powers: The first category has plausible mechanisms that aren't intrinsically disruptive to major metapatterns about how the world functions. In contrast psychic powers goes against much of our understanding of how the world functions (does bad things to evolution, basic laws of physics, and amounts to a claim of irreducible mental constructs to name just three of the serious problems). As a non-Singularitan, I have to say that I find this sort of comparison deeply unpersuasive.

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