[Dakarʒ]

We're gonna max out in 200 years?

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ 

We're gonna max out in 200 years?

Wouldn't surprise me at all.

[Tiresias]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Look me up in 2207, we'll see who's right and who's wrong. Million quid on it.

You "skip-read" my post.

Originally Posted by Tiresias 

No, no. Human intelligence will be artificially enhanced. Starting with Nootropics (smart drugs), leading into cyborgenic technologies, and the eventual collapse of human-machine intelligence. In the future, human consciousness will be uploaded onto a non-biological substrate with unlimited computational resources (such as, the ability to ingest the information in the Encyclopaedia Britannia faster than you can say: Technological Singularity. )

This will include the ability for multiple intelligent beings to link up and pool their computational resources.

O yes, it's all in Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005).

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Tiresias 

You "skip-read" my post.

No I didn't. I just thought you were talking fantasist crap so didn't bother to reply to it.

[Dakarʒ]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Wouldn't surprise me at all.

Your cynicism towards the human race really is unparalleled, for a Christian.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ 

Your cynicism towards the human race really is unparalleled, for a Christian.

I live in Britain, what do you expect?

It's not cynicism, it's realism.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

I'm pretty sure you could train 26 monkeys to each type a single letter. Add a few monkeys for punctuation.

You're still not going to get Shakespeare.

No, but we can use tiny bits of dumb silicon and other junk to store and process billions of times more information than any human is capable of — including Shakespeare. The idea that any one human needs to contain all the knowledge assumes that our metacognitive ability will never improve past where it is. That could be true, but we've come much further in the past couple of centuries than anyone 250 years ago could have imagined, so I don't think it's a sure thing.

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Let me tell you a story: A couple of years after I'd finished teaching uni, I was visiting one of my former students, who himself was now teaching the subject. A couple of guys from some software company arranged to come in for a demonstration day of some whizz-bang new audio software they'd developed. They ran the demo, informing everyone that what the software did was completely new and did wonderful things which hadn't been done before.
Everyone in the building was excited about the new capabilities and possibilities.
Well... ...at least they were until I pointed out that software b had been doing this very same thing for five years *and* had a GUI.

You taught Bill Gates?

[Dakarʒ]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

I live in Britain, what do you expect?

The light of God to brighten your view on life. No, I'm not being completely sarcastic.

Originally Posted by Doofy 

It's not cynicism, it's realism.

I'd usually agree with the sentiment, but you've take cynicism to another level.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

No, but we can use tiny bits of dumb silicon and other junk to store and process billions of times more information than any human is capable of — including Shakespeare.

But then you're going to run into information overload trying to retrieve the relevant information. The Internet is showing this to be happening already (try Googling for something and you'll get millions of pages of personal opinion dressed up as blogs).

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

The idea that any one human needs to contain all the knowledge assumes that our metacognitive ability will never improve past where it is.

I'm not on about "one human". I'm talking about the whole kit and caboodle. Even specialists will end up having problems, and the old definition will ring true:

Expert: Someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ 

The light of God to brighten your view on life. No, I'm not being completely sarcastic.

My view of life *is* brightened. Just not my view of people. It's my curse for having an IQ above 80 points in a country where you're not allowed an IQ above 60.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

But then you're going to run into information overload trying to retrieve the relevant information. The Internet is showing this to be happening already (try Googling for something and you'll get millions of pages of personal opinion dressed up as blogs).

And a couple hundred years ago, it would have been "Oh, nobody can find and read books in a library fast enough" or "Oh, nobody can write fast enough to do billions of computations in a second." Just because a hurdle exists today doesn't mean we won't invent a way over it.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

And a couple hundred years ago, it would have been "Oh, nobody can find and read books in a library fast enough" or "Oh, nobody can write fast enough to do billions of computations in a second." Just because a hurdle exists today doesn't mean we won't invent a way over it.

OK, but as long as they fix Finder first.

[Tiresias]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

No I didn't. I just thought you were talking fantasist crap so didn't bother to reply to it.

Read the book before you scoff.

The Singularity Is Near - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Which is to say...

Until you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Biographia Literaria (1817)

[bobbytyson]

The problem is not religion, people tend to create when not knowing. they make gods to feel better about death and other problems. We look back on men and women who would scarafice to gods and call them barbarians, but we are still the same species as they where and because of our curiosity and foolishness we want an answer but religion comes in when we dont want to wate for our answer. What im trying to say is its not religious people that are dumb its people that are retarted.

[BadKosh]

My religious OPINION is more valid than yours? Proof?

[Snow-i]

The zombie (thread) apocalypse has started.

[sek929]

A 5 year old thread about religion?

MacNN is back baby!

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by sek929 

A 5 year old thread about religion?

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW!?

[Athens]

Originally Posted by sek929 

A 5 year old thread about religion?

MacNN is back baby!

Now now, fresh new recruits doing what they are supposed to do, searching for topics that already exist before posting a new one

Should be interesting to see how many old ones get revived. I've felt like bumping the Battlestar thread for a while now

[lpkmckenna]

Wow, those names: Saetre, Helmling, Doofy, Tiresias, Chuckit. I do miss most of those guys.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by Tiresias 

I believe in the possibility—one which cannot be proved or disproved—of a God in the Spinozistic sense of a "vast, orchestrating intelligence"; that is, I am agnostic.

You mean, noncommittal.

But how can anyone with a modicum of intelligence bring themselves to say, Such-and-such a god is the only god, and then, for "proof", put forward self-referential appeals to authority ( Ipsedixitism )

Even more curious that someone claiming an augmented intellect would confuse apologetics for "proof-peddling" and in such a socially inept manner.

Those offering "proof" of their faith are using evidence to corroborate doctrine, but no one is suggesting faith itself is proof of anything. Your premise is a straw man. You already accept the possibility of that which cannot be defined by any natural law, who are you to question whether or not others are correct? After all if they are correct, God telling us would be the only suitable proof.

[ironknee]

btw for me, i couldn't see all these old post before....so this is good for me...except the elimination of our signatures

but let's pick this up with proof...either side