

Singularly Stupid - bdfh42
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/02/04/singularly-stupid/

======
mkn
"Philip Greenspun Writes About the Singularity," or, "How to Do It Wrong!"

 _What would you call people who pay $25,000 for a nine-week course of study
with a collection of Silicon Valley optimists? “Singularly Stupid”?_

Name calling. This can in no way contribute to any discussion where
understanding is the goal. Arguably, it follows that the rest of the essay is
not intended to help people's understanding.

 _The idea of the singularity is that technology, especially in the form of
artifically intelligent robots, will solve all of our problems and
technological advance will speed up exponentially starting roughly around the
year 2030._

The point is that the rate of advances in nearly all fields _is_ exponential.
Doubly exponential, in fact. That is, the exponent is growing at an
exponential rate. And it's not that all of our problems will be solved, it's
that the advances will be so dramatic that rules derived from how things are
now--this side of the singularity--are useless for understanding what happens
after the singularity.

 _So far technology innovation hasn’t outstripped Malthusian human population
growth. We can grow more food more efficiently, but the number of human mouths
to feed has grown just about as fast, so that we struggle to feed everyone. A
lot of what we’ve done over the past few hundred years has come at the cost of
using up the Earth, e.g., clearing forest for farmland or digging up coal and
oil and lighting it on fire, taking all of the Cod out of the North Atlantic._

One of the most blatant straw men I've seen in a long time. First,
technological innovation hasn't outstripped Malthusian population growth
because technological innovation _is the cause of it!_ Frankly, there are a
lot of sad things about having 6 billion people on earth, but I think that
about 6 billion of them would vote against programs that say, reduced the food
supply.

Second, this ignores the amount of stuff we are able to get out of a unit of
matter taken from the environment, and the amount of pollution produced by a
unit measure of production, and the amount of dispersal for a given amount of
pollution. In short, it categorically ignores any good that can have come from
technology.

 _Far from freeing us from cleaning the house, Artificial Intelligence thus
far has failed to live up to promises made by professors seeking research
funding in 1960 (that reminds me I need to do laundry!)._

It's probable that this fallacy has a proper name, but I've always called it
Ascription of Intent. And I'm talking about the first implicit fallacy, which
is an assertion that professors lied about AI for the sole reason of obtaining
funding. The other fallacy is an ad hominem attack, namely that because
professors were (allegedly) lying to get funding, AI is
[useless|stupid|malevolent|a bad thing].

 _Given the track record of tech as a mixed blessing and as a slower agent for
change than predicted, do young people need to prepare for 2030? Can they
prepare by listening to Ray Kurzweil, or anyone else born in 1948? Should they
fork over $25,000 for nine weeks or simply watch old Jetsons episodes?_

It's coming thick and fast, now. Technology is a slower agent of change than
predicted? Really? Who's predictions? I remember a prediction about computers
someday being smaller than a rhinoceros, and another about how every town will
have one telephone. Even 20 years ago, did anyone imagine that a global
computer network would be so pervasive that even logically fallacious essays
would be conveyed instantaneously the world over?

Furthermore, his point is specifically and directly addressed by Kurzweil et
al. Actually, not even 'et al.' In 'The Singularity Is Near,' Kurzweil talks
about how even scientists--especially scientists--underestimate the pace of
progress because of their proximity to the drudgery of their own various
specialties. He talks about how the aggregate adds up more quickly than humans
are able to directly sense, and that it takes analysis to get a true picture
of the rate of progress. I think we need to insist that Greenspun at least
obey the principle of charity and put the best representation of his
opponent's argument forward, rather than the worst. (And not just for the sake
of charity, but because that is how collective knowledge--rather than, for
example, an author's personal agenda--would be advanced.)

And what does anyone's birth date have to do with it? He may as well have
comment on the race, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, or eye color
of Singularity advocates.

 _Maybe I will kick off the comments section with a realistic tech innovation
that would change the world in a positive way. My pick: A better battery
(cheaper, lighter, higher power density). That would enable the use of
renewable energy in every kind of portable application, e.g., cars and
airplanes, and also make it much more practical to use wind and solar
generation._

Has he not heard of Lithium-Ion batteries? He's not heard of the Tesla
Roadster? Is he asserting that battery technology is the only factor limiting
the adoption of renewable energy? Power generation density isn't an issue?
High capital costs aren't an issue? Regulatory hurdles aren't an issue? It's
batteries that are going to save us?

The "[s]pecial offer' at the end doesn't even rise to the level where comment
is necessary.

Addendum:

There has been a lot of hand-wringing recently over the direction that HN has
been taking. That this article has made the front page should be taken as food
for thought in this regard. The content of this article didn't even rise to
the level of 'commentary' or 'argument.' It's easy to get off track into name-
calling, non-sequiters, and simple wrong-headedness; this applies to comments
as well as story submissions. I'm not here arguing whether this article should
have been front-paged. I am arguing that, if you care about HN, one of the
things you can do is make sure that your comments do not resemble this article
in vacuity, stupidity, needless over-emotionalism, or fallaciousness.

