There is a subset of the pro-Singularity individuals that is acting in an a very religious fashion. See prior discussion here where ata pointed to the Singularity 2045 Facebook group which includes the text:
To raise awareness of the Singularity, which is expected to occur no later than the year 2045, we must reach out to everyone on the 1st day of every month.
At 20:45 hours (8:45pm) or earlier on the 1st day of each month we will send SINGULARITY MESSAGES to friends or strangers.
Example message:
“Nanobot revolution, AI aware, technological utopia: Singularity2045.”
Year 2045 is our deadline for the Singularity. Heightened awareness will ensure the Singularity happens sooner rather than later. Our goal is to make the Singularity happen by 2045 at the latest.
This isn’t just a small group of random people either. Michael Anissimov and Aubrey de Grey are both administrators.
I would hope this is simply a case of both of these individuals joining any singularity-related FB groups for PR, and the original admin seeing this and granting them admin privileges.
Is there anything more to it than “hmm, we need a date that’s distant enough to not strain plausibility but close enough that most people expect to still be alive”.
Projecting his double exponential growth of computer hardware he gets total computations by computers exceeding computations in human brains (using his estimate) by a factor of a billion around then I think.
It is one of the more common times for the Singularity. Timtyler made a graph a while ago of Singularity claims and I think that the mean was around 2040. I suspect that you’ve hit part of what is going on, as well as general wishful thinking. This SMBC seems relevant.
I was similarly somewhat alarmed by that when I found it, but I think for the most part it’s just onevery(um...) enthusiasticperson. (curiousepic (below) is almost certainly correct about why some non-crazy persons are administrators of the Facebook group.) I’d bet that nobody actually does the monthly 20:45 SINGULARITY MESSAGES thing.
Admin on Facebook isn’t opt-in, it’s more like they clicked “yes” when invited to join the group and then the group creator set them as admins in order to increase the status of his group.
There is a subset of the pro-Singularity individuals that is acting in an a very religious fashion. See prior discussion here where ata pointed to the Singularity 2045 Facebook group which includes the text:
This isn’t just a small group of random people either. Michael Anissimov and Aubrey de Grey are both administrators.
I would hope this is simply a case of both of these individuals joining any singularity-related FB groups for PR, and the original admin seeing this and granting them admin privileges.
Yup.
Does anyone know where the 2045 figure came from?
Is there anything more to it than “hmm, we need a date that’s distant enough to not strain plausibility but close enough that most people expect to still be alive”.
The exact number is Kurzweil’s predicted date from his book “The Singularity is Near.”
Well, I suppose that answer’s the question of why the facebook group uses it.
Any idea why Kurzweil chose it? Was there any kind of quantitative thinking involved?
I’m not accusing anyone, its a question that currently leaves me puzzled, so I’d be interested in seeing if he has any kind of justification.
Projecting his double exponential growth of computer hardware he gets total computations by computers exceeding computations in human brains (using his estimate) by a factor of a billion around then I think.
Thanks, I’ll have to look into it further.
It is one of the more common times for the Singularity. Timtyler made a graph a while ago of Singularity claims and I think that the mean was around 2040. I suspect that you’ve hit part of what is going on, as well as general wishful thinking. This SMBC seems relevant.
I was similarly somewhat alarmed by that when I found it, but I think for the most part it’s just one very (um...) enthusiastic person. (curiousepic (below) is almost certainly correct about why some non-crazy persons are administrators of the Facebook group.) I’d bet that nobody actually does the monthly 20:45 SINGULARITY MESSAGES thing.
This particular failure doesn’t include the further hundreds of people who joined.
Admin on Facebook isn’t opt-in, it’s more like they clicked “yes” when invited to join the group and then the group creator set them as admins in order to increase the status of his group.