The Law of Accelerating Returns

[Mythos]

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/a...ml?printable=1

Very long article but worth the read. I would like the opinion of those brave enough to read it through. Have we managed to overcome the "law" of diminishing returns? Will we see a singurality in the next 30 years? Is this article true?

[Gary88]

it makes assumptions. that growth in tech is exponential...how do you explain the mediaeval/dark ages? chip powers are increasing greatly but there is a limit for various reasons until we get quantum computing. many of the things in it are debatable. i doubt any such singualrity but then what do i know.

[Cataclysm]

Singularity sounds scary. I dont like it one bit, no siree...

[ajm317]

I find it amusing that he uses his calculation to argue we are the only intelligent life in the universe.

I find it far more likely his assumptions are wrong.

His fundamental assumption that technological advancement is exponential is, I think, misguided. It is certaintly true now, and may have been true up until now, but I doubt it is going to be true forever. As any scientist knows, a model can only predict so much and then it fails. There are "regimes" in which your model works. Relativity works in the regime where you are not very small for example. Currently we are in a regime where our growth is exponential. Will it be so forever? I would argue that the fact we have not seen intelligent life from elsewhere is proof it will not.

Up until now whenever we've hit a brick wall in technology we've had, as he puts it, a "paradigm shift" to allow us to continue. I see no gaurantee this will continue. Furthermore, it is not always true. He has cherry picked examples.

Take Physics for example. First there was Newton, then steady progress untill the 19th century then progress petered out. Then a paradigm shift: Quantum Mechanics, relativity, great advancement through the 60's. And since then? There's been great progress in condensed matter, but not towards the physics of everything. We're still waiting on the next paradigm shift. And what if it comes? To hear the string theorists talk, after the next paradigm shift we maybe done! No more physics. All finished, got it figured out.

I suspect this will be the tale elsewhere. Right now, exponential growth in computing. Later? Maybe quantum computing? Then what? Where do you go from there? Will there be more? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe after we build the best quantum computer, nothing better for a thousand years.

Again, I find it laughable to suggest we are "in the lead" as a species as he does, so I have no other recourse but to suggest that the exponential regime we are in will one day end.

[Simetrical]

Heh, I only had to look at the URL. Ray Kurzweil strikes again! I think he has a point about a technological singularity. Biotech is the next big thing, and massive progress in neurology would potentially end the human mind as we know it, allowing us to achieve undreamed-of heights. I suspect that will come in my lifetime, although no one can be sure. Strong AI I'm less certain of, given the modest progress that seems to be occurring in that field, but either way I think the coming century will probably be more revolutionary than any past century by far.

Take Physics for example. First there was Newton, then steady progress untill the 19th century then progress petered out.

Er, physics research petered out in the 19th century? Angstrom, Becquerel, Biot, Curie, Doppler, Foucalt, Fresnel, Gauss, Hamilton, Heaviside, Henry, Hertz, Joule, Kirchhoff, Lorenz, Maxwell, Michelson, Ohm, Savart, van der Waals, and Weber are all names that should be familiar to students of physics. All did most of their work in the 19th century (okay, probably a couple didn't, I was going by birth/death). The entire theory of electromagnetism was founded then, and thermodynamics was first really laid out. It was one of the more impressive centuries in the history of physics, and although it can't rank with Newton, you can easily make a case for it being more important than the 20th century (electromagnetic induction anyone?).

[ajm317]

I should have clarified. Physics petered out at the END of the 19th century, and not for very long. Also, petered out is a strong term, progress in physics never STOPPED but it slowed for a while. At one point in the late 19th century a famous physicist remarked that aside from some unresolved questions in thermodynamics physics was done. This happened precisely BECAUSE of all those successes you described. They were SO successful, people thought they had it all figured out.

Then a couple people came along and pointed out by experiment and theory that classical physics couldn't possibly be all there was (Planck, the Michelson-Morley experiment) and relativity and quantum mechanics popped up.