> But isn't he simply refusing to accept, on an emotional level, that everyone gets older, everybody dies?
Why? Why should we accept on an "emotional level" that we are about to die? Just because it's currently "inevitable"? Seems like a cop-out to me. I think humans are meant to be better than just "accepting their fate", and that we should always try to improve our lives and conditions.
But is there really a clear moral achievement in solving death? As long as we can procreate faster than we can increase the yield of resources for allowing quality of life there will always be a potentiality of more people than we can support. Then we have the problem of figuring out how to distribute those resources in the most morally efficient way. Living longer means taking more of those resources for yourself.
The ideas of singularity are based on extrapolating from the past (progress of technology). If you extrapolate from the past human lives, eventuality of death seems pretty inevitable for many generations to come. Which extrapolation you choose probably says more about you than it does about the world.
> Which extrapolation you choose probably says more about you than it does about the world
Exactly, i.e. you can't just go and extrapolate stuff at will, lest you end up talking like that guy: http://xkcd.com/605/.
Some extrapolations are more valid than others. There are casual reasons to believe that the rate of progress will continue for some time. There are no reasons to believe that death will always be inevitable (sans the thermal death of the universe stuff, but I'm sure we'll figure something out by then).
> There are casual reasons to believe that the rate of progress will continue for some time.
What are those reasons? What if you extrapolated the speed of passenger planes in the 60s, or even 80s. Just 30 years ago. Would you be correct about the 21st century? How about space travel?
What if AI is just like that? We'll keep improving, and then it'll stall. It may later recover. Or not.
That's the problem with extrapolation, and extending current trends into the future. It's actually pretty reliable — you're often right. Until you're not.
The economic incentives for progress are still there, we're using current tools to design better tools in a self-amplifying feedback loop, and limits for this process seem still far away from us. We have tons of space for progress. [0]
> What if you extrapolated the speed of passenger planes in the 60s, or even 80s. Just 30 years ago.
Then I would be wrong, for economical, not technological reasons. We can fly at Mach 25 today, but for various (economic) reasons people generally don't want to even go supersonic.
> Would you be correct about the 21st century? How about space travel?
Well, we didn't get space travel, but we got the Internet. To be honest, the progress we made in the last 50 years is more amazing than people dreamed back then, but in a different way.
> That's the problem with extrapolation, and extending current trends into the future. It's actually pretty reliable — you're often right. Until you're not.
I agree. In general, the more detailed you try to get in your future predictions, the more likely it is for you to be wrong.
[0] - for instance, even re-reading and cross-correlating (in an automated way) all the medical papers that were published in the last 100 years would bring us tremendous new discoveries; we already have more science than humans can handle, but we also build tools that could handle it for us.
Biotechnology is an infant, like computers at the 50s. Why should we not expect huge progress from it?
Now, I guess he'll have to redo his AI extrapolations. Chip manufacturing is now mature, and while we'll probably be only slightly latter at the computers that put 70% of the population out of a job, the current smaller rate of improvement will make a lot of difference for his 2029 prevision.
Yes, but while we're hitting the limit of our current solutions, AFAIR there's a lot more room to explore with 3D chips and optoelectronics. We might yet squeeze some more progress out of it.
> Biotechnology is an infant, like computers at the 50s. Why should we not expect huge progress from it?
We should, and in this case we have a good reason to believe it - every living thing on this planet, and every little bit of what we discover about them, is an evidence that nanotechnology is possible, works, and can do amazing things. The challenge in front of us is to understand, take control and re-purpose.
I think that humans are meant to accept that they cannot and should not be able to obtain massive amounts of control over world-scale events for prolonged amount of time.
We are social species. I believe every individual should carve out his piece of history and then let others do the same. Whether they chose to continue in your tracks or not. If we are to achieve any greatness at all, we should all participate even people who are yet to be born.
What you are suggesting seems like breaking nature's cycle to me.
> I think that humans are meant to accept that they cannot and should not be able to obtain massive amounts of control over world-scale events for prolonged amount of time.
Yes, that's why we require political leaders to step down from office eventually. But the civilized way of requiring leaders to step down from office does not involve killing them.
> What you are suggesting seems like breaking nature's cycle to me.
Damn right. So was the eradication of smallpox. Nature contains many cycles that are utterly abhorrent.
>Yes, that's why we require political leaders to step down from office eventually. But the civilized way of requiring leaders to step down from office does not involve killing them.
I'm talking more in line of philosophical movements. Political leaders are not that important (although it sure seems that way to us).
In my opinion, we as a species, need to have that failsafe of time perspective on ideologies. We risk lurching in a wrong direction with no possibility of coming back on track otherwise.
No single generation should decide to faith of humanity as a whole.
You make an appeal to nature fallacy here but you also point towards a valid point. The moral dilemma of taking up resources that could satisfy needs of others, born or not yet born. Sharing resources is not a new issue though, this just makes the issue harder.
Why? Why should we accept on an "emotional level" that we are about to die? Just because it's currently "inevitable"? Seems like a cop-out to me. I think humans are meant to be better than just "accepting their fate", and that we should always try to improve our lives and conditions.