[6ren]

It's as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad. http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/douglas-r-hof...

I see what DRF means, and The Singularity is Near did seem mostly a perfunctory literature review, with important issues not discussed, just skimmed over. (For example, he doesn't discussed the causes of accelerating returns, doesn't support the causes with data, only the effects. Another example: is it necessarily true that we are intelligent enough to understand ourselves? We're effective when we can something decompose hierarchically into simpler concepts... but what if there isn't such a decomposition of intelligence? i.e. the simplest decomposition is too complex for us to grasp. Hofstadner asks if a giraffe is intelligent enough to understand itself.)

But I thought he supported his basic thesis, that progress is accelerating, compellingly. Really did a great job (seems to be the result of ongoing criticism, and him finding ways to refute it).

[backprojection]

>For example, he doesn't discussed the causes of accelerating returns, doesn't support the causes with data, only the effects.

I agree with this. It seems to be a huge hole in the entire discussion. It's not enough to cite historical data, and assert that exponential growth will continue indefinitely. I could speculate a bit about some explanations. But I'm curious if there are any good discussions out there, does anyone have some recommendations?

[slacka]

I also found it annoying that in all his examples of exponential growth biological system he conveniently left out where the populations crash after reaching an environmental limit. I think it's just as likely that technology will send us back into the stone age with nukes or bio-weapons as it is we merge with AI.

[rpm4321]

DRH?

[eksabajt]

Douglas Richard Hofstadter

[rpm4321]

I know. He has DRF, so I was just letting him know about a confusing typo.