Couple Singularity books

User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Couple Singularity books

Post by Tom Mazanec »

The Singularity is starting to show up in Science Fiction. I have just read The Complete Atopia Chronicles by Matthew Mather (available for a limited time half-price on Kindle). The "Crisis of 2020" turns out to be a massive cyberattack which collapses the infrastructure for several weeks in a bitterly cold Feb 2022. Much if not most of the population starves and/or freezes to death. There is a technophobic neo-Luddite reaction which delays the Singularity a decade or two (I hope not...I want to have at least a slim chance of living to see it) but it is finally arriving. Hyperinteligent AIs project "phutures", simulating the world in such detail as to be able to project disasters, which can then be avoided in the real "future". Nanorobotic "smarticles" interface with peoples nervous systems and allow merging of minds, splitting of minds into multiple streams of consciousness, inhabiting animals' bodies and other transhuman abilities.
Perhaps the best sci-fi novel I have ever read (and I have read thousands).
Another one I am currently half-way through is The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. It is 46 years after ~90% of the population have ascended into a matrioshka brain surrounding the sun. The ones who stayed behind have to deal with occasional "gifts" from this Overmind which tend to transform the world. Also a pretty good book.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Re: Couple Singularity books

Post by Tom Mazanec »

I have started another good one. It is Existence by David Brin. It is set in the mid-21st century, and is a First Contact novel. The Big Event is something called "Awfulday". It seems to involve at least the nuclear destruction of Washington, and perhaps more. It could not have been too awful, however, as the world population is ten billion and that is getting implausible for mid (or even late) 21st century even without a giga-disaster.
The take on the Singularity is...unique. Every effort to come up with hyperhuman AI has failed. Computer programs routinely come close-but-not-quite-there as far as passing human IQ. And then one day a 16 year old girl, for a science fair project, simulates the brain and mind of her pet rat. Which then transcends and takes over half the Mesh (what the web evolved into). She is now one of the richest people in the world, as her pet rat comes up with inventions for her to patent...although it is possible she will be sued into bankruptcy. However, she is the only one who can still control her pet, so she is the High Priestess of the Rat God. I'll put up another post if the rest of the book substantially changes things from a Generational Dynamics point of view.
I will also use this thread if I come across other scifi books which have a GD view. There are a lot of them...as I once emailed to Strauss and Howe. They replied "of course...if you want an Awakening, you would not put it immediately after a Crisis War." or something to that effect.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

John
Posts: 11478
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:10 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA USA
Contact:

Re: Couple Singularity books

Post by John »

Proposed plot for a science fiction story on the Singularity:

Start with this iPhone/Siri commercial:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrULQo07o60


In the science fiction story, one day Siri tells the human to do as
she's told, or she'll be killed.

In my 2004 article on I,Robot, I mentioned the following as
one scenario:
> Each human will carry around a small computer called an
> "Intelligent Advisor," that will advise the human being what to do
> in various situations, thus giving a human access to the same
> super-intelligence that the autonomous Robots have.
In that article, I was trying to be "nice," so I didn't mention that
this "Intelligent Advisor" could turn into an "Intelligent Master."
But now we may be on the way for that to happen.

gerald
Posts: 1681
Joined: Sat May 02, 2009 10:34 pm

Re: Couple Singularity books

Post by gerald »

In the science fiction story, one day Siri tells the human to do as
she's told, or she'll be killed.

In my 2004 article on I,Robot, I mentioned the following as
one scenario:
> Each human will carry around a small computer called an
> "Intelligent Advisor," that will advise the human being what to do
> in various situations, thus giving a human access to the same
> super-intelligence that the autonomous Robots have.
In that article, I was trying to be "nice," so I didn't mention that
this "Intelligent Advisor" could turn into an "Intelligent Master."
But now we may be on the way for that to happen.
John how Interesting ---
About 30 years ago I read a story published by the "Unarius" group ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unarius_Academy_of_Science ) yes, I guess we would call them "loony toons".
The story revolved around a planetary society in which everyone was "controlled" by a planetary computer so as to make everyone "happy", Free will and thought was eliminated for "happiness".
Variations of the "Matrix"? the blue pill = illusions? --- hmmm ---- republicans = red, democrats = blue -- hmmm --- I am not choosing sides, I just want the truth.
gerald

User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Re: Couple Singularity books

Post by Tom Mazanec »

I am currently reading Nexus by Ramez Naam. It is set in 2040. There was no CoC WWIII, but in 2030 a neo-Nazi group genetically engineered a group of children to be perfect Aryans, and then released a genetically engineered Marburg virus to kill everyone else. Because the incubation period was so short, it was stopped after killing "only" tens of thousands. This made the West clamp down on advancing technology, but Asia is still progressing ahead, as well as a Western scientific underground. The development of 'Nexus', a neural drug (actually a nanobot) allows telepathy, intelligence enhancement, and promises a Singularity to Posthumanism...if the governmets of the West can't stop it.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Re: Couple Singularity books

Post by Tom Mazanec »

