The Church of the Singularity

A new religion has taken hold of the digerati of the world. According to believers in the Singularity, technology is on an ever-accelerating trajectory, with new advances happening in shorter and shorter intervals of time. Within a few more decades, they claim, the world will be changing so quickly that society will not be able to keep up. According to this theory, as soon as we develop a machine that is more intelligent than we are, it will develop even smarter machines, which will develop even smarter machines, which will solve all of our problems and endow us all with godlike powers.

As strange as it sounds, this is an accurate description of the beliefs of Singularity enthusiasts. If this sounds goofy to you, you are certainly not alone. Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier describes it as “the tech world’s new religion.” Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Software (now a part of IBM), describes it as “intelligent design for the IQ 140 people.” I completely agree with them. The Singularity has all of the elements of a religious rapture: If we as a society behave ourselves, there will be one instant at some point in the next few decades that will transform the world and we will live forever in paradise. As Lanier notes, “books on the Singularity are at least as common in computer science departments as books on the rapture are in Christian bookstores.” The Singularity has many prominent adherents, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

If this religion has a high priest, it is futurist Ray Kurzweil. Its bible is Kurzweil’s 2005 tome, The Singularity Is Near. Kurzweil claims that the concept of the Singularity can be extrapolated from current technological trends. He completely rejects the idea that the ideas of the Singularity are motivated by any religious impulse, claiming that this is a veiled criticism to make it seem unscientific. He observes that computers have become much more powerful in recent decades, extrapolates that trend out a few more decades, and concludes that computers will soon leave us in the dust intellectually. He predicts the Singularity will occur around 2045.

Color me skeptical. While Kurzweil is quite right that merely labeling it a religion is insufficient to show that it’s inaccurate, I can see a number of very substantial problems with this belief. First of all, it is not reasonable to extrapolate current computing trends into the distant future. As Kurzweil himself notes, we are nearing the point in time (probably around 2019) when it will be impossible to shrink transistors anymore, and Moore’s Law will come to an end. Kurzweil then assumes (based on absolutely no evidence) that we will continue to double our computing power at approximately the same rate as before, by using three-dimensional computing chips. While this is possible, it is by no means guaranteed. The rapid increase in computing power that we’ve grown to expect could slow dramatically in the 2020s. If this happens, we almost certainly will not have truly intelligent artificial intelligence as soon as Kurzweil predicts.

Second, there is a very large difference between having the raw computing hardware to emulate a human brain, and actually having the software to create a program as complex as the human brain. This is not a minor problem. One rule of computer science is that as computer programs become more complex, it becomes evermore difficult to increase their complexity further. To make a program twice as smart requires drastically more than a twofold increase in the program’s complexity. It could be many, many decades (or longer) before we have any programs able to compete with humans intellectually.

Finally, Kurzweil makes a huge leap of faith by assuming to know the motives of beings more intelligent than we. If we create true artificial intelligence, what is to stop them from killing us all, or worse? Kurzweil claims that this will not happen because we will program them to respect us…but if they are more intelligent than we are, they could easily reprogram themselves if they wanted to. Or even if artificial intelligence is benign and wants nothing but to shower us with free goodies, there is absolutely no reason to think that they would want to create intelligence smarter than themselves, leading to a technological Singularity. Maybe their increased intelligence would allow them to see what Kurzweil apparently cannot: Creating entities smarter than themselves could pose a threat to their continued existence.

I think my previous entries have made clear that I am mostly a technological optimist. I share Ray Kurzweil’s belief that we will overcome many of the problems facing the world in the coming decades, including hunger, extreme poverty, naturally-occurring disease, environmental degradation, and aging. I will even grant that at some point in the future, we will probably create artificial intelligence that is smarter than we are and radically redefine our concept of what a human is. Despite all of this, the concept of a technological Singularity remains a completely irrational idea. It cloaks itself in the language of science and uses elegant graphs of past technological development to rationalize its predictions of future technological development, but ultimately it requires the same leaps of faith that are more characteristic of apocalyptic religious raptures than of science.

Book Review - "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan

Astronomer Carl Sagan’s 1996 book, The Demon-Haunted World is the ultimate guide to critical thinking. Carl Sagan asks, “How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience, New Age thinking, and fundamentalist zealotry…and the testable hypotheses of science?”

Sagan offers a lengthy explanation of how the scientific method works, and how it is demonstrably more successful than any of its pseudoscientific imitators. He teaches the importance of having a skeptical worldview, especially of extraordinary claims. As he stated in Cosmos, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Sagan explains the necessity of Ockham’s Razor – the rule of thumb that people should not assume anything that the evidence does not require them to assume – in critical thought. He systematically exposes the absurdity behind many of the most popular modern-day forms of pseudoscience, including astrology, homeopathy, psychics, alien abductions, Freudian psychoanalysis, doomsday predictions, graphology, and numerology.

