[...] Single-player Singularity [...]

[...] He said a little on the subject recently: http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/07/17/single-player-singularity/ [...]

[...] I have mentioned the Branson project A World of My Own before, but now reports are that it is ready for beta. [...]

[...] I have mentioned the Branson project A World of My Own before, but now reports are that it is ready for beta. For those that do not recall, this is essentially a digital distribution venture, but one that adds in sort of an achievement/social networking layer on top of it that is centered on a virtual world. So you  download games, and get stuff for your avatar, which is your overall identity within the system. [...]

Interesting stuff, but speaking from the point of view of someone who’s worked both in software test and in complex reality-modelling software, I’m not convinced this stuff is worth more than a hobbyist’s attention.

I wouldn’t know, honestly. I know Eliezer Yudkowsky (SIAI Fellow) and Bruce Klein (SIAI Director and ImmInst Founder) and Michael Anissimov (Lifeboat Fundraising Director) from IRC, chatted with the SL4 folks, and observed the conversations in which transhumanists, singularitarians, and immortalists are involved. For me, participation was futile…

I know there is a great deal of brainpower behind those discussions, and many of those brains are comfortably attached to people who are quite a bit more than mere “hobbyists.” Heck, just look at the people involved with Lifeboat. (Raph’s on the Futurists Advisory Board.)

I don’t think your valuation is fair, but then, I don’t have a dog in this race. I’m just pointing you to places where you could learn more about the Singularity. Whether it’s worth this or that is beyond what I can tell you.

Read: The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence | SL4

Interesting stuff, but speaking from the point of view of someone who’s worked both in software test and in complex reality-modelling software, I’m not convinced this stuff is worth more than a hobbyist’s attention.

The problem is that only hindsight is 20/20. If we think our computer program is great predictively, the only way we know that is still to compare it to the past, and keep an eye on it in the future. And trust me, even stuff that does a great job of evaluating the past is useless (worse than useless, if you put too much trust in it) when you run into a new trend (or trends) and higher order effects (or effects). If you say, “yes, but what if it can train itself to evaluate its reaction to new trends or higher order effects?” I’d have to say, “How long do you want it to think about which trends and effects to include?”

As you add more and more trends / variables to the predictive model (to say nothing of judging which trends to include), you can suck up effectively an infinite amount of computing power. As some game designers here can tell you, all the interesting questions are NP-complete. We’ve recently “solved” checkers, but I doubt the Davos crowd cares much.

Mutual funds say “past performance does not guarantee future results”. I guess that’s another way of saying, Singularity occured a long time ago.

Is it the pace of advancement, or the fact that people only extrapolate using the trends they know and/or care about?

Read: The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence | SL4

And the ecosystem is a way, like storytelling, to engage a single player. Plus there was that theme about 0 player world simulations.

Oh, no, wasn’t complaining about comments, just remarking that blogging is a multiplayer activity.

Right, before OOP, too, Ola.

[...] pm – Single-player Singularity http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/RaphsWebsite/~3/134611159/http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/07/17/single-player-singularity/How times [...]

In science fiction and futurism there’s this notion called The Singularity; it refers to a moment when the pace of advancement gets so fast that we lose the ability to predict what is going to happen.

Is it the pace of advancement, or the fact that people only extrapolate using the trends they know and/or care about?