Comment by creamytaco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by creamytaco | Hacker News Reader

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Here are some early signs of the anti-singularity:

+ Intelligence is decreasing worldwide, due to both accumulation of mutations detrimental to intelligence (dysgenics) and differential fertility (less intelligent people having on average the most children)

+ Modern society dominated by cancerous/parasitic bureaucracies (inefficiency generators)

+ Degradation of the definition of genius and societies hostile to genius

+ Dwindling number of genius individuals

+ Consequently, massive decrease in the number of ground-breaking inventions and scientific breakthroughs

As intelligence continues to decline, growth will reverse into decline and inefficiency, as the ability of people to sustain, repair, and maintain, the highly technical, specialized and coordinated world civilization will be lost.

Collapse and new dark age.

One thought: the genetic algorithm doesn't rely upon high-performing outliers exploding in numbers. It relies on recombination of otherwise useless traits from low-performing individuals, into newly high-performing combinations that exist as small populations, not lone individuals.

This is a reason to be extremely wary of the notion of culling the unfit. And that notion is an offshoot of being too caught up in the cult of the genius individual. Ain't none of us geniuses in isolation: effectiveness is the combination of genius and environment. You get the amazing individuals when a genius grows up in an environment that would've nurtured them pretty well even if they were not a genius… an environment that spends a lot of time and energy nurturing the unfit.

This applies as much to the environment cultivating those in poverty without hope, as it does to cultivating rich useless parasites without character. Either way, you cultivate the environment and the occasional individual pops out as exceptional, and makes breakthroughs.

So then the opposite:

+ Intelligence increasing worldwide, due to both accumulation of genetic improvements beneficial to intelligence (CRISPR?) and improved fertility of intelligent people

+ The bureaucracies of modern society serendipitously becoming efficient

+ Enhancing the definition of genius (perhaps to include all nine types of intelligence) and societies encouraging genius

+ Explosion in number of genius individuals

+ Massive increase in the number of ground-breaking inventions and scientific breakthroughs

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