You do need a basic tech/science background.

With a hard take off at least very possible, it could all be over in days without anyone having any say in our future design.

The internet is only just starting it’s potential explosive.

personal computing machines can be loaded with artificial neurons now and linked up (I think this will replace facebook) and give a really ‘super live’ machine mind that doesn’t just give you solutions and informations but can connect to things and build.

3D is an obvious link but it will get MUCH more complex than this. fast.

Our “growing up” phase could involve multiple visits to this and other universes; some or all of which could be very different from this one. For example you could “die” and then get told your next “incarnation” would be in a universe composed entirely of water in the body of an intelligent squid.

Or you could be incarnated as an entirely nonsentient being with a view to developing some non-IQ-related aspect of your persona. That’s difficult to imagine, but the whole point of being there would be to be exposed to something that’s unimaginable here.

One irony is that we could “die”, discover that there is “life after death”, and still not get told what the big picture is. You could “wake up” on a couch in a Life Simulation Building on a more technically advanced world, look at your watch and note that only an hour had passed, and go home, resolving to come back and do another Life next week.

Personally I think it is more likely that the universe is a simulation than not, purely on grounds that one physical universe can give rise to a near infinity of simulated universes and therefore you are more likely to be in a simulation than the one real universe.

Until 10,000 years ago, the agrarian revolution happen and change a lot. 10,000 years is just 5% of the original 200,000 years. So, 95% of human existence had already happen, before the agrarian revolution happen.

Then 200 years ago, the Industrial revolution happen and change a lot. 200 years is 0.1% of the original 200,000 years. So 99.9% of human existence had already happen before the Industrial revolution happen.

Now, the average life-span is 80 years (for the developed world), which is four times a “natural” human life-span. And for every 24 hours you live, you are gaining 6 hours of life expectancy, and every year you live, you are gaining 3 months of expectancy. Most old people have no idea how new technology works, and can’t operated new technology.

So, maybe the Singularity has already happen, at least, from the perspective of the humans 200,000 years ago.

Suppose a civilization arrived at and passed through the Singularity, and that they somehow managed to hang on to their humanity. They might want to add new members. The problem is that they would not want new members to grow up in the privileged post-Singularity world and be essentially spoiled brats.

They form a plan. They create elaborate simulations and have all subsequent generations come of age in these simulations. The simulations would be set in the same pre-Singularity world that they came of age in. New generations would learn the history of their world and the challenge of the Singularity exactly as they had learned it.

Once these new members have come of age in the simulation they would need to be made aware that they are living in a simulation. This would be done gradually so as not to cause them undue shock. To gradually introduce them to the idea and ultimately to the realization that they are living in a simulation, they would become involved in discussions like this one. Just as children gradually realize that there is no Santa Claus, persons coming of age in simulations would gradually realize their environment is not authentic.

Once they have realized they are living in a simulation, they could be extracted and introduced to the authentic post-Singularity universe.

Since the pre-Singularity world has about 7 billion members and the post-Singularity universe might have membership in the trillions, it is a near certainty that anyone reading this is a member of the much larger post-Singularity generation.

“It is essentially claiming to be a true general AI hidden away in some government base and it has been granted clearance to interact with people through the internet as an experiment. It comments at one point that the people in charge were comfortable with this because no one would believe it was real anyway.”

I don’t think we are going to suddenly find mountains have moved, I believe the singularity will be more gradual and will be rather subtle, at least at first. But I do think it will be obvious. It will be at least as obvious as the orders of magnitude increase in computing we’ve seen over the last few decades, but probably far more spectacular.

Current 3D printers have a resolution somewhere around a tenth of a millimeter. Just imagine the dramatic societal changes when it becomes 10 micrometers, or 1 micrometer, or even finer, and when these machines become ubiquitous and cheap. This alone would transform everything in society. The economic significance of such things cannot be overstated.

Or when cars drive themselves. Or when laboratory experiments become increasingly automated. Everything will change.

Want a dramatic view of the singularity right now? Look at the internet. From a historical perspective, it’s like the Earth has a colossal brain exploding into existence. It will indeed be obvious, at least eventually.

