NASA and Google To Back New "Singularity University" 294
Slatterz and Keith Kleiner were among several readers to send in word of Singularity University, announced at TED today by Ray Kurzweil. He and X Prize founder Peter Diamandis began talking about creating the school last year, after Diamandis read Kurzweil's 2005 book The Singularity is Near. NASA and Google are both supporting the project, NASA with space and Google with cash. The school aims to foster "disruptive innovation." As envisioned, Singularity U. will sponsor 3-day and 10-day courses for executives year-round, and its main offering will be a single 9-week course of study over the summer for 120 students, each of which will pay $25,000 for the privilege. Announced faculty so far includes Nobel Prize winning physicist George Smoot, NASA Ames chief scientist Stephanie Langhoff, Vint Cerf, and Will Wright, creator of the video games Spore and The Sims.
Doing != Teaching (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think this is going to work because although these people are the top in their fields, it doesn't make them good teachers, which is important if you're paying $25,000 for a 10 day course.
TED conference (Score:4, Insightful)
its main offering will be a single 9-week course of study over the summer for 120 students, each of which will pay $25,000 for the privilege
Well, that should help them get rid of that surplus cash. It's really in the spirit of TED, though. How much are the tickets to get into the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference -- $4k? $6k? It's basically an event where you pay for the privilege of schmoozing with famous people, be they celebrities, scientists, politicians, etc.
Still, some interesting news [apteraforum.com] has come out of the conference (re. Aptera [apteraforum.com]).
Kurzweil's timeline is already falling behind (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Doing != Teaching (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention... what could they possibly do in 10 days except inspire you or perhaps show you some neat things you had not seen before. Hardly worth the large price tag. It's like paying $30k/year for college to get a Liberal Arts degree.
Re:here we go (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you say so? I'm not any kind of fan Kurzweil or his technology singularity [wikipedia.org] concept (I've heard of it, but haven't read any of Kurzweil's writing on the subject), but the idea is absolutely intriguing. Not only that, it's entirely possible he may be right. Ray Kurzweil is a very smart man who has always been at the forefront of technological development.
Re:here we go (Score:5, Insightful)
Sad. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have several (mostly intelligent...) friends who believe this tripe. It's magical thinking for nerds.
Re:Sad. (Score:3, Insightful)
The Singularity is Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe in it (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe we will reach a point when technical progress will create a society completely different from anything we have ever seen, before the mid of this century.
But this does not mean I believe any of the participants in this event has something significant enough to say to make it worth paying $25000 to listen to them.
Re:TED conference (Score:5, Insightful)
Where the hell are grad and post-grad students supposed to dig up $25,000 for a 3 month course?
I'm surprised Google isn't putting up cash for an endowment that will allow the "singularity university" to pick students based on merit instead of means.
Re:here we go (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, no.
A cult is an "extremist" group that broke off of a religion. Thus a "Christian cult" is different from a "Muslim cult." It's more akin to "sect" except that it is typically viewed as heretical by the majority of the religion. For example, a "Christian cult" would be Heavens Gate or (depending on who you ask) even a group such as Mormons of Jehovah's Witnesses. Not being a Muslim, I don't know much about their cults.
Even google agrees. Or rather, wordnet.princeton.edu
Keywords are "unorthodox" and "extremist" which tend to be relative terms based on what IS "orthodox" and "non-extermist" (normal?). So a "Christian cult" is going to be unorthodox, and obviously that orthodoxy isn't going to be defined by, say, a Muslim, or some other religion.
Re:The Singularity is Nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
When it comes to solving problems, nothing beats hard work
The entire purpose of technology is to make the same amount of work achieve greater things, so I fail to see how you think technology is somehow not relevant compared with "hard work".
Re:Doing != Teaching (Score:2, Insightful)
Believe me, some of my lecturers can't teach either. I can still learn from them.
Re:here we go (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't even start.
The difference between a cult and a religion is 100 years.
What about Catholics? are they a cult? How about Lutherans?
All religions fell under the definitions you list at one point in their history.
Cult: A group of people who blindly follow a person or ideology with no verifiable evidence.
Re:25K?! Argh... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the idea is that people with $25K go to Singularity University in order to "learn" how to spend their money on more singularitarian bullshit.
Any place of learning, from high school through community college and up to grad school, is Singularity University. Hint: take math and science classes. I think I'd rather take linear algebra and diff eq. at a community college than pay $25K to hear a blowhard's dream for the future. Hell, if you take a decent statistics class you can outsmart these guys by learning about what's wrong with extrapolating a fitted curve past its support is not valid...
Nowhere (Score:5, Insightful)
A lever makes one man capable of lifting several tons by means of his own strength.
Where is the lever for the mind that makes thousands of brilliant technological advances out of a single man's half-baked brain fart?
Where is the force-multiplier for the mind?
