Singularity prediction isn't even taken seriously by most formerly-intrigued SF writers these days. (Go google Ramez Naam on the subject. Or me. Or Cory Doctorow.) Best we can probably hope for is better intelligence augmentation/amplification than we've got now.
The reason it's popular is that it plays to some deep eschatological anxieties shared by many people -- and it strikes resonant echoes with Christian millennialism, making it an easy memetic poisoned chalice for anyone who has consciously rejected knee-jerk Christian doctrine but not actually re-evaluated all their composite assumptions and beliefs to drink from.
>Singularity prediction isn't even taken seriously by most formerly-intrigued SF writers these days.
Becoming a science fiction cliche does not reduce the probability of an event occurring.
Edit: retracting the following:
>The reason it's popular is that it plays to some deep eschatological anxieties shared by many people.
This is probably true, but that's not an argument against the feasibility of AI or the extent of its implications. You're saying, "These projections "rhyme" with those of a low-status group, therefore they can't be true."
> You're saying, "These projections "rhyme" with those of a low-status group, therefore they can't be true."
No, that's not his argument for why it's not true, it's his argument for why the singularity concept persists when it seems that otherwise non-religious people would reject it.
Some of his arguments against an imminent singularity:
The entire low level ongoing effort to build a flying car (Terrafugia, Moller, etc) is basically driven by no market and no common sense, but a whole lot of Jetsons.
Well yeah, but welcome to humanity. We're at our best when we do what we dream of, as what's "realistic" and "feasible" is almost always just code for "the same crappy thing that happened yesterday happening again tomorrow because nobody made the effort to change it". Except then someone puts in the effort, fulfills their dreams, and the real world winds up totally different from the expected world in which those people never acted.
At least Terrafugia has a functioning prototype (i.e. it actually flies, rather than a 36-inch tethered hover), as well as orders.
A separate effort which actually makes a bit more sense and has more of a market is the iTec Maverick [1] - more of a flying dune buggy using a parasail as the "wing", but targeting a wholly different market (the Transition is aimed at wealthy pilots in wealthy countries with streets, airports, etc, whereas the Maverick is - in part - aimed at villagers living in remote jungles, far removed from civilization).
But there are a few clear standouts.
6. The patently obvious design flaws in a vehicle or weapon system go uncorrected during the entire life cycle of the system in question.
The original humvee had issues with passenger armor back in 2004 - they could have been purchased with the armor but weren't.
13, Computers, when shot, explode as if they had been stuffed full of Roman candles.
The videos of laptop batteries catching fire are pretty sparkly. Not sure how that would actually interact with a gunshot.
25, On-board computers always know exactly how long it will take for the malfunction to blow up the ship.
The Tesla roadster battery stories seem to give warning and force drivers to stop and get out.
31. A robot that can't climb stairs is deployed in an area where stairs are common.
Roomba?
At the very least, we can make an existential argument about sci-fi cliches actually being accurate. I couldn't think of a good way to get historical science fiction cliches. But the thing about the future is it's unknown. some of Jules Verne's stuff worked out, like submarines and travel to the moon, and other stuff didn't, like time travel.
I guess the rational response to "the singularity" is to stick a number on the likelihood of that actually happening - and then getting on with your life.
I think you're thinking about the future in a funny way, you should give Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan a read.
Meh, I always thought your "Why There Will Be No Singularity" blog post was a pretty accurate prediction. AI will work, but be so piecemeal that the chances of total domination by a superintelligent singleton get quite low. WBE will eventually work (after AI works, most likely), but will trigger lots of social strife and so come into use quite piecemeal itself. Life gets a lot better and a lot weirder but basically just goes on.
Which has the major upside of meaning we'll never have to deal with the Vile Offspring.
By the way, the final component to Rapture of the Nerds didn't seem to have a very good "exam", as I can't imagine the Galactic Authority would never have come up with any way to analyze minds, for instance a sample of human minds, and thus infer the chance that we can coexist as a species without having to run trillions of parallel copies performing very expensive simulations. Hilarious book, other than that, though; it really reminded me how much of a total nerd I am that I understood every single damn word without having to google.
"Nonsense" in that there's literally no way to ever tell the difference between a "simulation" being run on a computer in some exterior universe and a very real universe whose laws of physics are fundamentally discrete. "Real" is what you can causally interact with, which means that until that exterior universe decides to deliberately talk to us, they are not actually real with respect to us.
Maybe "pointless" is more correct then. "Nonsense" suggests you have a strong opinion on whether we live in a simulation, which as you said, we can't know.
> Meh, I always thought your "Why There Will Be No Singularity" blog post was a pretty accurate prediction. AI will work, but be so piecemeal that the chances of total domination by a superintelligent singleton get quite low.
Oh god - domination by the mediocre AI bureaucrat sounds worse than the AI overlord.
> Best we can probably hope for is better intelligence augmentation/amplification than we've got now.
That seems as if it can get pretty close to the singularity, and answers a lot of questions about what a super intelligent being's motivations would be.
The reason it's popular is that it plays to some deep eschatological anxieties shared by many people -- and it strikes resonant echoes with Christian millennialism, making it an easy memetic poisoned chalice for anyone who has consciously rejected knee-jerk Christian doctrine but not actually re-evaluated all their composite assumptions and beliefs to drink from.