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Comment by ThalesX | Hacker News Reader

I dislike being the pessimist but it seems overly optimist to imagine this singularity coming and undoing all of mankind’s harm... and I can imagine how someome at his age would embrace this view that surely, soon, automagically everything will be in order.

How long till we attain singularity? I believe another of his liftime and we’ll still be far away from true self-replicating GAI. I also believe climate change will transform our way of living long before that.

What will be it’s primary purpose? I don’t know, it’s definitely not going to be built to enrich mankind.

I like his view and I hope he is right but I believe the ‘singularity’ will solve how to further enrich its makes long before it solves the planet’s ailments.

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Singularity is becoming a religion, like the say The Rapture for nerds.

Technology is seldom the bottleneck, that seemingly is down to social acceptance.

Things used to progress by people dying out, however enhanced lifespan makes this even more of a problem.

Emigration to new societies helped, but there’s no where left to go with a clean sheet.

Whilst a fan of space colonies, that looks to be even more complex than when life moved from the sea to land.

So herding rabid cats seems to be the core skill.

The rabid cats herding was a bit glib in my part, consensus is hard to come by, but valuable. With so many different points of contention though it’s almost to get agreement across the board; a statespace explosion.

Several hundred years ago the main question was which crop to grow.

Several hundred years ago the main question was who would make the best king to lead us into the next war, which would probably be next year.

Sorry if I'm being glib, that's incidental to your main points.

They didn’t get to chose the king did they, otherwise it would have been a democracy.

There were lots of ways to chose a king. Heredity was just one of them -- which is why not all kings (or roman emperors etc) are from the same family.

In lots of cases, popular support (or lack thereof) played a big role (in some cases, even more directly than in current democracies).

Often popular support of the elements of the landed gentry with largest armed hirds or retinues to call upon.

Not quite the modern sense of popular support.

Replace landed gentry with corporatist class, and "largest armed hireds" with mass media, and you're not very far off.

Well, wars of succession were a thing.

Or which king to pay allegiance to, the invading or the sitting. Wait, have many parties can you vote for?

> So herding rabid cats seems to be the core skill.

Cat herding only makes sense if you have an idea of what should be done. Herding for the sake of keeping everyone 'on the same page' can be harmful. If you are trying to get a consensus this will squash small ideas before they have had a chance to prove themselves. Sometimes space and non-management is needed for things to sprout.

"The Rapture for nerds" class!

Technologically the singularity has already happened. It's not evenly distributed yet.

We have artificial nitrogen fertilizer. Since it's invention we have been converting oil into human biomass. As a side-effect there has been an acceleration of science and technology.

We have split the atom, we have automated thought, we read and write DNA, our words and images circle the globe in an instant. The singularity has already happened.

We just have to notice and calm down. We actually have all the answers and solutions we need already, the issue is purely psychological or spiritual now.

yes, i think the singularity would be in mankind's image i.e. post-industrial capitalist consumerist

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