The Singularity is not near (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, the singularity will not happen anywhere soon, because they fail to take the following three points into consideration or appreciate their weight: 1) In the past technologies changed over lifetimes. When you lived the past century, you have seen many new technologies come. Closer to the Singularity, humans are not capable or willing to change so many times. Humans slow it down. 2) Economics. Products are tied to an economic life cycle of cost and win. If all human effort was concentrated, we could have a base on Venus. Or Flying Cars. Instead, we have Windows Vista and low power PC's. 3) Their own egos, fantasies and projections. Fiction at best.
Re:here we go (Score:2, Insightful)
Smart does not equal right.
For it to happen means mankind no longer has imagination, creativity, and individuality.
Quite frankly, I can't imagine the entire human race losing the imagination. It is what allows us to be at the top.
Kurzweil is taken the proposition stated by I. J. Good and is turning it into a religion.
He proposes that 'Moore's law' will apply to all technology and assumes IC development will not change.
Yes, it seems intriguing, but I first read about it in OMNI* in 1983. Vinge wrote it,I believe.
The technology is still 50 years away.
I'll take cold fusion..it's only 5 years away~
*Best magazine ever. Especially when Bova was in charge. Guccione ruined with his damn red pages.
Re:here we go (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank you for posting your own definition. I am actually IN the religious groupings (being part of a religion, that is), and I even cited an outside source... :)
Catholics are not a cult, unless you talk to conservative evangelical Christians. It kinda depends on what dogma/doctrine of the RCC one looks at and how it is interpreted. It can get somewhat complex.
Lutherans are not a cult. Lutherans have basically orthodox teachings.
What one particular religion or sect is considered DOES change. Who said it didn't? What is a sect now may end up becoming more "popular" and the "original" may end up being a "sect." For example, 600 years ago, it was Roman Catholic or nothing, as far as "mainstream" things were considered. And yes, back then if you held to non-RCC you were a "cult" or, in more popular terms, a "heretic." In the present day, that is different, and the RCC is less heretic-happy than it was 600 years ago. Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc., all are "orthodox" Christian denominations. Heavens Gate, Worldwide Church of God (at least when it started), Unitarians, etc., are not.
Who gets to decide what "orthodox" means may change. (note the distinction: who determines what is "commonly accepted" may change, but that is different from saying what is actually true or not changes... in other words, I'm not advocating a post-modern position in epistemology)
Re:here we go (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's not mine. I forgot to give the credit where the credit belongs. It was said by Michael Shermer
Oh, so at what point did the Catholics stop becoming a cult, as per the definitions you listed?
Same for Lutherans.
The term Catholic goes back to abput 105/6. It was meaning Universal...but some how I thinkg the Romans and Jews may have a different take.
This is obvious if you study the time, perios and events that were happening at the time the letter was written.
Of course, you have read the Letter to the Smyrnaeans ? and studied the founding of the church?
To say ANY christian* religion isn't a cult as per the definitions you gave is absurd.
All this brings me to my point:
Either define a moment when something moves from 'cult' to 'religion', or it's just a larger cult.
Stop trying to ahve it both ways.
I specifically mention Christian because that's what we are discussing, I can come up with similar historical examples for most religions.
Re:Nowhere (Score:5, Insightful)
A lever makes one man capable of lifting several tons by means of his own strength.
A library lets me learn many times what I could discern on my own. A computer lets me design things that would otherwise be impossibly complex, or solve impossibly complex formulas. Newer programs can solve problems for me, given only a way to rate solutions.
Where is the lever for the mind that makes thousands of brilliant technological advances out of a single man's half-baked brain fart?
That would be like a "lever" that lets one man lift several tons and arrange them into a skyscraper by just flailing about wildly.
Where is the force-multiplier for the mind?
Libraries, slide rules, computers, the Internet, ... there's lots, as long as your mind is open.
Re:gah! s/two/nine/ (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:here we go (Score:5, Insightful)
We are already extremely dependant on machine and internet connections to keep up the rate today, our dependence and rate of immersion will simply increase along with the rate of progress. I don't really see where the loss of imagination, creativity and individuality comes into play here.
Also, religion usually lacks scientific basis and contains supernatural aspects, it's sortof what makes it a religion, the concept of the singularity may perhaps be a bit naive but it's not a religion. Sure it sounds a bit romantic and head in the clouds to dream of the Time of Change when the world will turn utopian but as a matter of fact we are living in a time of change and extremely rapid progress right at the moment, it's only the utopian part that's missing but the situation is rapidly improving for the average human.
Re:Doing != Teaching (Score:5, Insightful)
The same as with MBAs, pay 30k/year in order to listen the obvious, sometimes from funny teachers... BUT at the end, make commercially interesting relationships.
Re:here we go (Score:5, Insightful)
For it to happen means mankind no longer has imagination, creativity, and individuality.
I don't understand this. None of those are necessarily eliminated by a singularity; if anything they're more likely to become stronger.
