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0 pointsbrookst3y ago0 comments

I think you just declared radio, television, the internet, the macaroon, and mobile phones to be singularities.

People generally use the term to mean the point at which progress is automatic, unbounded, and instant. E.g. AIs that can produce smarter AIs themselves, in short order.

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SuoDuanDao3y ago

'step change' sounds less exciting than 'singularity' but in terms of the original definition there's very little distinction.

brookstOP3y ago

Hmm. I see the singularity as a recursive step change; the last step where the average slope becomes vertical.

I’m not a singularity believer (singularitist?); from the perspective of 1000 years ago we’re already at the point of infinite progress in zero time. I think individuals, the culture, and the species adapt to accelerating progress, and I intuit, maybe wrongly, that Gödel‘s theorem means that technology will never become runaway and recursive.

But I think that’s what people mean, more than just a step/paradigm change like the internet.

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