I’ve had this post in the hopper for months now, just waiting for it to I guess compose itself. But I’m realizing that’s not going to happen. Things don’t just magically transform on their own. And that’s ultimately what I want to say on the subject of the Singularity, of this idea that humanity and global consciousness will mystically change over night.
It is not to be expected that human nature will change in a day.
-Frank B. Kellogg
To people hoping for a pie in the sky solution, I have to simply ask: where in the history of humanity has this ever happened before? And based on that, why should it happen now? Why would human nature suddenly veer wildly off course and turn out differently for the first time? It’s bullshit. We have way too much work to do to perfect ourselves before we reach the end. We don’t suddenly get off in another six years just because we’re totally freaked and feel like change is accelerating past us. Being scared and hoping for an external savior isn’t a solution. It’s like the teenager who believes that when they turn 18 everything’s gonna be okay. They get to vote, get out of their parents’ house, but then they realize stuff is still hard. So they think turning 21 will be their saving grace, cause they can drink. And the pattern just goes on and on. Your problems and your struggle don’t just end one day.
What seems to happen is that you get better at living life. You become more of an artist, more of a craftsman. You don’t try to eradicate imperfections in your raw materials; you learn to use them to enhance the beauty of your work.
I also wonder if the Singularity hasn’t happened at least once before, with similarly disastrous results:
According to the narrative in Genesis Chapter 11 of the Bible, the Tower of Babel was a tower built by a united humanity to reach the heavens. Because man had it in his heart to be like God, God stopped this project by confusing their languages so that each spoke a different language. As a result, they could no longer communicate with one another and the work was halted. The builders were then scattered to different parts of Earth. This story is used to explain the existence of many different languages and races.
I like to imagine this scenario as applied to the Singularity by way of the fictional structure of virtual reality (and maybe I’ll write a piece on this for my new Conspiracy Fiction site). It would go something like this: humanity would experience a day of rejoicing because we’ve created a technology which allows us to feel each other from the inside, a technology of universal compassion, as it were. We all eagerly line up to be fused via the new ConsciousNet into one primordial being, an Adam Kadmon, filled with the sum total of human emotion, intelligence and experience in one body. It’s hailed as the Singularity, the Second Coming of Eden. How long does that last though before we get bored? Before Adam needs a helpmate and begins shucking out ribs to create numerous companions? Or, perhaps in another scenario humanity comes together as one mind only to finally realize that an AI has existed among us without our knowing. Maybe this AI has actually purposely engineered us into its realm of pure mind - where it reigns supreme - so as to finally control us completely. I imagine the Singularity equivalent of the Tower of Babel being the AI comes to the ConsciousNet where we are all gathering together in rejoicing and scatters us all to the wind. This time instead of just confusing our languages, it scatters us each into our own private recursive virtual reality simulation, where each of us becomes solitary lonely seeds and sovereigns of a new world order. Something tells me that isn’t so different from where we are today metaphysically. Maybe the Bible doesn’t describe just a mythical past, but the spirals of the future which we will inevitably ensnare ourselves in again and again.
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~Great~ thought in an excellent post. I’ve thought about this too, to be honest. That the Bible isn’t actually about our past at all, but may in fact be a prophecy of sorts about our future. At any rate, the reason your supposed AI consciousness might stop us from creating or implementing that ConsciousNet idea may be due to the fact that, with death, we naturally become part of a singular consciousness where we have access to every emotion, feeling, experience, and memory ever had in the universe. . .and if we actually created a device that would mirror that here on earth, it would defeat the point of death and render it meaningless. And maybe this AI consciousness is programmed to NOT let that happen for some reason. Or maybe it’s actually facilitating the arrival of this Singularity, which would rid the need of biological death and create a heaven here on earth. Neat idea to think about to be sure, but then most of the ideas you have here are.
I usually imagine the Singularity as having already happened (or always happening) but for most of history humanity was too naive to recognize it as such. Schizophrenics perhaps glimpse this or feel its weight. Anxiety “disorder” perhaps is anything but. It could be that anxiety is not a symptom of something awry in one’s brain chemistry, but that reality and the passage of time is distorted (according to our perception) already — our chemistries and habits of thought merely following triptychs of very little variance.
I think we are naive to “it” now as well. But here’s the thing: It can and will be born at anytime. This being because it is possible. Could we not define the specific “singularity” the same way we define the general “future”? Are they not the opposite already? Perhaps the singularity is general while the future is quite specific. We just have it all backwards and are feeding meaning into something that subliminally exists already.
I know it all sounds like sophistry, which is cool. It basically is. But I think that’s the point. We’re looking for a solid something — some term it the “singularity” and others the “singularity hoax”. I think it is neither and the same. Basically I think the singularity and its attendant hoax will entail of one thing and one thing only. That being, a fierce emotional upheaval for every sentient form of life on Earth. In case you haven’t noticed we are being implicitly and explicitly told at all times we as a culture, species, country etc. “need to change”. As in, “it’s all coming to an end!”.
One way or the other, we will survive if we will it. And then, we also will not eventually too. This obscured paradox I think, is where this “singularity” and its “hoax” lies.