Re:Doing != Teaching (Score:2, Insightful)
But even the greatest teacher won't teach very well if they don't know their stuff...
Sometimes the only people who will do are the ones who are the best in their field, and the students just have to make up for the teacher's lack of teaching skill with their own learning skill.
Re:here we go (Score:4, Insightful)
True enough. But pointing that out does not make him or his arguments wrong, either.
To say that creating computers advanced enough to surpass ourselves proves that we have "lost" imagination and creativity is a stretch, to say the least. To me it would seem to prove the contrary.
Whether it will happen or not, and in particular whether Kurzweil's timeline is correct, is another issue; as many have pointed out, futurists love to predict that the most fantastic things will happen right near the end of their lifetimes, so his "live forever" claims may be borne of hope more than reason. But the Moore's law claims don't seem as wild to me, since he is very explicit about noting that it has nothing to do with the particulars of the chips, but about the fact that the total computing power tends to follow the law with only minor divergences as one technology dies out and is replaced by one that scales better.
Personally, I feel the label "religion" is a bit inappropriate whenever log-log plots are a crucial part of the pitch. Feel free to disagree.
Re:here we go (Score:1, Insightful)
Arguing that religions are just larger cults because there's no clear demarcation is like arguing that adults are just larger children because there's no clear demarcation.
Re:here we go (Score:4, Insightful)
Right around the point where they run hospitals, schools and soup kitchens.
Scientologists on the other hand do not appear to do anything at all for the benefit of society or even of those members that are not in the upper reaches of the pyramid scheme - actually I wouldn't even call them a cult, although there are things like Magnificant Meal that are called cults but were also designed and run for financial purposes.
It's time to reach for the dictionary instead of the increasingly popular technique of giving words a meaning that feels good.
Re:The Singularity is not near (Score:3, Insightful)
I made a basic economic example which does not cover the start of it, for the sake of brevity. It's a bit silly to take it literally instead of seeing the bigger scope of it. It doesn't work the way you think it does. There's cost of entrance, investment, increasingly bigger and fewer corps, etc. etc. Wintel lifecycles won over the wild innovation of the 80ties (Amiga and the others died). They had a grip on the market for over a decade despite your romantic views of capitalism. Again, this is just one example, you can apply it to most markets.
Your last point is even sillier considering your 2nd and last points. You don't have much of an argument, do you, except the predictable 1, which my argument refuted. But thanks for bringing it on as a counter-argument. That makes is circular, and more source of entertainment.
Re:The Singularity is Nonsense (Score:1, Insightful)
We already have 6 billion brains working in parallel to try to solve these problems, and they haven't done it.
Those six billion brains are not "working in parallel" anywhere near as efficiently as a network of six billion computer-brains could. Were people able to communicate their thoughts with others as quickly and easily as they can with themselves (e.g., I see in my mind's eye exactly what you see in yours; you experience my memories exactly as I do), human progress would be MUCH faster. So much of our time now is wasted trying (and often failing) to communicate our thoughts with others. To eliminate that bottleneck? Entire fields could be mastered in a matter of weeks instead of years. Books and journals would become obsolete. Heck, a fair argument could be made that the result of such parallelism WOULD BE the singularity!
[insert "Beowulf cluster" joke here]
Another thing is, the majority of those brains aren't working to solve problems any bigger than themselves--they're simply trying to survive. Heck, a fair number of those brains are devoted to stifling or snuffing out other brains. And even those brains that are working to solve big problems often get preoccupied with things like survival, fatigue, reproduction (including child-rearing), competing interests, burn out, etc.; that is, they're not able to work on the same problem 24/7.
Clearly, thought alone cannot solve all problems. Eventually, someone has got to build something. However, a computer with human-level intelligence could surely be hooked up to superhuman sensors and effectors (which already exist) to do that work.
When will that technology be here? Who knows. Far bigger is the concern over what those with access to the technology will do with it. How will we keep would-be despots from plying it to conquer the world? How will we keep misanthropes from using it to destroy humanity just because they think the world will be better off without us?
Personally, I think about the only effective measure for dealing with the singularity would be for one infinitely altruistic person to hide it until it could fortify itself against any discovery or attack, and then, perhaps paradoxically, let it slowly dole out its wisdom over the centuries, giving the world plenty of time to adjust to each new bit of knowledge. The altruist, of course, commits suicide, since he becomes the weak link in the singularity's defense.
Of course, in that case, how do we know the singularity doesn't already exist? Or that it hasn't already existed for thousands of years? [insert religious speculation here]
Re:Doing != Teaching (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:here we go (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, pseudoscience
Bonus counter point to your log-log plot remark: Scientology has 1950s scifi styled lie detectors as a crucial part of their religion. And the Catholic church one time published long treaties on just how many angels could physically dance on the head of a pin, so you see the trappings of science, don't make it science.
Re:Doing != Teaching (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doing != Teaching (Score:2, Insightful)