Or to put it another way: there is no rational basis for the belief that
Something Big
will happen in 2012, specifically. It is an apocalyptic date from an ancient
calendar
(let's call that an ADFAAC) that happens to coincide with the epoch of the
silicon
revolution on this planet. Well, as I recall, we already had an ADFAAC a few
years
back, and we didn't even have the planes falling out of the sky that the Y2K
people expected. The appeals of 2012ism have nothing to do with common-sense
logic, and yet common-sense logic alone is sufficient to anticipate the
creation
of superhuman artificial intelligence, and therefore some form of
Singularity. So I
think the cognitive baseline, in thinking about the Singularity, is
ironically to think
of it as a *mundane* event - not in the sense of uninteresting, but in the
sense
of worldly. It will be something as real as a paycheck or a car crash or a
tree. Now
maybe there's much more to reality than This Earthly Plane, in which case a
Singularity here presumably has some relationship to the larger scheme of
things.
For example - just to express this idea in a form that people here may be
more inclined
to take seriously - if we're 'living in a simulation', then a Singularity is
potentially
a simulation-breaching event. But let me suggest two guidelines for
discussion
(I would be happy to see them improved upon): 1. The focus has to be on the
nature and meaning of the Singularity within that part of reality with which
we are
already moderately familiar; 2. When discussing the Rest of Reality, one
should
always keep one's premises in sight.
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