[confluence]

Difficult to bring about the singularity without historic levels of technical competency and financial investment. Anything less is simply being contemptuous of the true challenge that must be overcome to achieve even 1/10th of what could be possible. A bunch of lectures, or sci-fi-esque stories really aren't going to do anything to achieve it past the first batch that really opened it up, but they do have an effect on what people care about, and what motivates them, so they aren't totally worthless.

Imagine if scientists approached bringing about the Manhattan Project without also demanding 10% of US GDP for five years, multiple state spanning test sites, absolute discretion, and the work output of hundreds of thousands. Same goes for the Apollo project.

Achieving the promises of the Singularity - whatever that happens to be exactly - is bigger than all of those nation spanning projects combined.

And we will only get there through enormous quantities of technical and organizational blood, sweat and tears spanning decades, and more likely, centuries. The work required is bigger than every research org, every country, and every company, so it looks less like "hard take off" and more like faster plodding.

[skrebbel]

I have the impression that you think the Singularity University is an organization that tries to bring about the Singularity. It's not. It's an organization that yells "Singularity!" and then organizes talks about food delivery startups.

[confluence]

I don't have that impression. I do believe we need a coalition that builds towards the ideals promised. The closest we have is the FANG cohort, but even then in only a few verticals (with some "progress" not being particularly helpful long term), with the rest of the economy improving drastically slower than they should. Science is the same - outside of some fields.

What I am saying is that if we do want to achieve impressive results at a massive scale, it's gonna require everyone to up their respective games by an order of magnitude. Globally we need everything to get better, much faster, period.

[saranaseri]

Well no one can argue with your point that to achieve massive results in a massive scale it requires a big effort from a lot of people. So to your own point Singularity University cannot (and is not claiming) do this with a 10 week program or conferences for that matter. But they are trying to stir a conversation, a brainstorm if you will, towards problems that matter. This is not the singularity. I am talking about bringing 80 graduates together to brainstorm solutions on real problems like poverty, health, energy, education and so forth using technology. A brainstorm like that will have a lot of content which is never pursued while other ideas are. The real science is up to the founders to conduct after the program. Hardly any "real science" can be conducted in a 10 week program. So what is the problem this mission?

Then you argue almost anyone can teach there? What are you basing that on? If you look at their faculty you will find some very impressive faculty members teaching there - some of which are also students from past programmes which speaks to the fact that 1) There are some impressive students in the classes with a lot of industry specific knowledge and 2) Students will come back and teach other students because the cause matters to them and SU is a place they like to be.

The issues around fraud and sexual assaults are obviously real issues but events in the past that the university, like any other, organizations has to deal with and prevent - and which they are dealing with.

I may not agree with everything SU is doing. I have a medical background and am not a "tech person" when it comes down to it, so a lot of the conversations around making humans machines and so forth does not grab my immediate interest. But the conversations, discussions and brainstorming sessions I have participated in at SU were legit, interesting and focused on real problems. The solutions and teams that come out from there will have to put in years and years of work, sweat and tears to create impact, but that is no different from you and me and everyone else trying to launch an impactful company.

I may also not agree entirely with the direction the University is going but every organisation must make their own decisions on their direction. You nor I have the data or insights to understsand why they are changing direction, if we had we may just have come to the same conclusions. I am excited to see where it will take them in the future and hope they will hold on to their goal of creating impact that matters in the world.