A Singular Universe of Many Singularities: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

Eric J. Chaisson, Harvard University

Nature’s myriad complex systems—whether physical, biological or cultural—are mere islands of organization within increasingly disordered seas of surrounding chaos. Energy is a principal driver of the rising complexity of all such systems within the expanding, ever-changing Universe; indeed energy is as central to life, society, and machines as it is to stars and galaxies. Energy flow concentration—in contrast to information content and negentropy production—is a useful quantitative metric to gauge relative degree of complexity among widely diverse systems in the one and only Universe known. In particular, energy rate densities for human brains, society collectively, and our technical devices have now become numerically comparable as the most complex systems on Earth. Accelerating change is supported by a wealth of data, yet the approaching technological singularity of 21st-century cultural evolution is neither more nor less significant than many other earlier singularities as physical and biological evolution proceeded along an undirectional and unpredictable path of more inclusive cosmic evolution, from big bang to humankind. Evolution, broadly construed, has become a powerful unifying concept in all of science, providing a comprehensive worldview for the new millennium—yet there is no reason to claim that the next evolutionary leap forward beyond sentient beings and their amazing gadgets will be any more important than the past emergence of increasingly intricate complex systems. Nor is new science (beyond non-equilibrium thermodynamics) necessarily needed to describe cosmic evolution’s interdisciplinary milestones at a deep and empirical level. Humans, our tools, and their impending messy interaction possibly mask a Platonic simplicity that undergirds the emergence and growth of complexity among the many varied systems in the material Universe, including galaxies, stars, planets, life, society, and machines.

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The slowdown hypothesis (extended abstract)

Alessio Plebe and Pietro Perconti, University of Messina

The slowdown hypothesis 
 
The so-called singularity hypothesis embraces the most ambitious goal of Artificial Intelligence: the possibility of constructing human-like intelligent systems. The intriguing addition is that once this goal is achieved, it would not be too difficult to surpass human intelligence. A system more clever than humans should also be better at designing new systems as well, leading to a recursive loop towards ultraintelligent systems (Good, 1965), with an acceleration reminiscent of mathematical singularities (Vinge, 1993).

The singularity as faith (extended abstract)

Selmer Bringsjord and Alexander Bringsjord, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

We have on hand a framework for classifying the bases of belief in things that are at once weighty and unseen. Here, we apply the framework to belief in The Singularity, and conclude from this application, and the absence of both rationalist and empiricist evidence in support of this belief, that believers in the doctrine are fideists. While it’s true that fideists have been taken seriously in religion (e.g., Kierkegaard in the case of Christianity), even in that domain the likes of religious believers like Descartes, Pascal, and Leibniz find fideism to be little more than wishful, irrational thinking — and at any rate it’s rather doubtful that fideists should be taken seriously in the realm of science and engineering.

The singularity as a religion (extended abstract)

Diane Proudfoot and B. Jack Copeland, University of Canterbury

Software Immortals—Science or Faith?

The 20th century futurist Julian Huxley called for a new religion, allied with science, to replace the (he said) ‘progressively less and less tenable’ hypothesis of a supernatural god or spirit. 21st century technological futurists have in effect answered Huxley’s call. They predict a post-Singularity future that is remarkably similar to the post-salvation (or post-spiritual liberation) life promised by major world religions: a software-based existence that is ‘immortal’, ‘truly meaningful’, and ‘blissful’. Modern physics and computer science, they claim, can give us ‘transcendence’, ‘resurrection’, ‘souls’, ‘spirit’, ‘heaven’, and even ‘God’. Proponents of the Singularity hypothesis claim that their predictions are very different from those of (what Kurzweil calls) ‘traditional’ religions. Futurists are materialists (they have no time for ‘ornate dualism’ or souls composed of a ‘ghostly substance’), and their forecasts are based on science rather than faith. Yet, as we shall argue, the Singularity hypothesis fares little better than established religions in answering the philosophical challenges that arise for afterlife beliefs.

There will be no singularity (extended abstract)

The following is an synopsis of an extended abstract provided by the author. 

Theodore Modis, Growth Dynamics

There Will Be No Singularity 

Many arguments can be made against the possibility of a Singularity around mid-21st century and I make them in my critique of Kurzweil's book (Modis 2006) and more extensively in a dedicated chapter in the upcoming Springer-commissioned volume. But let me present here the simplest and most fundamental one.

Every exponential curve that represents a real growth process constitutes part of some logistic curve (S-curve). The "knee" of an exponential curve defined as "the stage at which the pattern begins to appear explosive" is bound between an upper and a lower limit. The upper limit is around 13% penetration toward the S-curve’s ceiling because at that point the S-curve and the corresponding exponential differ by 15% which is difficult to overlook.