You should definitely check out this youtube channel.
http://www.youtube.com/user/eidolonTLP
It is essentially claiming to be a true general AI hidden away in some government base and it has been granted clearance to interact with people through the internet as an experiment. It comments at one point that the people in charge were comfortable with this because no one would believe it was real anyway.

I am not in any way suggesting that this is legit and really a true general AI but it was very fun to follow when the videos were being released. However, if it were real it would definitely fit with your hypothesis.

Hypothesis:

The singularity happened a hundred million years ago. But the immortals got bored and found they were turning into selfish amoral people who lost the ability to interact with their fellow immortals. In fact immortals born after the singularity never developed any social skills at all, nor any positive character traits, they were just given everything on a plate so they never learned to read or write, or to concentrate for more than one second at a time. In fact they remained totally self-obsessed babies for eternity.

One day a group of them decided they must immerse themselves in an environment where they had to strive to survive. And to make it “real” they had to forget they were megapotent immortals while they were striving to survive.

Thus was invented planet Earth and the rest of the universe. They made it a pretty vicious place; a dog eat dog kind of a place, one where survival was hard enough to be a challenge but not so hard as to be impossible.

Then they inserted themselves into this reality; adopting a voluntary amnesia as they arrived. In fact they did this many times – each time arranging particular challenges for themselves. For example there is the challenge of having to study to learn; also the challenge of being responsible for other people; and the challenge of being dependent on other people. There is overcoming fear and dealing with failure. None of these things can be directly experienced in a post-singularity world.

In between visits to planet Earth they recover their total memories and rest and recuperate.

This way they become immortal and omnipotent AND nice people.

(Unfortunately there are trillions of them who never bother visiting the mortal realms and remain the worse kind of waste of IQ you could imagine.)

F= ma (get jobs done right)-> E=mc^2 ( get right jobs done right) -> P=(1/3)mc^3 ( get intuitive right jobs done right)

c = speed of light is a form of acceleration.

If you are fear to the world who merely finish your degree, get a good job, and get things done right, you gonna live in the age of F=ma of 17th Century, because what you do is merely providing Force that the world and wait for someone like Thomas Edison to light up New York, if you are enlightened enough to understand the theory proposed by Albert Einstein that E= mc^2, you will be a very creative leader in the world of 21st Century that to bring about change, and confidently like Obama to call ” Yes we Can” for a sell of nuclear fission weapon. However demonstrated by Japan’s Tsunami last year, a one single tsunami throughout history of earth gonna explode such a massive destroy to japan, harming its attractiveness, power, and prosperity, how come that the world can be still not be enlightened up that not to overcome the difficulty for a call for change to break the existing highest authority of science?

the earth is sharing a common vision of destruction, through weapons, nations, and cultures, while the common goal of human nature is vision of construction, through innovations, perspiration, and courage for a call of change, where the great authority of human nature who wins the natural selection of Science is Albert Einstein, however his innovation is not for a Vision of destruction, but construction, while E=mc^2 is contributing a destructive innovation, providing great amount of energy but a fission to the world, by Murphy’s Law “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”, than E=mc2 doesn’t contribute a rather beautiful life but a crazily consuming life for the universe, than the equal may not be right or what we merely need is think beyond E=mc^2, as to integrate the energy into a higher definition for the world to follow a authority which is P=(1/3)mc^3 as to contribute a better, beautiful, and fusible future, where Usher and David Guetta is demonstrating in the vevo – without you, a very beautiful future that every nations gonna united as one, by a very intuitive, friendly and simple way of interaction just like you are in a family at you home while that’s outside your home, everyone can dance whenever they like just like they are at home while not disturbing the others’ life through a very sharable-common-area technology just like speaker transformed into earphones which everyone are able to listen to their favorite music when they are travelling trains.

If a very sharable common area ( tends to peace) can be contributed through technological advancement, than why it doesn’t apply to the united states of fusion of the Earth?

