There are precious few times in our history when the impossible was achieved in an impossibly short amount of time. These moments are as grandiose as they are insightful, the outcome of each initiative gave birth to a completely new paradigm for the Human Race. Three examples would be:
The Manhattan Project: opened the door to the atomic age: Over 600,000 participants
The Moonshot: was the beginning of the Space Age: 400,000 participants worked on just Apollo 11
Large Hardon Collider: The Quantum Age: Over 10,000 scientists and 250,000 workers.
What is required to achieve the impossibly miraculous is an interesting question. More interesting still is why. Why were these particular projects initiated, developed and brought to fruition? How was the enormous cost in blood and treasure rationalized, and did the ends justify the means?
The law of accelerating returns describes the exponential nature of our current evolutionary track. Every twelve months or so, for the past 60 years, processing power doubles in power, representing an exponential growth curve. We are currently on the very cusp of transition, just before that curve hits infinite. This is why it feels like the world is moving faster and faster towards something. This something is the singularity, and our linear brains are not able to conceptualize what happens during or after this moment.
The opportunities and miracles that are almost within our reach will allow us to ditch Darwin and take control of our own evolution. In our lifetime we will see the eradication of disease, radical extension of life and/or the death of dying, direct brain-computer interfaces become ubiquitous, , mind uploading to the internet, designer bodies and babies. Of course the crowning achievement will be when we create advanced, general purpose, artificial intelligence with the ability to recursively self evolve and become millions of times more advanced with each passing day… We will have created God.
THere are of course two sides to everything, and this crescendo of technological enlightenment has a profoundly darker side. It is difficult to imagine a scenario where humanity achieves singularity without significant collateral damage to our species, and that is a best case scenario. The most likely outcome of a prolonged run-up to singularity places these technologies in the hands of the wealthiest and worst among us. Imagine Hitler, Stalin or Barney the Purple Dinosaur being the sole arbitrator of Advanced AI with the ability to create new life forms, weapons and disease.
For this reason we call on scientists of the world to cease building war machines and repurpose your laboratory's to the democratization of information. We call on the people of the world to learn how to stop hating. We call on the leaders of the world to end your petty and scrupulous wars of attrition and conquest, and discover cooperation. We call on the world to come together and create a future where our children will inherit a world built on our common humanity, not our uncommon hate.
We desperately need a new Moonshot, Cern, and Manhattan Project if we are to have a possitive singularity, for anything less is an outcome that leaves me trembling for my son.
The Manhattan Project: opened the door to the atomic age: Over 600,000 participants
The Moonshot: was the beginning of the Space Age: 400,000 participants worked on just Apollo 11
Large Hardon Collider: The Quantum Age: Over 10,000 scientists and 250,000 workers.
What is required to achieve the impossibly miraculous is an interesting question. More interesting still is why. Why were these particular projects initiated, developed and brought to fruition? How was the enormous cost in blood and treasure rationalized, and did the ends justify the means?
The law of accelerating returns describes the exponential nature of our current evolutionary track. Every twelve months or so, for the past 60 years, processing power doubles in power, representing an exponential growth curve. We are currently on the very cusp of transition, just before that curve hits infinite. This is why it feels like the world is moving faster and faster towards something. This something is the singularity, and our linear brains are not able to conceptualize what happens during or after this moment.
The opportunities and miracles that are almost within our reach will allow us to ditch Darwin and take control of our own evolution. In our lifetime we will see the eradication of disease, radical extension of life and/or the death of dying, direct brain-computer interfaces become ubiquitous, , mind uploading to the internet, designer bodies and babies. Of course the crowning achievement will be when we create advanced, general purpose, artificial intelligence with the ability to recursively self evolve and become millions of times more advanced with each passing day… We will have created God.
THere are of course two sides to everything, and this crescendo of technological enlightenment has a profoundly darker side. It is difficult to imagine a scenario where humanity achieves singularity without significant collateral damage to our species, and that is a best case scenario. The most likely outcome of a prolonged run-up to singularity places these technologies in the hands of the wealthiest and worst among us. Imagine Hitler, Stalin or Barney the Purple Dinosaur being the sole arbitrator of Advanced AI with the ability to create new life forms, weapons and disease.
For this reason we call on scientists of the world to cease building war machines and repurpose your laboratory's to the democratization of information. We call on the people of the world to learn how to stop hating. We call on the leaders of the world to end your petty and scrupulous wars of attrition and conquest, and discover cooperation. We call on the world to come together and create a future where our children will inherit a world built on our common humanity, not our uncommon hate.
We desperately need a new Moonshot, Cern, and Manhattan Project if we are to have a possitive singularity, for anything less is an outcome that leaves me trembling for my son.
