I got interested in transhumanism around 1997, began following Kurzweil around the time he published The age of spiritual machines (before he started using the “singularity brand” coined by Vinge and turned into a movement by Eliezer), and have been following Eliezer since 2002-ish, and I agree that there has been much more than normal on the subject in the mainstream media in the last three to six months.
If there was a watershed moment, I’d suggest Watson winning at Jeopardy, but it appeared to be happening prior to that as well. My guess is that the causality runs partly from SI’s ongoing education and recruitment activities, partly from LW beginning to project a “cultural shadow” (like I’ve met philosophy grad students who are aware that people who are into Bayesian statistics tend to also be into the Many Worlds hypothesis but don’t understand how or why these hang together) and partly because of paid PR efforts to promote Kurzweil’s new movie.
I got interested in transhumanism around 1997, began following Kurzweil around the time he published The age of spiritual machines (before he started using the “singularity brand” coined by Vinge and turned into a movement by Eliezer), and have been following Eliezer since 2002-ish, and I agree that there has been much more than normal on the subject in the mainstream media in the last three to six months.
If there was a watershed moment, I’d suggest Watson winning at Jeopardy, but it appeared to be happening prior to that as well. My guess is that the causality runs partly from SI’s ongoing education and recruitment activities, partly from LW beginning to project a “cultural shadow” (like I’ve met philosophy grad students who are aware that people who are into Bayesian statistics tend to also be into the Many Worlds hypothesis but don’t understand how or why these hang together) and partly because of paid PR efforts to promote Kurzweil’s new movie.
Thank you. This helped.