Em Econ, London Style
Together with the provocative (Skype super-developer) Jaan Tallinn, I’ll speak on em econ next Saturday 2-5pm in London:
In this extended (3 hour) session, Robin Hanson and Jaan Tallinn will revisit and expand the material from their ground-breaking presentations from the Singularity Summit 2012 – presentations that Vernor Vinge, commenting shortly afterwards, described as refutations of the saying that “there is nothing new under the sun”. (more)
Jaan will talk on:
The incredible coincidence that we were born just decades before an imminent technological singularity that threatens to break our model of the evolution of the entire universe.
Added 19Dec: Here slides, bad audio from the talk. Here are slides, audio from my talk at the Oxford AGI-Impacts conference talk a few days before.
Added May ’13: Here is video of my Oxford conference talk.
@f26939f398e5b2e21ea353b06370c426:disqus You say it's a "question" and then go on to defend the position it reflects. one can't have a discussion that way.
Completely disagree. You're inferring a position on me that i do not hold - that it is impossible to predict the future several decades out, in principle. That's not my claim. However, i'm still within my rights to defend another position - i have no reason to believe that the ability to predict the future decades hence is currently within anyone's power.
If i had been around in the mid-1950s and someone in that era said to me they predict a superpower will send men to the Moon and return them to Earth by the end of the next decade, responding "how could you possibly predict that" and denying that anyone has the ability to make that prediction, does not also mean i deny the possibility that that prediction could successfully be made in principle, it simply means i see no evidence that the ability to make a successful prediction of that nature exists.
"Many things have been conceived before they are accomplished."
Vastly less than the number of things conceived that never see the light of day. This reminds me of Jacque Fresco, a man who designs lots of cool, futuristic looking stuff, and then labels what he does 'the future', as if calling something the future would make it come true.
VV:
Amdahl's law, fortunately, does not affect brain simulation as the brain is also a parallel system.
Moore's law is about to plateau, though, likely in fewer than 4 doublings. The past improvements were of decreased cost, as well - photolithography is immensely cheaper per component than discrete elements, discrete transistors are much cheaper than vacuum tubes, vacuum tubes are cheaper than electromechanical relays, etc. But there is no replacement in sight that would be cheaper than photolithography. And that sort of thing doesn't come around overnight.