It is still painful to see the term "Intelligence Explosion" being used to refer only to future developments.

The Intelligence Explosion Is Happening Now. If people think otherwise they should make a case for that. This really matters because - if a process has been going on for thousands of years, then we might already know something about how it operates.

So far, about the only defense of this misleading terminology that I have seen boiled down to: "I . J .Good said so, and we should defer to him". For the actual argument see the section here titled "Distinguishing the Explosion from the Preceding Build-Up". I think that this is a pretty feeble argument - which in no way justifies the proposed usage.

A nuclear explosion begins when critical mass is reached. You can't just define the explosion as starting when the bomb casing shatters - and justify that by saying: that is when the human consequences start to matter. By then the actual explosion has been underway for quite some time.

I think that most of the people who promote the idea of a future-only explosion actually think that the explosion will happen in the future. They really think that there will be a future "ignition point", after which progress will "take off". This is a case of bad terminology fostering and promoting bad thinking. These people are just confused about how cultural evolution and evolutionary synergy work.

The "singularity" termminology is also to blame here. That is another case where bad terminology has resulted in bad thinking.

No doubt the picture of a strange future which can't be understood in terms of past trends appeals to some. If we believe their claim that future is filled with strange new woo that is totally different from what came before then maybe we should pay more attention to thier guide book. Perhaps the "future-only explosion" nonsense is best understood - not as attempted science, but as attempted manipulation. I suspect that this factor is involved in how this bad meme has spread. The weird and different future pictured can thus be best seen as a sociological phenomenon - rather than a scientific one.

Anyway, I think those involved should snap out of this one. It is pretty much 100% misleading nonsense. You folk should acknowledge the historical roots of the phenomenon and adopt an appropriate classification and naming scheme for it - and stop promoting the idea of a "future-only explosion".