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The Singularity idea has worried me for years—its a classic religious, — Singularity

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"The Singularity idea has worried me for years—its a classic religious, Christian-style, end-of-the-world concept that appeals to peoples in Western cultures deeply. Its also mostly nonsense...The Singularity concept has all the earmarks of an idea that can lead to cultishness, and passivity. Theres a tremendous amount of hard work to be done, and intellectually masturbating about a supposed Singularity is not going to get us anywhere."
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"Quite aware that the criteria of value in mathematical work are, to some extent, purely aesthetic, he [von Neumann] once expressed an apprehension that the values put on abstract scientific achievement in out present civilization might diminish: "The interests of humanity might change, the present curiosities in science may cease, and entirely different things may occupy the human mind in the future." One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue."
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"If the alternative thats being offered to what physicists now talk about - a big bang, a spontaneous singularity which gave rise to the origin of the universe - if the alternative to that is a divine intelligence, a creator, which would have to have been complicated, statistically improbable, the very kind of thing which scientific theories such as Darwins exists to explain, then immediately we see that however difficult and apparently inadequate the theory of the physicists is, the theory of the theologians - that the first course was a complicated intelligence - is even more difficult to accept."
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"Developments that before were thought might only happen in "a million years" (if ever) will likely happen in the next century. ...I think its fair to call this event a singularity ("the Singularity" for the purposes of this paper). It is a point where our models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move closer and closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs till the notion becomes a commonplace. Yet when it finally happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown."
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"Because we are not in a civilization which believes strongly in oracles or sacred places, we see the full frenzy of those who killed themselves to find the sepulchre of Christ. But being in a civilization which does believe in this dogma of fact for facts sake, we do not see the full frenzy of those who kill themselves to find the North Pole. I am not speaking of a tenable ultimate utility which is true both of the Crusades and the polar explorations. I mean merely that we do see the superficial and aesthetic singularity, the startling quality, about the idea of men crossing a continent with armies to conquer the place where a man died. But we do not see the aesthetic singularity and startling quality of men dying in agonies to find a place where no man can live — a place only interesting because it is supposed to be the meeting-place of some lines that do not exist."
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