I'm amused by how much section 1.8 resembles my own Singularitarian conversion moment.
It is quite funny how my story differs. See the banner on my homepage in 2005?
"Towards the Singularity and a Posthuman Future"
I was a believer. It seemed completely obvious that we'll soon see superhuman AI. When reading 'Permutation City' and 'Diaspora' I was bothered by how there was no AI, just emulations. That didn't seem right.
I changed my mind. I now think that a lot of what I believed to know was based on extrapolations of current trends mixed with pure speculation. Those incredible amounts of technological optimism just seem naive now. It all sounds really cool and convincing when formulated in English, but that's not enough.
I was a believer. It seemed completely obvious that we'll soon see superhuman AI. When reading 'Permutation City' and 'Diaspora' I was bothered by how there was no AI, just emulations. That didn't seem right.
A common plot device - humans need human-like protagonists to identify with - or the story doesn't sell.
Such scenarios then get "reified" in people's minds, and a whole lot of nonsense results.
I thought this may be of interest to the LW community. Jacob Barnett is a 12-year old male who taught himself all of high school math (algebra through calculus), has a currently scored math IQ of 170 (for what that's worth) and is currently on track to become a researcher of astrophysics. His current major news worthy claim-to-fame (aside from being really young): The Big Bang Theory is currently incorrect (I believe the article states he has something about a lack of carbon in the model), and he's planning to develop a new theory.
I haven't learned anything serious in physics, so I have nothing to note on his claim. I realize the news article cited puts him claim fairly generally, so I'll ask this: Can someone explain how elements are generally modeled to have formed from the big bang? And is there anything that it Jacob may be missing in the current literature?