hello.
I am new to the consept of the Singularity but I am very interested in learning more.

first , I want to apologize my spelling and punctuation I will do my best so please bare with me.



to my understanding the Singularity will be the point where Man and Machine will become one correct?

most of my knowledge on this subject comes from science fiction (Matrix,Termanator,Ghost in the Shell ect) . the best I have seen is Shirow Masamune's work , "Ghost in the Shell" and "Appleseed " are 2 amazing stories about possible post Singularity worlds.

can someone refer me to a website or book that can give me a basic understanding of this Singularity?

It seems the Genral/ religious public Fear this event . I myself belive it will be the greatest step in our evolution If it is done right! how can we prevent Mankind from screwing it up?

AI
correct me if im wrong but the first step to Singularity will be the development of AI .
how close are we to having computers ask "why" "who am I"and/ or "I dont want to Die"?

Please forgive me for sounding so Naive this is an Amazing new Consept for me and i just want to learn more.

thank you.

Hello Event Horizon 32, and welcome to Brainmeta!

Fear not the asking of questions, nor any ridicule that may come your way (unlikely), for the path to knowledge is arduous and long but nevertheless most rewarding!

I know little about the singularity myself; I suppose I should read more about it.
A good start while you await sensible or cynical responses is for you to search Google.
Just use your browser to get to google (just type google in the address space of your browser) and enter singularity as your search term. I just tried it and the very first site offered looks good.

Enjoy yourself among friends and help where you can too!!

Bye for now, Bill.

thank you rhymer.

I took your advice and found this ...


http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Techn...cal_singularity

i am very excited to learn more .

the Singularity typically means the merging of man and machine, but it can also mean a singularity in human consciousness, the moment when human consciousness transcends itself.

Don't forget about black holes.

....and the last ultimate singularity to have occured, prior to the Big Bang.

hehe yes i am aware of the astrophysical Singularity.
at this time my interest are with the Technological Singularity.

from man made fire to Mathmatics,Flight, faster than sound flight, atomic energy to quantum mechanics and string theory ,genetics ect ect. it feels like we are having a Knowledge Renaissance.
unfortunately I have never been to college but with the help of my computer (and the Discovery Channel ) i have been able to learn some amazing things , ponder the cosmos and the very fabric of the universe and i dont think its just me.

I believe that humans in general are more aware . we may not be close to the singularity but it sure feels like we are close to the Event Horizon.

yes, the expansion of thought to an elevated level of 'enlightenment'

....only approximately 300,000 years to go before we collect that electron of information.

That of the singularity.

Also, this topic has been touched upon quite frequently here at mind-brain.com, so do a forum search under singularity as well. Good luck with your intellectual quest.

thanks Don & code buttons.

i look forward to my ongoing quest and this forum is a great base to start .

the net is vast and infinite.

In discussing something like the "consciousness singularity" we should be very careful of the words we use. The predicate of a singularity is that we cannot comprehend it in any way. All we know about it is what it is not, or what it will not be. We can only define it negatively, never positively, since it is a mind-state supposedly so different from our own that we cannot comprehend it.

Even the 'standard' definition falls short of describing it adequately.

The '''Consciousness Singularity''' refers to a hypothetical point of time in the future when human consciousness, at both the personal and species level, experiences an abrupt transition, a phase transition of sorts, into a collective state of transcendence that is conceptually impossible for us to imagine "what it's like" with our current limited cognitive abilities.

To call the state of transcendence a "collective" one is a minor error, but a serious one. A collective comes into being when certain entities are brought together into a conceptual group. All the entities are taken to have some concept in common, which others lack. The basic rule defining a group is exclusionary/inclusionary. Everything that has attribute 'group' is included, whatever is not-group is excluded. What, then, will be excluded from the consciousness singularity? If it is to be a singularity, nothing must be excluded, otherwise it is a duality.

Moreover, something could not go from being a duality to being a singularity, and neither could it happen the other way around. Any singularity is conceptually divisible into parts (the whole would have to composite) and all multiplicities are unifiable into a singularity (the parts necessitate a whole) in the opposite conceptual process. All these words are useless - the true nature of the thing transcends both concepts of unity and multiplicity.

That is why statements like "human consciousness will transcend itself", which try to get around the positive definition by venturing into truism/redundancy/paradox, are so problematic. If human consciousness is transcended, what is doing the transcending? This is a journey of the mind, so human consciousness can only be the transcendent element. What, then, is to be transcended? Surely human consciousness cannot both transcend itself and be transcended by itself?

Logically, consciousness cannot do both of those things. That is why 'transcendence' is a problem - all concepts, even the mere concept of transcendence, have to be transcended. Furthermore, even the 'imperative to transcend' has to be transcended - the multiplicity we are so desperately trying to unify is already unified. Which is why it is better just to shut up and meditate.

Just for the sake of inciting discussion:

What if we have transcended and don't know it? (i.e. even the collective state didn't help us to understand). Then where do we go from there?

I guarantee we have not "transcended," however I also don't think that point in time is far away... and when it happens, I think we will have a way of knowing...