h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It seems to me that there are a lot of examples of situations where there is a limit to further progress. I am thinking of how runners keep breaking records, yet it is nearly certain, I think, that there will be a point past which they will not be able to go. More scientifically, is it not the case that the speed of light can be approached, but never exceeded? Or has my habit of getting my science from pop magazines led me astray? Of course, this would posit human intelligence as the absolute that could not be surpassed; if that is the case, Heaven help the Universe! However it MIGHT be possible that no intelligence can create an intelligence beyond its own limits, no? So much of what seems to be superior intelligence in computers is just speed. Maybe we will end up with some kind of weird situation where AI can reach the same limit many times in a nanosecond, but never make the kind of superbreakthrough that puts it on the next level? So we could end up with some intelligence that knew everything we know or could figure out, but that a truly superior intelligence requires an additional dimension that neither we nor our machines could ever intuit or reach: something like a person who never saw being able to imagine color, or a person deaf from birth imagining music.
Further I quibble with the idea of progress as being inevitable. Seems to me the Dark Ages came AFTER the Greek civilization, for example. I am thinking of the gurus who said only last year that the U.S. economy was no longer subject to the old boom and bust cycles - and then along came the Dark Forces of Bush...
Just musing here, in my species-appropriate way...

You're right, it is currently widely believed that the speed of light cannot be exceeded. However, I have a feeling that's just a theory.

Those who try to accomplish superhuman intelligence argue that it's only arrogant to think that the human intelligence is some kind of limit that can't be exceeded. That's just as dumb as if the monkey's would claim, thousands of years ago, that they were the apex of evolution and that it's all downhill from here. We have no way of knowing whether there even ~is~ a theoretical limit to intelligence.

The process of creating a superhuman AI starts with creating a subhuman AI. The key is to make it open-ended by giving it the power to change its own source code. If it can then learn to improve its own intelligence and elevate itself to human intelligence, there's no reason why it couldn't continue, since it has already proven that it can go beyond "its own limits". That's the plan. Most researchers in this field tend to look upon the "additional dimension" concepts as superstitious and unscientific. That's not to say that they're right and you're wrong, of course...

Progress isn't inevitable. For all we know, we might invent nanobots and accidentally turn the Earth and everything on it into a gray goo of nanobots. I wouldn't exactly call that progress.

Hello

One of the things i am fascinated is human emotions, or better said: feelings, very hard to define.

But the point i would like to make is: if we have progress, scientific studies that say ,for example, that this type of light bulb is better that that one; or this new kind of table is better, with better matireals, better leg position (the studies comprove that) and so on,... Why on earth people mantain certain things as an older toaster, or wooden tables?

Nanothecnolodgy is a future that may bring as to the singularity. I believe will be the technolodgy that will bring humanity to the other side, to the side of endless existence, god life if you prefer. But then what? What will there be to do? Create planets, a galaxy, a universe, conquer new dimensions? New earths and solar sistems with new kinds of life forms?

I prefer to say that we will became elements, the singularity is the beggining of a new Big Bang.

Or maybe not. Technology is a tool, and an injured woodcutter can destry it saw and continue to live peacefully in the woods.

Kandarian