The singularity as faith (extended abstract)
Selmer Bringsjord and Alexander Bringsjord, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic
We have on hand a framework for classifying the bases of belief in things that are at once weighty and unseen. Here, we apply the framework to belief in The Singularity, and conclude from this application, and the absence of both rationalist and empiricist evidence in support of this belief, that believers in the doctrine are fideists. While it’s true that fideists have been taken seriously in religion (e.g., Kierkegaard in the case of Christianity), even in that domain the likes of religious believers like Descartes, Pascal, and Leibniz find fideism to be little more than wishful, irrational thinking — and at any rate it’s rather doubtful that fideists should be taken seriously in the realm of science and engineering.
Link: singularityhypothesis.blogspot.com/2011/07/singularity-as-faith.html
(Note: this reply is not aimed at XiXiDu in particular.)
I agree with Normal_Anomaly's sibling comment. If the Bringsjords are saying that "S is for these reasons probably false, so belief in S can only be fideistic", then they should just give arguments against S.
But the fact hinted here that humans haven't gotten to human level AI yet
a sharp toddler of today makes a mockery of any computing machine with designs on natural-language communication
does appear to be evidence that human-level intelligences are not good at AI theory, thus not good at fooming quickly.
Federov's Rapture at Charlie's Diary
This is a follow-up to his article on Singularitarianism last week, which was also discussed here.
His own introduction:
I'm not sure if the point is really anything more than guilt-by-association, because he doesn't really make a complete argument for anything in particular.