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TheOtherDave comments on $295 bounty for new Singularity Institute logo design (crowd-sourced competition) - Less Wrong
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Comments (91)
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.
The genetic takeover/substrate migration is a useful reference class, but (although I agree with you that in some weak sense the intelligence explosion is already underway) minds that can rewrite themselves in place will be qualitatively different from anything that has happened before.
Sure. Memes were new. Technology was new. Machine intelligence is just the applicationn of technology to minds. The digital revolution has replaced most of our analogue media - with one major exception.
Also, thanks for linking to that Moravec paper (on your website). I hadn't seen it before, and as I enjoy his writing a great deal, I'll be reading it posthaste (after I finish these damned logos).