Is the Singularity nearer?

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“Human-level” “understanding” is not merely a range from “content generation to reasoning” (which A.I. pioneers misconceive). That is, human understanding is not merely cognitive, because intentionality and identification with preferred value (feeling) are integral to any human conception of interested action.

prospecting gods

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The following is from an email to a well-known scholar of Heidegger’s thinking, which I now realize could be a preface for earlier postings here, given that people face blog listings in reverse chronological order.

Astrobiology is realizing more and more (not less and less) that life begins easily, and our solar system is relatively young. Intelligent life becomes recursively evolutionary because that's what Our post-natural "second-nature" (Nobelist Gerald Edelman) intelligence does; and it has been there (somewhere) for thousands of millennia. Humans became minimally technical 50 millennia ago, technological merely one millennium ago, hyper-tech 0.05 millennium ago, i.e., middle of the last century. Earthly capability a millennium forward is inconceivable. A thousand millennia: a planetary Singularity that became post-biological long ago?

night note

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An accident of nature put Stephen Hawking into a life of perpetual contemplation (given the cottage industry of supports that kept him productive).

High capability for reverie can be a rapturous way of life (if one can afford it).

Perhaps reveries of leading minds in mathematics are anticipating Absolute Others, millions of years of evolution beyond us.

memo to the unresponsive gods

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As You stay silent to We Earthans, I assume You can understand Us—so, me here speaking, writing as one of Us among You, uncomprehending how being among You goes.

Given Your silence, We here can only believe that intelligibility in itself comprehends Itself no better than We’re doing—or evolving to do, as if we’re the first form of life in the region to possibly understand being
a form of life in the region evolving to express intelligibility in Itself.

universe unrevealed

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PBS Nova has finished broadcasting its new 5-episode series titled “Universe Revealed,” which uses superb graphics to convey for a general audience how recent astrophysical strides in revealing the universe through satellite telescopes leave us ultimately facing wondrous mystery. Much of it involves young astrophysicists enthusiastically talking to the camera about recent discoveries—which is really inspiring. It complements the video animations well.

The last word, literally, of the last episode is by young Grant Tremblay, stationed at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics. I was so intrigued by what he said that I sent him an email today, which I’ll share here.

He noted, “We are going to be but a sentence in the Book of the Universe. And so, I think it’s incumbent upon us to write the best possible sentence that we can. I cannot wait for what is to come.”

being in The Dark

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Whatever the shape “our universe” (our?) is—Klein bottle, say?— its expansion isn’t happening in 4-d (space-time). It’s happening in greater dimensionality, which We’ll never know, never comprehend.

The Earthan Being evolves.

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The Internet is an electronic organism. Seeing an animation of its actual evolution (2003 to 2021) astounds me (link upcoming).

Beginning around 2003, the actual structure of the Internet at various days was computed, graphically transposed (for each computation), then merged this year into a time series which shows an electronic organism growing:

the body of Earthan intelligence evolving. (Click “Learn More” to see the animation.)