While some have criticized the book as being anti-religious, Sagan himself disputed this characterization. He was clearly an agnostic, but had a deep appreciation for the sense of wonder that religion could inspire and recognized that it had much in common with his own appreciation for science. He does take certain religious views to task – such as the ideas of young-earth creationism, faith healing, and divine intervention. However, he notes that although “religions are often the state-protected nurseries of pseudoscience…there is no reason why religions have to play that role.” Sagan was a strong advocate of finding common ground between the religious and scientific communities: a central theme of his novel Contact.

14 years after its original publication, The Demon-Haunted World seems more topical than ever. The applications of critical thinking extend far beyond the realm of science. By being skeptical of unusual claims, we can better gauge the veracity of some of the odd statements we routinely hear from any authority, including our politicians, educators, corporate gurus, and religious leaders. In my opinion, there is no more important skill that our schools should teach students than the process of thinking critically. Unfortunately, most high schools and many universities don’t offer any classes in critical thought, even as electives. Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World can guide us where our schools do not.

The Demon-Haunted World was Sagan's last book before his death in 1996. Although it never reached the same level of popularity as some of his other works such as Cosmos and Contact, I think it is his most important work for the layperson. The Demon-Haunted World has shaped my view of the world more than any other book.

5/5 stars

Inception and the Ethics of Virtual Reality

***SPOILER ALERT***

I watched Inception last weekend - the first movie I've seen in the theater all year. It’s a great movie, and is a great illustration of the simulation hypothesis. Along with movies like The Matrix and Vanilla Sky, it explores the concept of whether our reality may be a simulation, and if there’s any way to tell the difference.

The reason I often blog about the simulation hypothesis is not merely because it’s an interesting philosophical question, although it certainly is. As Inception illustrates, there are some profound ethical dilemmas we will need to face in the future, when we have both the raw computing power and the understanding of our own neurology to escape to convincing, fictitious worlds.

In Inception, Cobb and Mal dream for decades (in dream-time) in a world of their own creation. Mal goes so far as to hide any evidence that she is dreaming, preferring to forget that their world is not real. When we have the technology to create simulated realities, there will almost certainly be people who want to do this. Even today, many people choose to spend a huge portion of their lives escaping into the crude virtual worlds that our technology allows, such as World of Warcraft. As long as this lifestyle is limited to computer geeks, most people will view it as an unhealthy activity. But when simulated worlds become truly convincing, it is probable that many others will want to join in.

How will society view people who want to spend years or decades in a simulation, living a better life than they have in this world? Will people scorn them like drug addicts? Will organized religions extol simulations as a way to have profound spiritual experiences, or will they be fearful of the threat that simulations pose to their monopoly on heaven? Might there be a mass exodus of people from this world, if nearly everyone prefers to live in a simulation? What would be the economic impact if a large portion of the population suddenly decided to stop working and live in a simulation? Will governments simply accept their choice and allow people to sleep the years away, or will they wake them up? Will those who remain behind envy those who have escaped to a better, simulated life? Perhaps we will empathize with them and respect their decision. (EDIT: I realized I used the pronouns “we” and “them” here to describe, respectively, those who remain behind and those who choose to live in a simulations…but honestly I have no idea which camp I would be in.) After all, how would we feel if we suddenly “woke up” to a higher plane of reality today, only to find that our “real” life was much worse than the one we experience in this world? I imagine that many of us would feel cheated out of our lives like Mal did, and be unable to accept the sudden decline in our standard of living. It seems very human to want to live the best life we possibly can. Since most of us wouldn’t want to wake up to a worse world, I think that eventually society will empathize with the dreamers and accept those who wish to remain lost in their subconscious.

This is but one of many new ethical questions we may have to confront by the middle of this century. Near the end of Inception Mal tells Cobb (who knows full well that he is dreaming), “You no longer believe in a single reality. So choose. Choose to be here with me.” Cobb rejects her offer, choosing to live in “actual reality” instead. While I’m pretty sure that the audience of 2010 is expected to applaud his decision, ultimately Mal is right. In a world where convincing simulations are possible, there is really no way to know if one is in a simulation or not. So why not just accept this and let people live in whatever world makes them happy? Could we really pass judgment on those who want to live permanently in a simulation, when we have no idea if we have chosen to do the same? Waking them up could be tantamount to destroying their lives. The audience of 2060 may react very differently to the ending of this movie.

What are your thoughts on the ethics of simulated reality? Do you think it would be more ethical (or practical) to let the dreamers dream, or to wake them up to "reality?"