I think the significance of Vinter's announcement is that he is trying to make
what is basically a hello world type of organism--the most basic type of
program that can be run with the legacy genetic operating system. It will
allow people to do what if type scenarios without all the complexity involved
with using currently existing evolved organisms. It means that genetics is
going from a science phase to an engineering phase attempting to use reusable
components. Now all we need is something like the Multisim program (formerly
Electronics Workbench) used in the electronics industry
http://www.ni.com/multisim/whatis.htm for genetic engineering to make building
synthetic life forms extremely easy.
Also, as far as scientists believing in the singularity goes, I think the way
science works forces most scientists to be extremely conservative with what
they say because if the powers that be decide they are too fringe in their
thinking they can be lose credibility which is the same as losing funding.
Unfortunately I think the powers that be are not all that imaginative for the
most part and many scientists will continue to be quiet until the singularity
is a generally accepted posibility with them. I do think a lot of scientists
probably do believe it is possible though and that makes it more likely to
happen since that means more of them will be working on it or thinking about it
even if they are quiet right now. The trick to getting more scientists to talk
about it openly is for the scientists who are fairly immune to being considered
too fringe (the nobel prize winners, etc.) to be brought onboard and, once they
start saying its possible, it will cause a cascade
effect. I think this is already happening so I expect the singularity concept
to become accepted more and more in the next few years similar to the way the
nanotechnology idea went from fringe to politically and scientifically accepted.
Scott
Joshua Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 18:01:20 +0200
From: "Joshua Fox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: singularity@v2.listbox.com
Subject: [singularity] Venter
Could one of you fine folk explain the significance of Venter's recent
announcement
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/oct/06/genetics.climatechange
They didn't build a genome from raw non-biological molecules. They used
biological systems as building blocks. Does this work qualify as a truly major
step?
Also, Venter's somewhat garbled Wikipedia entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter#Mycoplasma_laboratorium suggests that
he is "Singularity aware." He appeared at a talk with Kurzweil
http://www.milkeninstitute.org/events/events.taf?EvID=456&EventID=GC05&cat=allconf&function=show&level1=program&level2=agenda
. Can we surmise that many leading scientists who are not in AI and who are
not known as Transhumanists in fact believe in the likelihood of a Singularity.
If so, how do we draw them out from mere scientific belief to helping bring a
positive Singularity?
Joshua
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