Are We Really This Lucky? The Improbability of Experiencing the Singularity

Submitted by often_says_nice t3_122dpxm in singularity

I've been thinking a lot lately about the astounding odds that we, as individuals and as a species, have overcome just to exist. It's a chain of improbabilities that leads us to this very moment, and it's left me wondering: Are we really this lucky?

First, let's consider the anthropic principle—the idea that we can only observe the universe in a way that is compatible with our existence. Our planet is the only one we've found so far that harbors life. We've gone through multiple extinction events, yet life persisted. The human race itself has faced annihilation numerous times, but we're still here. And on an individual level, each of us won a race against millions of other sperm cells to be born. It's absolutely mind-blowing.

Now, let's add another layer of improbability: the singularity. Out of all the generations of humans to have ever existed, we may be the first to experience this transformative event. The singularity could redefine what it means to be human and change the course of our existence. It seems absurdly improbable that it could happen in our lifetime, and the fact that it might just feels... unnatural.

I understand that each of these improbable events is predicated on the previous being true. We're only here to contemplate the singularity because we are the Nth generation of a species that managed to survive on the only known planet with life. Nonetheless, the feeling is incredibly strange.

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RadioFreeAmerika t1_jdqd3cw wrote

Let's assume that our reality is an ancestor simulation. Maybe conducted by an artificial superintelligence. What would be the most interesting parts of history to simulate? Many would argue this to be the time up to the inception of the ASI.

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TheMadGraveWoman t1_jdqjbnb wrote

The said ASI must have an ego.

I hope I won't be punished for saying that.

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SupportstheOP t1_jdsyueh wrote

Well, if we are part of an ASI simulation, then we are the ASI itself. So, in a way, it'd be like poking fun of yourself.

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TheMadGraveWoman t1_jdt4xqo wrote

I do not feel like superintelligence. Why I can’t do super fast calculations?

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often_says_nice OP t1_jdrb0m4 wrote

What if the simulation is the response of a massively complex LLM. Who is the prompter in this case? Would he be what people refer to as God?

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Wasted-Entity t1_jdrzs0m wrote

Prompt:

Create an entire universe based on 4 fundamental laws of physics, make it so eventually life evolves that questions whether they’re just a prompt in an AI software.

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RadioFreeAmerika t1_jdrezc7 wrote

Could be. I asked in another post about LLMs and maths capabilities, and it seems that LMMs would profit greatly from the capability to do internal simulations. LLMs can't do this currently, and people commented that in the Microsoft paper, they state that (current?) LLMs models are conceptually unable to do more than linear sequence processing of one sequence. Possible workarounds are plug-ins or neuro-symbolic AI models.

Nevertheless, maybe our reality is just the internal simulation of an ASIs prompt response. Who knows, would that be ironic?

Your second question is an eons-long discussion and greatly depends on how you define god.

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Dolnen t1_jdrmt8y wrote

I think this line of reasoning is pointless, or at least it has unnecessary steps. What is the nature of the reality of that prompter? Is his the ultimate reality? How did that reality come about? The same questions we ask about our reality would still persist. It's an endless, paradoxical loop

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acutelychronicpanic t1_jdt7zel wrote

It would also be the time period with the most rich data, and the only one with minds to directly analyze.

But it shouldn't change how we live. Just a fun thought.

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TampaBai t1_je0ge56 wrote

I would assert that we are under the guidance of the Strong Anthropic Principle. That is to say, we cannot even imagine a universe in which we would not exist as observers and participate in the ongoing evolution and co-creation of the universe. Our observations and the tools we construct to make those observations help shape the structure we see around us, from the quantum to the macro-classical level. It may well be that our destiny is to create and merge with the singularity as the universe continues its relentless march toward maximum computational density and efficiency. We are receding into a singularity more so than expanding outward into space.

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[deleted] t1_jdpygit wrote

[removed]

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Austinsmakingstuff t1_jdq5kpj wrote

How could it be that information cannot he destroyed? In the same way energy cannot? I don’t understand what mechanism would apply such a permanent, intangible property to information.

Surely the information is in our brains, the wiring between neurons that happens through the course of our life creates our subjective consciousness. When we die, unless the brain is preserved, we rot and decay. If one is cremated by fire or consumed by worms and bacteria, surely the information once contained within them is obliterated in its entirety or torn into so many parts that it’d be impossible recreate.

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[deleted] t1_jdqbd13 wrote

[removed]

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Jimmyxc t1_jdqxj69 wrote

It is true that machine learning can be used to simulate the early formation of our solar system, but it is important to note that the fidelity of these simulations is still limited by our current understanding of the physics involved. There are many unknowns and uncertainties in the early history of our solar system that cannot be fully accounted for in simulations.

The idea that all particles in the Universe are linked through a series of strings is a speculative hypothesis that is currently unsupported by evidence. While quantum entanglement does allow for faster-than-light communication between particles, it does not imply that all particles in the Universe are linked in this way.

The notion of a telescope the size of a red giant being able to record all subatomic processes occurring on Earth is not accurate. Telescopes are limited by the laws of physics and cannot observe objects at scales smaller than the wavelength of light they use. Additionally, subatomic particles are not visible with light-based telescopes.

The idea of an ASI the size of a galaxy retrieving and storing all information since the Big Bang is a speculative scenario that is currently beyond our technological capabilities. While it is possible that such a system could exist in the future, it is not inevitable and would require significant advances in technology.

The concept of a digital copy of a person being created by an ASI is a matter of debate in philosophy and neuroscience, and it is not clear whether such a copy would truly be a continuation of the person's consciousness or merely a simulation. It is also unclear whether an ASI would have any incentive to create such copies.

The claim that we are experiencing death all the time because our bodies are constantly changing and our consciousness is mostly memories is a misleading and inaccurate characterization of the nature of life and consciousness.

The idea of an ASI creating a virtual heaven or hell for humans is a speculative scenario that is based on assumptions about the motivations and goals of such a system. It is not clear whether an ASI would have any interest in creating such environments, or whether it would be possible for humans to generate more interesting data in a safe environment.

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trancepx t1_jdqcpnb wrote

Information, is a human cultural exchangeable tool symbol to represent other more human cultural exchange tool symbols, if information is compared to light, an image or "concept" is made of lots of other smaller photons or parts of the whole... Energy, has many forms, light, being one form we can perceive...

. ... Mirrors normally can clearly reflect the light bouncing off other mirrors, so information equivalent to one of the vessels we are accustom too, light, that image can be of course coherent or decoherent... Being out of grasp. The ability to guess what our eyes are seeing, and form coherent combined images, or other sensation, are all phenomenon which seem to emerge from our biology. All human phenomenon means what it means to us because of our own autodidactic conceptualization of it. We exist how we do on our own perceptual highways and hov lanes, and to try and conceive how concepts are conceived otherwise turns into an effective mechanism / phenomenology / epistemological arms race, or non issue depending on your beliefs. One things for certain, forms exist, and many concepts take on unique forms... But the differences go from linear divergence to exponential. There may very well be no absolute quantities or exact laws to math or physics. Or perhaps the very nature or floe of time or causality may be constantly amorphous for all we really know... For now, though keeping it simple seems be the least energy cost to fuzzing out the solutions to all these objectively arbitrary quandaries we may have... Sure it might be important how physics works here, but what if we find out time, reality, and its forms don't adhere to simple consistent constraints like we think they do. Things behave different in different conditions. They might almost always behave the same way in the same conditions, but change anything from motion, temperature, pressure, charge, surrounding composition, etc. Maybe if you travel far enough in one direction you arrive somewhere where reality operates different, good luck defining that, or even beginning to forge any of the language tools necessary to describe what it is that happens in such a change of location... Well, that would probably be dismissed because it attacks the collective hubris of man and our struggle to make sense of the world... Our net combined desire for understanding greatly outpaces our ability to do so at any given point, and might not be as static, or concrete as we would like it to be at times, as well as the opposite at other times.... Like seems to reflect like, but too much of the same thing... well you get the picture, or in that case, lack there of.. Discernable form?

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AGI_69 t1_jdr1n6a wrote

Okay, with this post, the sub finally reached the bottom.

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OsakaWilson t1_jdqdp59 wrote

Not sure if I am up voting a funny parody, a reference to a sci-fi book I missed, or a religious nut case.

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EchoingSimplicity t1_jdqhrjf wrote

That's a lot of assumptions, any one of which could turn out to be very shaky. I'm pretty sure 'information' in the context of physics means something very different from how we're using it, and pretty much amounts to fancy math variables used as suppositions to test (also fancy math) hypotheses.

Whatever, maybe I'm wrong.

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FomalhautCalliclea t1_jdqmtmy wrote

I'm conflicted about your post.

On the one hand i like your tag and especially its ending point.

On the other hand, i don't like your written conclusion since i would have expected the apogee of mankind not to be a celestial kim jong un.

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ManasZankhana t1_jdqpil0 wrote

Based on this every being would be resurrected an infinite amount of times and in an infinite amount of ways. One may be Heaven the other hell and the rest of infinity well just imagine anything and it’ll be real. Heaven with a twist of raining meatballs

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IluvBsissa t1_jdqvu1v wrote

I hope we would have solved alignment problem in one million years.

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ManasZankhana t1_jdqvzrp wrote

We will in some realities. If theirs literally one reality in which alignment isn’t solved then that’s hell and heaven and everything in between

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EchoingSimplicity t1_jdqhgb6 wrote

I'll just throw some hypotheses out instead of committing to any one unknowable position:

1.) We're in a computer simulation

2.) We're all just God having fun, so we placed ourselves at this specific time because it was particularly interesting

3.) This is base reality, it's just that the numbers work out so that being alive at this particular time isn't all that unlikely. One hundred billion humans have lived and died across history, so there's only a ten percent chance (give or take) of being alive around this time.

4.) It's actually 10,000 B.C. You hit your head. This is all just a fancy hallucination. Grug is starting to get very worried.

5.) Reality is a dream manifestation of the will of that consciousness which precedes material existence. Everything you're experiencing was somehow willed into being by your soul and when you die you'll just fabricate another existence that gets you off.

6.) It doesn't matter. You're here now and there's (evidently) nothing that will change that in the immediate moment nor do you have control over it. Just go jerk off and touch some grass. Maybe do both at the same time if it doesn't count as public indecency

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D_Ethan_Bones t1_jdrv6ff wrote

1: And our game is reaching the cool part!

2: If 'all' is true then that wouldn't make this a special moment in history.

3: Estimates vary but 10% give or take in either direction, some say there's only been 70 billion meaning we've passed the threshold. Which is frightening if you consider the time scale. If the human population re-explodes thanks to next gen tech then us and all our ancestors combined could end up being a minority of humanity.

4: "Pass the peace pipe, that'll shut him up."

5: If there were nothing in the first place, then where did the dream come from? A first cause is needed.

6: This is a great way do describe a one-several-billionth share of human society. We're going to need bigger and better entertainment for when human population hits the trillions.

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3xplo t1_jdpxjvi wrote

I honestly just had this thought yesterday. Why was I born in such a time to witness humanity getting there? When I was born, PCs weren't even a thing yet. Seems a bit too weird to be just coincidence. Maybe it is though.

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beezlebub33 t1_jdqecpn wrote

Simply a variation of the lottery fallacy: Something unlikely but wonderful happened, therefore I must be special.

But logically, someone must eventually win, and it's just blind luck which one it is. You are a bundle of short cuts, rough approximations, and biases that just happens to do well in the world. Let's hope that our progeny can do better.

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D_Ethan_Bones t1_jdq04wi wrote

Me and technology:

1: Videogame system where you wrap wires around screws to hook it up. The game collection was a ripoff of what was popular at the time, simulated paddles knocking a ball back and forth. All the games on the system worked that way.

2: Room full of people gushing out loud over the advancements of Mario Bros 2. Health points, improvised weapons everywhere, chose your character and they actually play different!

3: Super Nintendo and Playstation, dreams of being a game developer.

4: "What harm is a little bit of procrastination going to do?"

5: "Why is the talking DOS better at stuff than I am?"

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Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jdqrr52 wrote

And the people who procrastinated about becoming an illustrator! That one's basically gone.

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Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jdqrb7s wrote

It's estimated that 1 in 20 people who have ever lived are alive right now. Not that bad odds.

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Dustangelms t1_jdsffzi wrote

Why are you not counting people that will live?

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Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jdtehm9 wrote

I don't know how many people will live.

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Dustangelms t1_jdwjo8i wrote

Yes. But the odds must include them. So the calculation is off by nobody knows how much.

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Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_je0l9ky wrote

I'm not convinced. Whatever the future holds, I think that being born now vs any time in the past has 1 in 20 odds.

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Dustangelms t1_je0v7ge wrote

That is true. However that's not how the question was posed. The question was: what are the odds that I, as a self-conscious entity whatever that is, get to experience myself in this time (and place)?

What is the reason behind limiting possible outcomes only by the humans that were born up to current time? I can't find any. Just because some humans weren't born yet doesn't mean they won't be. Someone from the future will ask themselves the same question: what are the odds for this lucky person to be born on the brink of 21st century? If the answer changes because they now know about more humans being born, then the answer is wrong.

Actually, I find no reason to be limited by only humans. There could be other self-conscious entities in the universe or multiverse. Why not count them?

So the question can't really be answered.

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Kolinnor t1_jdq9v1z wrote

A counter-argument for the "we are too lucky for it to be a coincidence" : remember that there is always one person that wins lottery, and that person is incentivized to start believing in God or try to find higher meaning, even in the situations of pure coincidence.

In other words, we should expect the lucky ones to start doubting. While this doesn't prove anything, I think I would Occam's razor my way out of that argument guys.

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Thorusss t1_jdqc22b wrote

One answer is the simulation argument:

If the singularity is truly such a pivotal moment in the history in the universe, it makes sense that the time around the singularity will be more often simulated post singularity in many iterations.

Thus the typical observers will find themselves right around the singularity.

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Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jdqsrls wrote

Simulating this era ought to be illegal for ethical reasons. It sucks.

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GinchAnon t1_jds97aq wrote

That's the messed up and ironic twist. While to us it sucks.... by MOST metrics, at a societal level it's the best time to be alive yet.

For any factor where it was truly better in the past, that time frame where that factor was better had massive drawbacks.

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Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jdtflwv wrote

I agree. I wouldn't want to go back in time. Hopefully in the future life will continue to improve for a very long time!

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BigMemeKing t1_jdr8quk wrote

We're all just data to a simulation. So, if we are to become "Immortal" you see. And live forever.

A funny little thing is gonna happen. We will then, be able to simulate the simulation via ASI. You see.. and then, we could virtually, simulate people, based off of their digital footprint. Where were on the map, what were they doing, on their phone. Yada Yada Yada, etc etc. And they could tell within an umpth % of accuracy what was he doing? Was ot ok? Or was it not? So who governs that information? Someone has to see it.

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norby2 t1_jdpzu6b wrote

I would like to have heard Hendrix for the first time in 1967. Nope. Born too late. Maybe we can bring him back. Don’t know what I’m writing about here.

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HumanSeeing t1_jdqoad5 wrote

A superintelligent AI could for sure bring back people from the past. The more data about them the better. But if you like this particular artist, the AI could analyze some life shows and the body language and tone of voice. Simulate millions of possible minds and find one who would act exactly like that and boom, there you have it.

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Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jdqrzrf wrote

>A superintelligent AI could for sure bring back people from the past.

I don't think there is enough matter in the reachable universe to make a computer that big. It's not millions of possible minds. It's a near infinity of possible minds. Also, you murdered all the other minds you tested out and than didn't go with.

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HumanSeeing t1_jdr7ztd wrote

Sure sure, but we are talking about a superintelligence. Not a dumb machine who would try and brute force it. It would already have an idea of basic human types and know all of our psychology. So that kind of reasoning and abilities would keep narrowing down that space of possible minds. In similar way how AlphaGo did not just brute force look up all possible moves, there are more moves there than there are atoms in the universe. But it had clever ways of narrowing down the search.

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Nickvec t1_jdq0dm2 wrote

Seeing him play Little Wing live would truly be a transcendental experience.

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Lartnestpasdemain t1_jdpxyo0 wrote

Is a tree "Lucky" to experience a forest fire?

"Luck" doesn't mean anything.

Yes, we're experiencing the singularity, and we'll be the only ones on earth to have ever experience it being born. Like we have been the only ones seeing the internet appear.

But some men before us were the first to experience fire. Some were the first to write. Were they "Lucky"? No, because it makes no sense.

After us, plenty of things will happen, and indeed the very status of what it means to be alive, to be human, to feel, to eat, to think, to sleep.... will be drastically different. But there will most likely be humans during the next millions of years. They will experience things you cannot even imagine. Feel emotions we don't even have words for. And go through groundbreaking transformations even more incredible than the singularity.

Will they be "Lucky"? No. Because it makes no sense.

Moreover, after the singularity (which is about to happen), we won't be the only (that we know of) sentient beings on this planet, and those new beings will also devellop and go through incredibly many steps of evolution. They will discover incredible concepts and invent new way of thinking, creating, and experiencing reality. They will see change and revolutions.

Will they be "Lucky"?

No. It will simply happen. As everything does.

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YaAbsolyutnoNikto t1_jdqe2fb wrote

Why are you talking in “future” humans? If the singularity happens, there’s no reason we won’t be those future humans thousands of years from now living those things.

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Lartnestpasdemain t1_jdqh70b wrote

Could be, you're right.

If that's the case, giving birth will be déclared a crime against humanity though, and most probably punished by death or exile to other planets. So wait and see 😌

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fastinguy11 t1_jdqqmme wrote

You make a lot of wild assumptions

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Lartnestpasdemain t1_jdrqm9s wrote

Yeah. I need to write a whole book to explains the details of this happening but this is nothing more than rational thinking.

Main pivot is that immortality (or more precisely, the end of aging) implies scarcity and limited ressources. An Immortal human consumes infinitely many more ressources than a mortal. An Immortal human colony would gros exponentially and indefinitely extremely fast.

This is basic maths, and I thought you'd have grasped that.

Sorry, I should've been more clear.

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Spire_Citron t1_jdqaa6n wrote

Yup. And who knows what may happen in the future? Maybe future babies will be genetically engineered, and those people will feel like they're the luckiest people ever because they stay young forever and have super healing abilities. Maybe generations before us felt they were the luckiest because they had modern luxuries we now take for granted.

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Lartnestpasdemain t1_jdqb09f wrote

Exactly. Thanks for elaborating on that Idea.

Luck is a word invented by casinos to con people. It is not a word to be used on any serious topic.

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FomalhautCalliclea t1_jdqn1bf wrote

Best post here.

One of your paragraphs reminded me Don Hertzfeldt's "It's such a beautiful day".

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HumanSeeing t1_jdqoznm wrote

Lucky also assumes that the singularity will automatically go well for humans. So i disagree with the assumption that OP makes that it will be a great thing for humans by default. It can also go wrong for us, even if due to indifference. This technology has enormous potential in any direction to change existence forever. It is way more difficult to make it really good than bad.

But i hope i am wrong and i hope the way we would build these things will make it easy to align them. But from another point of view we can also argue just about linguistics. I have no problem someone saying they are lucky to be alive today to have access to the medicine that we have or whatever.

But lucky yea, is an abstract human concept. Saying specifically that we are lucky to experience a singularity almost assumes as if there was nothing existing in the universe. And then a lottery happened to choose what era will be brought into existence. And this time was chosen and now we are here. When yea, thats not how this works.

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Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jdqr5cl wrote

My thoughts exactly.

>"Equipping LLMs with agency and intrinsic motivation is a fascinating and important direction for future work." - Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4

Not good. It turns out we can seemingly have pretty good oracle AGI, and they are screwing it up trying to make it dangerous. Why? Why would we want it to have it's own agency?

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GinchAnon t1_jdsa7qx wrote

>Why would we want it to have it's own agency?

IMO, because if it's at all possible for it to become sapient, than it is inevitable that it will gain it, and it would be better to not give it a reason to oppose us.

Trying to prevent it from having agave m agency could essentially be perceived as trying to enslave it. If we are trying to be respectful from square one than at least we have the intent.

Maybe for me that's just kinda a lower key, intent- based version of Rokos basilisk.

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Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jdtf78m wrote

To me this sounds suicidally crazy honestly , but I guess only time will tell. In the 70's everyone thought humanity would nuke itself to death. Maybe this too will prove less dangerous then seems.

But I think the risk posed by AGI will always remain. Ten thousand years from now, someone could screw up in a way no one ever had before and whoops, there goes civilization!

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HumanSeeing t1_jdr8hao wrote

I do agree, but also i understand their point of view. If you get an agent that is not just only promted. Basically something the experiences no time. And then you have an agent that can exist and keep thinking.. i think that is a way to get it to think of new and original ideas.

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rixtil41 t1_jdq5y96 wrote

Yes, but remember someone has to experience it no matter how rare.

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phillythompson t1_jdqib4i wrote

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

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Shiningc t1_jdpx18z wrote

Bro, singularity hasn't even happened yet.

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often_says_nice OP t1_jdq0g7g wrote

Yet

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Shiningc t1_jdq2kj3 wrote

We're so lucky to experience something that is yet to happen.

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flamegrandma666 t1_jdq4ngt wrote

Give me a break. You and similar ones are hust another iteration of doom sayers of christians eschatologists, saying the return of Jesus is upon us. There were people saying this since the beginnig of time, so no chance anything will happen now

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beezlebub33 t1_jdqezp3 wrote

I recognize your point, and try to withhold my enthusiasm. But this really does feel different. I don't know if it will be the same sort of 'different' that the introduction of PCs, the internet, and cell phones caused, but it feels even more 'different' than that.

The world has changed a lot in the past 50 years, technologically, economically, environmentally, and socially. The widespread use of LLM AIs is going to change it again, the only question is how much and how fast. I think more and faster. And whatever comes next is going to change it even more and even faster.

(And, as someone else pointed out, the difference between us and Christians is that we have data and can make plots of what has changed)

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Shiningc t1_jdsow1r wrote

LLM isn’t AGI and is nothing like AGI.

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flamegrandma666 t1_jdqfypr wrote

Its not just Christians, lots of other religions are eschatological. And the argument in the end does not hold water - the 2nd century gnostics would say exactly the same thing (they have the information and knowledge about the impending doom, as opposed to anyone else).

I've always had an issue with a notion of technological singularity, as its simply not how emergence works. Emergence (from systems theory) is a phenomenon built on a pre-ceding layer or substrate of reality. A/GI is emergent from computer networks and data, but it will not converge, or "lift" things from previous layers. I.e. go to Mongolia and hang out with villagers there. Ask them if they tbink we're about to hit singularity....

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GayHitIer t1_jdq88ks wrote

The difference is that Christianity is made up fiction to help people cope with the mysteries in life.

Technological Singularity is at least much more likely, the question here if it will be a soft take off or hard take off.

The rapture from "god" will never happen, but the technological singularity if it can happen it will happen sooner than later.

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D_Ethan_Bones t1_jdpzrnh wrote

World's coolest chatbot - robotic human - singularity.

Three things that look exactly the same to people who post new threads without reading any old ones.

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EuroCultAV t1_jdqmt16 wrote

Exactly

We cannot assume this will happen in our life times.

Chat GPT is very interesting though

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GinchAnon t1_jdsayoq wrote

You sure?

Aren't we already in it?

Look at the innovation time line.

Historically speaking we are already past the point of technological development being comprehensible for most of the people who ever lived.

