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| 02:27 AM | ||
**The Six Mega-Trajectories of Biological Evolution - Are We Entering the Seventh?** | |
| ~Andariel~ Offer Upgrade  User ID: 1472501  Canada07/18/2011 09:37 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | The Seventh will be induced by humans. Read on. July 18 2011  Milan Cirkovic of the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade, and one of the world's leading authorities on astrobiology and the evolution of galaxies and baryonic dark matter, has outlined along with philosopher Robert Bradbury the six great mega-trajectories of the biological evolution on Earth: 1. From the origin of life to the ”Last Common Ancestor" 2. Prokaryote diversification 3. Unicellular eukaryote diversification 4. Multicellularity 5. Invasion of the land 6. Appearance of intelligence and technology. The authors suggest a "postbiological" seventh mega-trajectory triggered by the emergence of artificial intelligence "at least equivalent to the biologically-evolved one. (Bradbury is the inventor of the matrioshka brain -a hypothetical megastructure, based on the Dyson sphere, of immense computational capacity). In a fascinating discovery that counters a common theory that human evolution has slowed to a crawl or even stopped in modern humans, a recent study examining data from an international genomics project describes the past 40,000 years as a time of supercharged evolutionary change, driven by exponential population growth and cultural shifts. The findings may lead to a very broad rethinking of human evolution, especially in the view that modern culture has essentially relaxed the need for physical genetic changes in humans to improve survival. A team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks estimates that positive selection just in the past 5,000 years alone -dating back to the Stone Age - has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period of human evolution. Many of the new genetic adjustments are occurring around changes in the human diet brought on by the advent of agriculture, and resistance to epidemic diseases that became major killers after the growth of human civilizations. More here [link to www.dailygalaxy.com] Space, the final frontier...or is it? Knowledge is power |
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| Anonymous Coward User ID: 865798 United States07/18/2011 09:57 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than human intelligence. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of technological singularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which the future becomes difficult to understand or predict. Nevertheless, proponents of the singularity typically anticipate such an event to precede an "intelligence explosion", wherein superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds. The term was coined by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes for the singularity. The concept is popularized by futurists like Ray Kurzweil and widely expected by proponents to occur in the early to mid twenty first century. [link to en.wikipedia.org] Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns In his 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines Kurzweil proposed "The Law of Accelerating Returns", according to which the rate of change in a wide variety of evolutionary systems (including but not limited to the growth of technologies) tends to increase exponentially.[6] He gave further focus to this issue in a 2001 essay entitled "The Law of Accelerating Returns"[7] which argued for extending Moore's Law to describe exponential growth of diverse forms of technological progress. Whenever a technology approaches some kind of a barrier, according to Kurzweil, a new technology will be invented to allow us to cross that barrier. He cites numerous past examples of this to substantiate his assertions. He predicts that such paradigm shifts have and will continue to become increasingly common, leading to "technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history." He believes the Law of Accelerating Returns implies that a technological singularity will occur before the end of the 21st century, in 2045. The essay begins: [link to en.wikipedia.org] |
| ~Andariel~ (OP) User ID: 1472501 Canada07/18/2011 10:00 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Ray Kurzweil's Technological Singularity Quoting: SickScentTechnological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than human intelligence. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of technological singularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which the future becomes difficult to understand or predict. Nevertheless, proponents of the singularity typically anticipate such an event to precede an "intelligence explosion", wherein superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds. The term was coined by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes for the singularity. The concept is popularized by futurists like Ray Kurzweil and widely expected by proponents to occur in the early to mid twenty first century. [link to en.wikipedia.org] Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns In his 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines Kurzweil proposed "The Law of Accelerating Returns", according to which the rate of change in a wide variety of evolutionary systems (including but not limited to the growth of technologies) tends to increase exponentially.[6] He gave further focus to this issue in a 2001 essay entitled "The Law of Accelerating Returns"[7] which argued for extending Moore's Law to describe exponential growth of diverse forms of technological progress. Whenever a technology approaches some kind of a barrier, according to Kurzweil, a new technology will be invented to allow us to cross that barrier. He cites numerous past examples of this to substantiate his assertions. He predicts that such paradigm shifts have and will continue to become increasingly common, leading to "technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history." He believes the Law of Accelerating Returns implies that a technological singularity will occur before the end of the 21st century, in 2045. The essay begins: [link to en.wikipedia.org]  Space, the final frontier...or is it? Knowledge is power |
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