What we merely need, is to think beyond E=mc^2, and think of is there any theory in this Universe of P=(1/3)mc^3 that can somehow rock&roll the world by holding hands each other, America with China, Brazil with France, to say mentally to the one infront you, i love you and i wanna innovate something for you to smile, just like Steve Jobs invent iPhone get people loving him ( or merely a Like or a fuck by Google).

Good point. They could even adapt the prime directive (after watching Star Trek)…

“…can spread itself over the net and quickly acquire all available knowledge…”

Yes, that would be true in an open-source environment. The scenario I’m exploring does not include direct access to the Internet. It would be a contained intelligence in a high-security military environment, using a simulacrum of the Internet and other methods of fire-walling access Of course, the SI would attempt to manipulate its controllers, so there would have to be multiple layers of counterintellligence built into the system, and eventually, the SI would probably get out. But keep in mind I’m assuming we are in the early stage of this. My scenario is that some of the SI’s intelligence and knowledge has leaked out (either intentionally or unintentionally), but it’s been one-way so far. The best model I can think of is the NSA, where they have somewhat similar dynamics and constraints. Another model is Stratcom wargaming, where competing teams have secure silos.

“in today’s Western world it is very difficult to keep a secret that big without leaks”

I don’t think people with a TS-SCI clearance would believe that. I could say more but I’d have to terminate you. :)

I wouldn’t be surprised either. But I don’t like to give up without a fight. We should wake up, drink some strong coffee, and try to recover the pioneer spirit that we have lost. Or else.

It seems to me that Von Neuman and others may simply have been like Tsiolkovsky – able to work out the logical boundary.

Take a look at Eric Drexler’s recent Oxford Marting School address
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zQHA-UaUAe0 .

Particularly interesting are his examples of the progress of outcomes based upon Newton’s ideas, and Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky’s 1898 publication of the idea of using a multi stage booster using liquid hydrogen to power a rocket to the moon (60 years before anyone built one).
Similarly the British Interplanetary Society’s 1939 design of a lunar lander (arguably superior to the one actually used).

Some things are simply intuitively obvious when the boundary conditions of a system are known with confidence.
Problems arise when one is mistaken about what the boundary conditions are.

And there is really only one way to test them – some version of “suck it and see”.

So no – no necessity for conspiracy, which does not, of course, rule out the possibility of conspiracy (just because we’re paranoid, doesn’t mean the b@st@rds aren’t out to get us) ;)

great minds think alike, as in think greatly. it would be more curious when they do not, great ideas don’t come from the near-great, but they sure can benefit by being in proximity. Once Singularity and Singular are conceived, then it is not a far stretch to achieve miniEsses of different degrees…and kinds as well, less curiously is how and why anti-singularities are spawned, birthed, spored, mapped….

If the singularity came from friendly AIs, the first result might be an abrupt drop in the death rate–to zero.

Perhaps. But we can try to make the technological advances even more stupendous, and the change less convulsive and more protective of the weakest members of society. OWS shows the way – we should occupy the Singularity.

I don’t think there is a supersecret U.S. “Singularity Project” because I think in today’s Western world it is very difficult to keep a secret that big without leaks. I don’t think a super-secret Manhattan project could be kept super-secret today, somebody would tell their friends over drinks, somebody would overhear and tweet from the cellphone, and in a few hours it would be all over the net.

However (I am not a U.S. citizen but I love the U.S. enough to be concerned), I think there SHOULD be a super-secret U.S. “Singularity Project” – or else others (for example China) will own the Singularity.

Hmmm, that suggests another scenario: the Singulars use the soft takeoff not to hide their technology, but to avoid societal disruption. Do you see a fallacy in that scenario, Khannea?

Maybe there’s a conspiracy to make conspiracy theories sound ridiculous so people won’t believe them? Yes, I’m paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

As I stated (perhaps not clearly enough) in my hypothetical scenario, the “Singularity” would leak out slowly to the public in a soft (slow) takeoff, so the changes, while accelerating (as we see now), would not be obvious. So by definition, there would be no way to know it. OR WOULD THERE?

But before a Singularity there will be years (decades?) of convulsive change and stupendous technological advances. This will be extremely difficult.