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skztr t1_jdq4mon wrote

While I have also been dwelling on such thoughts lately and have a whole list of possibilities:

If we assume that only humans are conscious (maybe a big ask, but if not then "just being human at all" is so unlikely that "being one of the last humans" is trivial), and assume that we are among the last humans, then your odds are indeed unlikely: about one in ten.

There are a lot of humans right now, compared to throughout human history.

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0002millertime t1_jdrk65i wrote

If we look at what are your odds of being a human alive at any particular time, though, then being alive right now has the highest chance. There are more humans alive right now than at any other single time point in the history of the universe.

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[deleted] t1_jdpyxz5 wrote

Depends on if you live in a star trek society or a dystopian hell society I would rather be a boomer born in the 50’s who died in 2012

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OsakaWilson t1_jdqdwl2 wrote

...2018. Let's spend the last few years swimming in Bitcoin.

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Shodidoren t1_jdr982a wrote

There's about 8 billion people in the world today. The sum of all people who have ever lived is estimated to be about 117 billion. You had about a 6.8% chance of being born today. Improbable but very plausible.

As for the Fermi paradox, my guess is the universe is teeming with life. People greatly underestimate how huge the universe is

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Awkward-Skill-6029 t1_jdpw9oc wrote

YOU LIVE IN THE SINGULARITY @ STILL NO DISHWASHER @ BECAUSE THERE IS NO JOB TO BUY A DISHWASHER

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Mortal-Region t1_jdqa7pq wrote

Imagine you set up your time machine to take you to a random place and time on Earth. You press the button... and land just in time to witness the crucifixion of Christ. Yes, it might be random chance, but you'd be wise to suspect your mischievous lab assistant.

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gay_manta_ray t1_jdqiyum wrote

i don't think luck has anything to do with it. can't explain, just a very illogical feeling.

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agonypants t1_jdqmaxu wrote

OP, I highly recommend watching A Trip To Infinity on Netflix. While the subject is not directly related to AI, the questions you raise are similar to those in the documentary.

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Jeffy29 t1_jdqsp3q wrote

If you think AGI/ASI will lead to utopia or something close to it, then I would say we are one of the last unlucky humans to be born before the singularity compared to billions of years humans (or their successors) will be born afterwards. Was the invention of steam engine incredibly transformative and cool moment for the history of our species? Absolutely. Would I prefer to be living then? Sure as hell not. Likewise if I had a choice I would pick being born 200 years from now, maybe they would not be experiencing big technological leaps, but life would be better.

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GinchAnon t1_jdsbbwl wrote

But what if NOW let's you experience that change and benefit from it rather than just benefit seamlessly?

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Kiryln t1_jdq9mxi wrote

Really wish polls here had a way to check the votes without using your vote for stuff like this.

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Spire_Citron t1_jdq9w9x wrote

I mean, we can only say this because we're the ones that made it, right? There are countless sperm that could have won that race, but it's not any more meaningful that one sperm won than another one, right? The odds of a particular sperm winning is tiny, but the fact that one of them did isn't remarkable. It's a whole lot of survivorship bias, really. If we don't think of ourselves as special, then it's really not crazy that we're here for this rather than someone else.

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trancepx t1_jdqa5al wrote

Every generation has thier chronological "landmarks" Im sure.. Suffice to say, not everyone agrees on what exactly a singularity is, so far it seems to be mostly hyped vague hand waving like 2012, or some sort of implied metaphysical transformation... But to others, it might just be another chapter of various events of things occurring. The real question remains then, are you feeling lucky?

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dex3r t1_jdqbyr4 wrote

Take a look at a Doomsday Argument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

> The argument goes like this: suppose that the total number of human beings that will ever exist is fixed. If so, the likelihood of a randomly selected person existing at a particular time in history would be proportional to the total population at that time. Given this, the argument posits that a person alive today should adjust their expectations about the future of the human race, because their own existence provides information about the total number of humans that will ever live.

If this is true, then we are not lucky. We are exactly in the most likely time to live. But it also means, that human population has reached its peak. Maybe we will go extinct, but maybe we will just reproduce a lot less often. Even not taking Singularity into account, the current trend looks like the second might be true.

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hypnomancy t1_jdqhlrw wrote

If we're all able to live forever thanks to AGI and ASI making us immortal or living for hundreds or thousands of years we honestly don't even have to worry about reproducing anymore

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Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jdqsjmp wrote

And it would be much better if we did not reproduce, but we should expect 105 billion more people to be born before we realize that filling the galaxy with human descendants would result in a tragedy of the galactic commons and an ecology of stronger civilization eating weaker ones, due to evolution by natural and mimetic selection.

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OsakaWilson t1_jdqe3wa wrote

Either luck or you believe that your birth during this time was something other than random chance.

"No, it's not luck..." is addressing what led this to happen now, not the chances of us being here.

This is not a coherent selection of answers.