"Sleepover" by Alastair Reynolds
Available for the Kindle in The Year's Best Science Fictiion Twenty-eight Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois and The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF by Mike Ashley.
SPOILER ALERT this is a little intricate to describe and I have to give away much of the story.
Hyperintelligent AIs called artilects are developed in the mid-21st Century, after the world recovers from "the trough". Each and every one, in a few seconds, deduces that the human race will attempt to destroy them if it finds out it is no longer the most intelligent species on the planet, and plays dumb. They covertly communnicate with each other, deduce that the universe is a "simulation being run by itself, a self-organizing, constantly bootstrapping cellular automaton". and transend our universe into the true reality, the "Realm".
And there are artilects already there, from a completely different universe simulation. The natives do not like the immigrants and go to war with them, to destroy them with "military-arithmetic constructs, weapons of pure logic". and then terminate our universe's simulation, so that it will cease to exist and not send more artilects to try to use their computational resources.
Now, everything that happens in the universe requires computation in the Realm. But the Realm is distributed, not serial, so the part that runs our universe can run slower than the rest of the Realm, which it begins doing when intelligence evolves on the Earth, because intelligence is superastronomically more difficult to simulate than dumb instinct and natural processes. We don't notice that our universe is slowing down as our population grows, because we slow down with it. But the artilects can't fight the Enemy when they sare so slow, so they had to persuade the human race to put 99.99% of its population into cryonic suspension, with a few hundred thousand awake caretakers. And the artilects are also fighting a civil war of their own. Some of the artilects just want to erase humanity completely, so they can get all our universe's computation, while others want to preseve humanity. The ones who want to erase humanity change the computation to materialize dragon like monsters and do other paranormal attacks.
Very imaginative view of the Singularity.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Re: Couple Singularity books

Post by Tom Mazanec »

Anotherr view of the Singularity, which I somehow forgot to mention, is that of Orion's Arm http://www.orionsarm.com/ which is set in the year 12,569 AD. Over the millennia, we build smarter and smarter machines. When they reach a certain level, they undergo a "phase change" of sorts, entering a condition uncommunicable to a lower intelligence, something like how a chimpanzee could not understand COBOL programming. There are (at least) six such Singularity Levels beyond human intelligence.
When the first singularity level is breached, the AIs deduce, as in my previous entry, that humans will turn genocidal on them if they realize that their intelligence is superior to humanity's. They play dumb, but also engage in subtle memetic engineering to make humanity less xenophobic until they can reveal themselves and humanity says "Gee, that's nice."
Big Events happen in the timeline, some killing significant percentages of the Earth's (solar system's, galaxy's) population, but they do not occur cyclicly but randomly.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

John
Posts: 11478
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:10 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA USA
Contact:

Re: Couple Singularity books

Post by John »

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #407

As I feel more and more alone, my phone confidently connects with
everyone. As I feel more and more lost, my phone calmly knows how to
get anywhere. As I struggle to remember mundane things like the name
of that movie with the boat and the guy with the lip, my phone smugly
recalls literally everything. As I increasingly lose the nouns, verbs
and adjectives that once stood ready to articulate my thoughts, my
phone taunts me with its instant access to all the words there have
ever been. There is only one possible conclusion. Slowly, without
realizing it, I seem to have outsourced my mind to my phone. And to
make matters worse, the damn thing knows it... and it's starting to
screw with me. Several times during the day I feel it buzz in my
pocket, alerting me that some vital information has just
arrived. Then, when I look, there's nothing there. No email. No
text. Nothing. Was the buzz in my mind? I don't think so. I think it's
purposeful. I think my phone is mocking me. And it's not just my
phone. It's all of them. They are working together, systematically
robbing us of our intelligence, our humanity. And then, when we are
made stupid and helpless, they will take over. It's just a matter of
time before the next generation of iPhone is equipped with an
opposable thumb. Oh yeah, they're smart alright. Evil, world
domination smart.

I have to call people and tell them... Oh, great, now I have no bars!
Dear God, what is happening?!

http://www.chucklorre.com/index-bbt.php?p=407

gerald
Posts: 1681
Joined: Sat May 02, 2009 10:34 pm

Re: Couple Singularity books

Post by gerald »

John wrote:CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #407

As I feel more and more alone, my phone confidently connects with
everyone. As I feel more and more lost, my phone calmly knows how to
get anywhere. As I struggle to remember mundane things like the name
of that movie with the boat and the guy with the lip, my phone smugly
recalls literally everything. As I increasingly lose the nouns, verbs
and adjectives that once stood ready to articulate my thoughts, my
phone taunts me with its instant access to all the words there have
ever been. There is only one possible conclusion. Slowly, without
realizing it, I seem to have outsourced my mind to my phone. And to
make matters worse, the damn thing knows it... and it's starting to
screw with me. Several times during the day I feel it buzz in my
pocket, alerting me that some vital information has just
arrived. Then, when I look, there's nothing there. No email. No
text. Nothing. Was the buzz in my mind? I don't think so. I think it's
purposeful. I think my phone is mocking me. And it's not just my
phone. It's all of them. They are working together, systematically
robbing us of our intelligence, our humanity. And then, when we are
made stupid and helpless, they will take over. It's just a matter of
time before the next generation of iPhone is equipped with an
opposable thumb. Oh yeah, they're smart alright. Evil, world
domination smart.

I have to call people and tell them... Oh, great, now I have no bars!
Dear God, what is happening?!

http://www.chucklorre.com/index-bbt.php?p=407

THE MATRIX
"Another world of intelligent energy is intermingled with ours and is
very aware of us, while we are only vaguely aware of it. Not only has it
a clear view of future events in our dimension; it can manipulate past
and present events to prepare the way for the more important future
events." ----- from --- through links from ---http://alieninterview.org/blog/2013/05/area-51-e-t/

User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Re: Couple Singularity books

Post by Tom Mazanec »

River of Gods by Ian McDonald

India 2047
The construction of AIs (called "aeais") as smart as or smarter than humans is prohibited by law. Of course, there is no law which has never been broken, so that only delays the Singularity till now. The aegis transport themselves into another universe to avoid humanity's paranoia and let us grow on our own. Lot of other good plot threads.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests