EgoTripper
New Member
I was here awhile back, left for a bit to focus on law school, then forgot the name and email address of my last account! Ah well. Hello again, atheist-raised-by-Catholics here 
This is a fairly long-shot brainstorm I had recently. I thought I'd share!
I just watched Waking Life, a trippy (for lack of a better word) movie about a guy wandering through his dreams and having various conversations with people about obscure philosophies and profound questions. I can't recommend it enough for philosophy-minded people.
One of the people he meets is a chemist who has an awesome take on evolution. He points out that we have taken our evolution into our own hands, and as a result, our evolution (defining "our evolution" as not only our biological development, but also our mental and technological development) has accelerated exponentially. Where once natural selection and social adaptation drove human development, now our own intelligence drives our own development.
He suggests that we're only a few short decades away from learning how to enhance our own intelligence, either through genetic research or through artificial intelligence (or some combination of the two). When that happens, he seems to imply that all Hell will break loose almost instantaneously.
Imagine: A scientist makes himself smarter, and thus better able to make himself even SMARTER, and thus EVEN BETTER able to further increase his intelligence, and so on and so on. It's like a "feedback loop" of snowballing intelligence. As the process begins, the speed of compounding intelligence also accelerates into a runaway, explosive chain reaction.
For example: Maybe it begins as a brain pill. The scientist takes it every day for a month. He's smarter during that month, and with that intelligence he invents a better brain pill. This pill makes him even smarter during the next month, and so is able to create an even better pill. This goes on for maybe a year until, say, he figures out how to upload his mind into a computer. Suddenly, the intelligence amplification is happening in computer time -- millionths of a second. Every iteration sees an increase in intelligence that drives the next iteration, and each lasts mere fractions of a second instead of a month. To us outside, we would see an "almost instantaneous realization of human potential;" the capacity of that recursively-improving man/machine would go infinite almost immediately unless something interrupted the cycle or got in its way -- and given that this being's intelligence is improving exponentially, couldn't that intelligence be applied against any such obstacles in its path?
The chemist in Waking Life stopped there. In the process of collecting the brains that had dribbled out of my ears, though, I kept thinking.
As far as I see, there aren't many assumptions that need to be made to conclude that this is a fairly inevitable course of events, and that it will likely happen soon:
Assumption 1) Someone will, at some point in our future, invent a means to increase human intelligence. We've already got drugs that are on the right track, like medication for ADHD. There have been developments in AI that might also lead us to this "breaking point" of the first technological increase in human intelligence.
Assumption 2) The unstoppable nature of the cycle once it's begun. Once our intelligence learns how to improve itself, then it stands to reason that the next step of improved intelligence will be in an even better position to improve itself, and so on and so on. As I said above, this improved intelligence would be used against any obstacles that might stand in its path.
So what are the consequences? If intelligence truly "goes infinite," then virtually every secret in the known Universe would be unlocked. Time and space, constructs we know to be manipulable in theory, would become lego blocks to this "neo-human." The only thing it wouldn't want to mess with would be its own genesis (i.e. if it wanted to play around with time, it probably wouldn't want to kill the father of the man who invented that first brain pill).
So. Omnipotent, omniscient and possessing a vested interest in ensuring that the events leading up to its own creation go according to plan. Sound familiar? Could we actually be on the verge of creating our own God?
This is a fairly long-shot brainstorm I had recently. I thought I'd share!
I just watched Waking Life, a trippy (for lack of a better word) movie about a guy wandering through his dreams and having various conversations with people about obscure philosophies and profound questions. I can't recommend it enough for philosophy-minded people.
One of the people he meets is a chemist who has an awesome take on evolution. He points out that we have taken our evolution into our own hands, and as a result, our evolution (defining "our evolution" as not only our biological development, but also our mental and technological development) has accelerated exponentially. Where once natural selection and social adaptation drove human development, now our own intelligence drives our own development.
He suggests that we're only a few short decades away from learning how to enhance our own intelligence, either through genetic research or through artificial intelligence (or some combination of the two). When that happens, he seems to imply that all Hell will break loose almost instantaneously.
Imagine: A scientist makes himself smarter, and thus better able to make himself even SMARTER, and thus EVEN BETTER able to further increase his intelligence, and so on and so on. It's like a "feedback loop" of snowballing intelligence. As the process begins, the speed of compounding intelligence also accelerates into a runaway, explosive chain reaction.
For example: Maybe it begins as a brain pill. The scientist takes it every day for a month. He's smarter during that month, and with that intelligence he invents a better brain pill. This pill makes him even smarter during the next month, and so is able to create an even better pill. This goes on for maybe a year until, say, he figures out how to upload his mind into a computer. Suddenly, the intelligence amplification is happening in computer time -- millionths of a second. Every iteration sees an increase in intelligence that drives the next iteration, and each lasts mere fractions of a second instead of a month. To us outside, we would see an "almost instantaneous realization of human potential;" the capacity of that recursively-improving man/machine would go infinite almost immediately unless something interrupted the cycle or got in its way -- and given that this being's intelligence is improving exponentially, couldn't that intelligence be applied against any such obstacles in its path?
The chemist in Waking Life stopped there. In the process of collecting the brains that had dribbled out of my ears, though, I kept thinking.
As far as I see, there aren't many assumptions that need to be made to conclude that this is a fairly inevitable course of events, and that it will likely happen soon:
Assumption 1) Someone will, at some point in our future, invent a means to increase human intelligence. We've already got drugs that are on the right track, like medication for ADHD. There have been developments in AI that might also lead us to this "breaking point" of the first technological increase in human intelligence.
Assumption 2) The unstoppable nature of the cycle once it's begun. Once our intelligence learns how to improve itself, then it stands to reason that the next step of improved intelligence will be in an even better position to improve itself, and so on and so on. As I said above, this improved intelligence would be used against any obstacles that might stand in its path.
So what are the consequences? If intelligence truly "goes infinite," then virtually every secret in the known Universe would be unlocked. Time and space, constructs we know to be manipulable in theory, would become lego blocks to this "neo-human." The only thing it wouldn't want to mess with would be its own genesis (i.e. if it wanted to play around with time, it probably wouldn't want to kill the father of the man who invented that first brain pill).
So. Omnipotent, omniscient and possessing a vested interest in ensuring that the events leading up to its own creation go according to plan. Sound familiar? Could we actually be on the verge of creating our own God?