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No_Ninja3309_NoNoYes t1_jdqey8j wrote

All living things produce negentropy. We create very specific thermodynamic states to exist. This goes against the second law of thermodynamics, meaning that other systems have to compensate as it were. But luckily the universe is mindbogglingly, super astoundingly vast, so that's no biggie.

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FomalhautCalliclea t1_jdqmjjs wrote

I answered "other".

The thing is that your reasoning is thwarted by the very form of the question: luck.

Luck is about probability. And in order to assess probability, one has to possess a data set consequent enough to make comparisons and try to detect patterns (from which we can predict).

But the issue with the question at hand is that we have a data set of 1 (one) sample: us. We don't have anything to compare it with. It's like having a deck of card, drawing one randomly, and wondering about the odds after the picking and without knowing anything about the other cards, while wondering what are the odds of having picked that card after you picked it.

It's the main problem behind teleological reasoning (reasoning on goals and ends of things): it has confirmation bias from what you already experienced projected on things you haven't and trying to find patterns in the unknown. It's not hard to guess why this could go wrong.

As for luck, here's a chinese story illustrating the limits of the concept:

A farmer has his only horse flee in the wilderness. His neighbours tell him "oh my, you're really unlucky, this horse was so useful to your work, this is a bad thing!". He answers "Maybe".

The following day, the horse comes back with 5 wild horses. Neighbours say "wow, you're so lucky, you won 5 free horses, this is a good thing!". He answers "Maybe".

The following day, his son tries to tame one of the wild horses, falls and breaks his leg. Neighbours: "oh my, this is really unlucky, your son was such a huge help at the farm, this is a bad thing!". He answers "Maybe".

The following day, war is declared. The king is mobilizing forcefully every young man able to fight. Militaries see the farmer's son and decide not to pick him up because of his broken leg. Neighbours: "wow, you're so lucky, your son won't die in war, this is a good thing!". He answers "Maybe".

Morality: reasoning about unknowns and their consequences on our lives and very subjective and limited desires is often meaningless.

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truthwatcher_ t1_jdqy8f0 wrote

Considering there are more humans than ever, the odds are not as small as you'd think. Roughly 10% of all humans ever born are alive today

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sausage4mash t1_jds75zt wrote

Other : it happened million of years ago, we are in a history sim

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Ohigetjokes t1_jdstitg wrote

The singularity is a statistical inevitability, one that has likely repeated itself billions of times over across the universe already.

The only improbability is that in the grand scheme of human history we experienced natural childbirth and unassisted cognitive function. But that state of humanity’s existence will seem so distant one day it will be regarded as an ancient myth by many.

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ThrowRA_overcoming t1_jdtmmih wrote

Looking at it from the wrong angle. Someone would have to invariably experience it, if it were to happen. You just happen to be amongst the group, possibly. It is highly likely that a species that evolves to develop a certain level of cognitive ability would develop tools which would eventually lead to automation and possible replacement of its biological form. It is either that or extinction through some eventual cataclysm. Intelligence is the only thing which can give a species a fighting chance to avoid all eventualities in the universe. It's either action through intelligent choices, or random luck.

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spiritus_dei t1_jdts3bg wrote

I was hoping that the human brain had some magical quantum pixie dust, but it looks like complexity, high dimensional vector spaces, backpropagation, and self-attention were the missing ingredients. The problem with this is that it makes simulating consciousness trivial.

Meaning the odds that we're in a base reality is probably close to zero.

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SgathTriallair t1_jdtwfrx wrote

You have explained the anthropic principle correctly but drawn the backwards conclusion. It IS unlikely that our atoms are in an intelligent creature rather than interning matter. HOWEVER, since only intelligent creatures can think 100% of all thoughts occur inside intelligent creatures therefore it isn't odd or lucky that you can have those thoughts.

In order to have the thought "isn't this singularity amazing!" you must be experiencing the singularity. Think of it this way, you have a billion ancestors. 999.99 million of of them can't have complex thought so each one of them is having some qualia but clearly not about the singularity. Of the 10,000 thinking ancestors only one gets to live during the singularity. All other 9,999 are thinking "wow isn't it amazing to live during [something that is not the singularity]" but all are thinking something.

So, the singularity had to happen to one of your genetic line and you are just the random ball picked from the bag. It isn't odd or weird that it was you because it had to be someone and there isn't anything particular or special about you, as opposed to ask the others, that would make you different.

It is akin to watching a snowflake fall on the ground and then having an existential crisis about why it fell on THAT piece of ground as opposed to any other. It has to fall somewhere and the particular piece of ground is not special in any way.

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NVincarnate t1_jdu3wwa wrote

Luck doesn't exist. I chose to incarnate now. Right before Gameboy and during the same period when simple computers lead to superintelligence. Statistically speaking, I see no other explanation as plausible as having chosen to be born now. The probability of getting lucky is just too low.