------
yummyfajitas
Just a nit: Greenspun is wrong about food production technology. Food scarcity
is no longer a problem: we have enough to feed everyone in the world, and make
some of them fat.

Distribution is an issue in some places, but production is a solved problem.

~~~
schmave
Production is solved for now, but our solution (at least in the US, as I
understand it) depends on abundant supplies of fossil fuel and fossil water,
which are not going to be around forever.

So, there is plenty of work to do to see that this problem stays solved.

~~~
Retric
Abundant supplies of fossil fuel's are in use because they are cheep. Zero
technological advances are required to provide a stable food supply for 20
billion people. It's actualy difficut to find the maximum stable food supply
with current technology over the long term.

For example: "there are 1.3 billion cattle in the world today"

Now some of them are a net food source because they feed in areas that humans
can't. But, effectively feeding cows costs the world well over 1 billion
humans worth of food.

Topsoil does not actually get destroyed. Rivers just deposit it as silt which
can be recovered.

etc.

~~~
gravitycop
_feeding cows costs the world well over 1 billion humans worth of food._

RBST can reduce that impact. <http://www.google.com/search?q=rbst+efficiency>

_rbST reduces carbon footprint of dairies

The present study demonstrates that use of rbST markedly improves the
efficiency of milk production and mitigates environmental parameters, ..._

------
menloparkbum
Apologies if this is off topic, but I've learned to associate a harvard.edu
URL in the HN topic with a Philip Greenspun post. I try to avoid his writing,
so if other people at Harvard have interesting things to say, I'm not going to
find it through Hacker News.

The same thing happens with subdomain blogs on github - I can't tell which
blog the post is really coming from. The posts are rarely from GitHub, the
company.

Is the reason the domain is used rather than the entire URL for aesthetic
reasons? The short domain looks better. However, I have an internal filter of
what I do and don't want to click on and seeing the entire URL helps.

------
randallsquared
"So far technology innovation hasn’t outstripped Malthusian human population
growth."

Er, yes, it has. There's more food/person on the planet now than when Malthus
wrote.

------
makaimc
I have to disagree with Dr. Greenspun here. Despite the Singularity topic's
lack of immediate value some people are still be interested in studying with
some of the most famous futurists in the world. Many people (myself included)
enjoy learning for the challenge of thinking in new ways and this program at
least promises that opportunity.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Did you miss the part about the $25,000? Best as I can tell from the TED
website, that's the admission to twelve TED conferences. Or two to three years
of state university tuition (depending on your home state). Or a very very
large book collection. Or one hell of a lot of plane tickets to see the
lectures that every "famous futurist" gives for _free_ , or for a relatively
modest conference fee, multiple times per year. (If they didn't give public
talks all the time these people wouldn't be famous futurists! And I assure you
that the more obscure futurists, toiling away in academia, are almost
certainly available to chat with you at a personal one-on-one lunch for a lot
less than $25,000, or even $2000.)

But, you know, one of the side effects of population growth is that there's
now _more_ than one sucker born every minute.

UPDATE: Someone else in the thread says TED costs $6000 for four days. So,
only _four_ TED conferences. Or something. If you have to ask you probably
can't afford it. ;)

~~~
makaimc
Whether or not the program is worth $25,000 is up to the market to decide, not
just you. Basing the value of a program by arbitrarily declaring "that's just
too much money for me!" does not address whether or not the program ultimately
offers enough value to the actual students. That question will be resolved in
time.

~~~
sethg
If I walk by a roulette wheel and I see someone put $10,000 on black, I deduce
that the person who laid down that money is an idiot. I realize that one can
make sophisticated arguments about "risk preference" and the idea that the
market sets a price for everything and so on, but at a certain point you just
have to say that the emperor has no clothes.

------
KaiP
I'm tired of hearing about a better battery. Yes it would be useful and
lucrative, but it's a very hard problem that has been worked on by lots of
people for a long time.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I think that's the point of this example. If technology is improving at an
exponentially accelerating rate, how come we have all these technologies
sitting around that aren't improving at all, despite lots and lots of effort?

Sterling makes a similar point in his hilarious deconstruction of the
Singularity, which IMHO is required listening for students of this topic:

[http://media.longnow.org/seminars/salt-0200406-sterling/salt...](http://media.longnow.org/seminars/salt-0200406-sterling/salt-0200406-sterling.mp3)

He points out that Singularitarians go on and on about the spectacular
technology improvements in data networks, but manage to ignore all the other
networks -- plumbing, railroads, highways -- that are much more important to
our lives but which haven't changed technologically since the 1950s or before.

~~~
jodrellblank
On the radio recently, I heard that Spain is improving its rail infrastructure
so that all cities will be within four hours of train travel from Madrid in
the next five years - that's 2014.

That made me realize that if Kurzweil's extrapolations towards a singularity
are roughly right, the imminent-singularity± world will look a lot like the
world looks now. Roads will be much the same, people wont have their houses
rebuilt, office buildings will be similar. It will be all the technology
inside that's different.

