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Perplexed comments on $295 bounty for new Singularity Institute logo design (crowd-sourced competition) - Less Wrong
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Comments (91)
I have the impression that the Singularity Summit and other association with "big-tent" singularitarianism provide some PR and fund-raising advantages. Even if SIAI research focuses on AI and Friendliness, Thiel probably prefers that they remain on speaking terms with futurism and transhumanism more generally.
Big money is probably the the best argument. But you also have to ask who you need to convince to mitigate risks from AI, e.g. who you want to implement your formal definition of friendliness. The answer to this question is likely not Thiel but some AGI researcher working on an academic project, some big corporation like IBM or a government. In most cases having Singularity in your name or talking about transhumanism will make them delete your e-Mails. This has nothing to do with being dishonest but social engineering, being aware of public perception and using an euphemism if possible.
If the SI were known for two things - both organizing the annual Singularity Summit and also sponsoring a peer-reviewed Electronic Journal of Friendly AI Research (EJFAIR), then I suspect it would have the best of both worlds. Neither activity is so disreputable as to tarnish the good reputation derived from the other (within relevant subcultures).
To my mind, the real threat to SI (or SIAI) credibility is the perception that it is an isolated intellectual subculture, speaking only to itself, and not engaged in an open and critical dialog with other AI researchers. Choosing the right euphemism for use in the name of the organization is not the most important task in this PR battle.
Absolutely, I was just bringing it up because Jack asked about a possible name change. It may also be the case that the term Singularity (technological) will gain general acceptance in future, as current progress towards an academic analysis suggests.
It would be unprecedented terminology.
Evolutionary changes have been called "revolutions" (industrial), "explosions" (cambrian), "takeovers" (genetic), "catastrophe" (oxygen), or "genesis" (abiogenesis).
There aren't any "singularities" on record, though.
I prefer "Technology Explosion". I think it is more descriptive and more accurate. There are also the terms "Digital Revolution" and "Memesis" - which I approve of.
Well, presumably if there was more than one of it, it wouldn't be a singularity.
Note that that isn't what the people who use the "singularity" term to describe the hypothetical discontinity in the middle of black holes seem to think.
Somebody should point out that TheOtherDave's comment was a joke. (At least, I'm 95% confident it was so intended, and also I found it amusing.)
The Singularity is more analogous to the event horizon of a black hole; that used to be called the Schwarzschild singularity, but since its singular behaviour was an artifact of co-ordinate systems (as was first clearly shown by David Finkelstein), this terminology has fallen out of use. One imagines that eventually historical Singularities (which are really just prediction horizons) cease to be so called after they are past.
The singularity at the center of a black hole is presumably equally illusory; general relativity simply breaks down there, giving nonsensical answers (infinities). Singularities are in the map, not the territory. (Am I the first to say that?)
Well, it was intended to be amusing, yes. (In retrospect, perhaps "if there was more than one of it, it would be a multiplicity" might have worked better. Perhaps not.)
That said, I do think there's an actual point buried in there somewhere. The sorts of people who use the term "Singularity" to describe an event are deliberately using a term that isn't commonly used to describe transition points, precisely in order to convey the inadequacy of former transition points as a reference class for thinking about that event. If "singularity" were a word in common usage to refer to other transition points in history, singularitarians would choose a different word.
Yes, I think you're right, concerning contemporary usage; but it's not clear to me that either Ulam or Vinge had that connotation in mind.
ETA: Or von Neumann.
The book "The Major Transitions in Evolution" fairly cleraly lays out many of the previous major transitions. Evolution has taken multiple major steps forwards before - for example, with the last genetic takeover, or with the origin of sex.
In my view, what we are seeing now is a modern genetic takeover. If so, we do have a useful reference class.
Calling an "event horizon" a "singularity" would be pretty bonkers.
No - the commonly-cited justification is that so our model of the spacetime supposedly breaks down in the middle of black holes, so the model of the future breaks down when contemplating smarter-than-human intelligences.
Personally, I think that is nonsense. Some people are proposing busted models, is all. If your model is broken, that is hardly a cause for celebration - you should instead return to the drawing board, and build a better model.
The event horizon is a co-ordinate singularity--like the North Pole. (Wikipedia has an article on the types of 'mathematical' singularity. I haven't read it, so I don't know how good it is.) Yes, in some sense it was a mistake to call the event horizon a 'singularity'; that's why they stopped.
Otherwise, we appear to agree. As you say, 'If you divide by zero in your model, that just shows that your model is broken.' I share your interest in good terminology; but it looks to me like it's probably far too late to get rid of 'The Singularity'. So I just adopt it, but with a certain air of amused detachment. Sure, it's just a co-ordinate singularity at most.
I wonder if Ulam was thinking of the Schwarzschild singularity in 1958; that's the same year Finkelstein's co-ordinates were introduced, so he may or may not have absorbed the illusory nature of the horizon at that point, but probably he wasn't thinking of the singularity at the centre of the hole. But I'm not much of an historian, and would welcome corrections from those better informed.
You might be the first to say it that way although the idea has certainly been expressed before. However, we don't actually know this for sure. We don't what happens at the singularity in a black hole. It seems likely that are models really are giving something wrong, and there are a handful of suggestions about what might be actually happening, but none of them are completely mathematically satisfying, and the lack of observational evidence is also an issue. We might be able to answer this if we a) had a theory of quantum gravity or b) had some naked singularities we could observe. Neither looks very likely at the moment, with the first probably more promising.
My take on the issue: http://finitenature.com/no_singularity/
I mean, yeah, you call the organization whatever the hell Thiel wants you to call it. But I don't see in particular why those connections couldn't be maintained alongside a name change that made the organization more palatable to non-futurists.