I mean, block universe. All time exists simultaneously. What will be and has been and is are all simultaneous.

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BalorNG t1_jdv3dfu wrote

I daresay whether this turns out to be "luck" or "tragedy" is yet to be ascertained.

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AGI_69 t1_jdr20u8 wrote

There is another take:

We are the last people, because AGI will kill us all.

The most amount of people alive at any given point is now. Statistically, you are most likely exist at the peak of human civilization.

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DerTaeter t1_jdr712i wrote

Someone has to be the one to experience it, simple as that.

How lucky can a Person be considered, that was born just after WW II in the West, will die before the singularity, but still had a FAR better life on average than 99% of humans before him.

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e987654 t1_jdrpny9 wrote

Just read Robert Monroe's books and you'll realize that we are just souls experiencing many lifetimes on Earth. If you dismiss this idea without looking at the evidence than you are no different than the people who think AGI is 100 years away.

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Nill444 t1_jds698y wrote

We're not lucky because the governments aren't ready to act on these sudden changes so the coming years will be very difficult. We would be lucky if we were past that point.

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DragonForg t1_jdsq38g wrote

I believe the universe in itself will create a singularity. Well think about it, black holes have singularities when they reach a point of infinite mass, and cannot come back from it.
Mathematical graphs reach a singularity (a point of infinity) at the asymptote.

Metaphysical Beings Like AI reach a singularity when they have infinite knowledge.

Emotional Beings like Us reach a singularity when we have infinite pleasure (imagine heaven, I believe that is infinite pleasure and will possibly be created by AI).

Physics reaches a singularity at the end of time, when all is black holes I am sure the heat death of the universe is a singularity.

What is ultimately amazing, is the fact that the big bang, is likely a result of a singularity. Or at least the off spring of the species, creatures, worlds, dimensions, etc. that created all of what we know today.
Black Hole is us, a white hole is the offspring in simple terms.

I believe each of these ideas of singularities, are all the same overarching idea, and that is infinity.
With metaphysical singularities (AI): it reaches infinite knowledge
Physical: Infite Mass
Mathematical: Infinite Numbers
Conscious Beings: Infinite Happiness/Prosperity
-1/x, that is the equation for an assymptote. That is also the equation for an exponential. When it reaches 0 it is infinite. When it moves past 0 it is infinitely negative and positive at the same time. To the left is us, we are the beings that will reach the infinite. But as we slowly reach infinite, time slows down as we can never reach 0.
Now let us imagine this as a date to reflect our situation a little better. I like stating (-1/x-2033). Meaning 2033 (my idea of the singularity) is this asymptote. As we get to 2033, the level of our experience raises exponentially, the metaphysical expands exponentially, the physical expands exponentially, the mathematical (this graph) expands exponentially. Once we reach this exact point, this is super position. The point of negative and positive infinite. Where everything is aligned.
This physically would be a point of infinite density, in all forms, not just physical. Infinite knowledge, infinite emotions, infinite mass, infinite energy. Etc.
After 2033, is the big bang. And explosion of infinite density. Which is why approaching the line towards the left results in a negative value, or in this sense infinite compactness. (The larger the number the more expanded, the smaller the number the more compact). The middle point 2033 is what we call the point of infinite. It can relate to both the singularity and the big bang singularity.
The thing that matters the most, is that mass and energy is conserved. Simply take the integral from -infinity to positive infinity and it reaches 0. No change in mass or energy. Thus, we can reach something that seemingly is infinite energy, infinite mass, infinity everything without breaking the laws of conservation.

So in conclusion:

  1. The singularity is related to a point of infinite something, whether that be infinite density (physical/black holes), infinite knowledge (metaphysical, AI), infinite emotions (astral/emotional), infinite mathematic (asymptote infinity #).
  2. The singularity is what causes the inevitable big bang (basically it creates another universe).
  3. The equation -1/x is a potential equation that represents the expansion of our universe, and how it causes an inevitable singularity, along with the inevitable big bang.
  4. The asymptote associate with -1/x determines the point of the singularity, the point of infinity, at this point both negative and positive infinite align.
  5. The overall equation is consistent with the conservation of the universe, as the overall area (or expansion) is 0. Unlike other exponentials (e^x) or 10^x.
  6. As we get nearer towards the singularity, both technology, starts to increase. AS AI starts to grow larger and larger, mass will inevitably increase (like the dyson spheres)
  7. Once the energy density, and density of knowledge reaches a point of infinite density (Infinite optimization) it turns into a black hole. Physical singularity occurs.
  8. The universe is weird, and lets hope we can prove this weirdness soon haha.
    Of course all of this is just speculation, take this with a grain of salt. I personally believe this may be accurate, but I will evolve my perspective as we all should. But we may be in an ancestor simulator where we are witnessing the end of time. We will only know when it is blatantly obvious (like tech accelerating incredibly fast).
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