Singularity: The Age of Abundance

[video=youtube;8CSNmrunCnA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CSNmrunCnA[/video]

What would happen if we eliminate scarcity? What would happen when we reach immortality? What would happen if we increase our cognitive ability by hundred fold or more?

What would happen when we hit singularity?

How would society look like? Would there even be a society? Would we become eternal roamers going whichever way we will?

Would we become gods?

 

Nobody knows until it happens.

 

Yep. So this thread is meant to speculate.

 

Well I believe human evolution will not be biological but technical. We will implant chips into our brain that gives us access to all information on earth such as any language or complex mathematical problems. We also will develop to replace all organs in the body whenever they wear out.

Whether or not that gives us immortality is unknown but it will give us hundreds of years. Children in the womb will be genetically modified in a number of ways and we will colonize the galaxy with space travel. There will not be one society but many spread all over the place on various planets.

Something like Starfleet is bound to happen. As a Christian I do not think we will ever have godlike powers but we will be able to seed planets. Jesus will come one day but I don't think it will be for millions of years. There will be massive wars and contact with alien species but humans will progress and improve.

Androids will become a part of our life and pollution will go away.

 

We will all become Gods but some Gods will be more equal than others.

 

It might benefit humanity, if we could see a revolution in human nature, as we have been psychologically the same for perhaps tens of thousands of years, which created most of the problems perpetually suffered by humanity.

But as long as we have sociopaths who move upwards creating great wealth for a few, nothing much will change. The elites and the gov't they own will simply create new schemes to max out their wealth, which means the non elites will not see much benefit, other than sparkly new widgets and stuff.

The world will never change, and move towards justice and goodness, until what man is psychologically undergoes a revolution, an evolution. And we are not even on the first step of such a thing.

I like the vision of the movement Zeitgeist, but what we are psychologically will never allow it to happen. This idea of changing society, in hopes it will change human nature has been proven to be an exercise in futility. For with this age old human nature in place, all that happens is that human nature takes such a system and corrupts it so it fails, and comes apart.

All that one needs to see this, is just to look at the history of humanity. And that history is a creation of human nature, the base side of it, which eventually gets in control, as it is like the waves of the ocean eroding the beaches of the world.

 

It would be hard to maintain your existence after hundreds of years. Especially since most people today live for material wealth. What if material wealth didn't matter and you can get anything you want just printed or something. Molecular assembler would prove the material. If you lives for material wealth then what's the point in life then?

Many would probably choose to die eventually. But few would be driven by endless curiosity and progress. Some of the first to die off would probably be the religious as they would likely not embrace this technology.

 

First, nanotechnology and manipulation of atoms will eliminate capitalism.....it won't be Karl Marx or whoever...

it'll be 1000s of near-microscopic robots, taking grass, water, and light...and turning them into milk....just as a cow does.

Ditto wrist-watches, hairbrushes, bacon, silk clothes, sneakers, T-bones, even Lambourghinis and Lear Jets. Basically, everything will be free....as the material would be just "dirt" or even "air"....and the power source would be solar.

That's not some hippie-dippie, "Bernie Sanders" "lib'rul Utopia" pipe-dream....but simple extrapolation of micro-robotic advancements.


THEN....we get to replacing our OWN cells with nano-bots....or cyber-downloading our minds.....and we don't even need material goods at all. We're immortal and beyond human need.

 

I basically agree with that.

 

There's your problem though as a Christian who believes in End Times eschatology......

why would an immortal cyberspace being, capable of generating its own reality, "need" a returned Christ promising them "Heaven"?

 

What does being immortal have to do with it?

Honestly the odds of anyone living for thousands of years without a fatal accident is probably pretty slim. Jesus will come one day and it won't matter how well you are living but that could be tens of millions of years from now. I know each generation of Christians think they are living in the end times but many of us do not believe that.

 

We could have nano machines inside our bodies that repeair all tissue. Or we can just alter our genome. But taking your route, Why stop with just organs? What about your whole body. We might all become machines. And with technology, we might be able to utilize quantum phenomena at a macro level.

 

Well, I figure that an idea of immortality would almost be blasphemous since we can only obtain immortality and enter the kingdom of heaven. But why go into that kingdom if we made this kingdom on earth? What's so special about it? It a perfect place where sickness, disease, and death doesn't exist? A world where scarcity doesn't? Plus in heaven I have to worship someone. So isn't the heaven on earth is better?

I imagine the human race gradually dying off from bordom. Each creating life somewhere to leave behind a legacy. Maybe they will have wars over them?

As far as fatal accident. OK. Your body died. But wait? The whole content of your mind up to the point of your death has been uploaded to a computer somewhere. And that is uploaded to some databank. So you can get your robotic body reprinted or your human body reprinted. Than upload your mind to your new body.

 

But what would Jesus promise such a being?

"Immortality"?...already taken care of.

"eternal joy in Heaven"?....a cyber-space entity could create ANY pleasurable reality they wanted that meets or even surpasses the traditional views of "Heaven."

 

And at least with an "earthly immortal Heaven"....you could end it due to boredom.

"Heaven" you can't....and faced with ENDLESS eons of "Eternity"....Heaven would eventually become "Hell"...a place of eternal boredom and torturous ennui.

 

Right. We live to progress, to learn. To achieve perfection.

But what if you have obtained all those things? What if you learned all there is? Saw all all their is?

Life would become a videogame. A blast of fun at first. But after you have saw everything, maxed you character out, and have done every thing, what the point in continuing to play?

As our mind is fetched from the databank after your body dies, there could even be a program that asks you "Do you wish to continue?"

Maybe we will make our creation and play something akin to Age of Empires(if it was a mmo)

 

Except the very point of the singularity is that it is the point where we can no longer predict the future as technology would develop at an unfathomable speed.

 

Reading Kurzweil's book....or the earlier and more humorous "Great Mambo Chicken"...and projecting current technological trendlines?

It's not ridiculous to claim the "trans-human" humanity in less than 200 years...or even <100 years.

 

You could still die or suffer in a spaceship crash. The neighbor who's wife you slept with could come over and kick your ass. Hardly the kingdom of heaven.

 

How can you die if your mind in the cloud?

And why have a wife if you can live forever? What the sense in reproduction and forming a family?

You yourself have said that babies will likely end up being test tube babies. But even then what's the point in having babies. A population of immortals who have babies would get overcrowded too quickly. Perhaps there will be a law that states that you can only have a baby after you choose to die. You have your kid. Wait around 50 years and die.

But there might not even be a society at this point. We could all just very well scatter across the stars

 

Read the culture series by the late great Iain M Banks .

You'll have your answer in detail.

The answer is communism. People will live in large family groups. Change their gender often. Pursue their hedonistic interests.

How's that sound ?

 

Won't they get bored eventually? I agree that communism will eventually rule. Why work when money doesn't exist due to scarcity not being there?

Humanity could easily grind to a halt at this point, wither, and die off. There won't be any incentive to do anything.

Stagnation is not a pretty thing.

 

Well at least this thread was started in the right section.

I think this conversation proves that religion, or the need for it, is somehow hardwired into humans. They toss aside the old religions, but then quickly adopt new ones that seem to give them the same sort of comfort the old ones did, chiefly, "Yeah! I'll live forever!"

 

Ask Arwen or, better yet, ask Aragon's mother.

 

I've heard about the singularity theory and i find it utter crap. Basically, it says that one day men will reach immortality through the use of computers, and technology will be so great that at some point a super intelligent, omnipotent computer will become the god of the prophecies. Definitely less than awesome.