If you've read Vernor Vinge's latest novel, Rainbow's End, that feels like a
fairly convincing future. Mostly augmented reality, fewer user serviceable
parts, and improved medical technology.

± _imminent-singularity_ implies a sharp switch. That's not how I think of it
- it's more a series of concentric circles - singularity event horizons,
future-shock waves emanating back into the past - that we are already in, and
have always been in, where each one marks a point where enough quantitative
change has happened to make a qualitative change that would be difficult to
predict from before the change. The imminent-singularity refers to the fact
that they are getting closer together, and as more of them happen in less
time, the cumulative effects are that much stronger and faster, leading to a
techno-sonic-boom.

The key changes to hurry along "the singularity" are changes to hurry along
new and better kinds of thought. As Alan Kay(?) said, computers are tools for
thinking, so I think it's right to look at computing/IT for the changes with
the most impact.

Significant AI work will, I think, be software based, or biological designed
with software. Significant nanotechnology design will be done with lots of aid
from computers. Significant collaborative work will be done with the help of
future telecoms infrastructure. Significant sharing and spreading of ideas
will be telecoms related.

Plumbing, railroads, highways ... A new kind of collaborative shower? Trains
that run even if there are leaves on the line? What kind of technological
change do you think would make major differences? I think something along the
lines of personal communications tech would make the most difference, e.g.:

\- An open API for all train and bus timetables and up to date changes.
Imagine being in an unfamiliar city, opening Google maps. It finds your
location, you click where you want to go, it finds a bus/underground route for
you, next few buses, option to buy a ticket.

\- Local area networking such that you walk into an airport, your phone knows
which flight you need so arrows appear on it and show you where to go in the
airport. Over here, down there, to this checkin, then to that lounge.

The technological changes that I think will make a difference are in people
and bureaucracy and communication, not in roads and rail themselves.

~~~
gravitycop
_\- An open API for all train and bus timetables and up to date changes.
Imagine being in an unfamiliar city, opening Google maps. It finds your
location, you click where you want to go, it finds a bus/underground route for
you, next few buses, option to buy a ticket._

Why not simply take a taxi cab?

~~~
jodrellblank
Because that wouldn't illustrate my point to the previous poster that
improvements for road/rail will be to do with people and information, not so
much cars or trains directly. :)

Why not use public transport?

\- Because you don't know where it is. Enter technology to point you to a
bus/train station. Enter GPS on your phone to guide you to it.

\- Because you don't know which route / bus / train to take. Enter an open
transit information system so your phone can tell you, on the fly.

\- Because you don't know if this is the right bus/train to get on. Enter QR
codes on the side of the bus so your phone can confirm it for you.

\- Because you don't know which stop to get off at. Enter GPS on your phone to
tell you.

\- Because you don't know which ticket to get or if you have the right change.
Enter your mobile and your phonebill or other integrated low-hassle small-
quantity payment service.

------
redorb
I'm pretty sure the $25k is for those who Google and/or other sponsors don't
give a scholarship to. Its a nice way of saying if we haven't invited you, you
can come; but BYOB (bring your own bank)

------
biohacker42
I feel like the first part of that was a straw man argument.

But the conclusion had one good point.

The problem I have with singularity folks is a matter of putting the horse
before the cart.

Sure it's nice to dream about the world after the singularity, but isn't your
time better spent taking one step after another towards that future?

And doesn't that require taking the first step, which would be something
improving _today's_ technology?

~~~
nazgulnarsil
Most singulatarians I speak with understand that thinking about what life will
be like after the singularity is fundamentally pointless. One of the
definitions of the singularity is the point beyond which extrapolation of
current trends becomes impossible. Most of my discussions with singulatarians
focus on the nature of technological innovation and which of several
possibilities for augmented or artificial intelligence might come first.

~~~
biohacker42
Vis-à-vis the nature of technological innovation:

I have this crazy notion that _more is more_.

In other words, the reason the valley is first in .com and other tech
innovation is because it has the most resources, in terms of people, funding,
etc, working on that.

So the best way to speed up innovation is to do everything you can to get more
people working on innovation.

That could include lobbying, or educating yourself, or teaching, etc.

------
gojomo
Sure, $25,000 is a lot for 9 weeks. But TED, where SU was officially
announced, costs $6,000 for 4 days.

Also, maybe they'll use exponential progress to halve their fees every year.
It'll cost under $1000 in 5 years, and under $1 in 15!

~~~
patio11
Harvard tuition in 1993: $23,514

Harvard tuition in 2008: $45,620

Harvard tuition in 2023: Potentially, under $1. But I'm not betting on it.

sources:

<http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/budget/factbook/00-01/page23.html>

<http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/cost.htm>

------
larryfreeman
I think a day of brilliant optimism would be a real treat. Optimism without
brilliance may be a bit much. But brilliance especially with optimism added
sounds great.

