Submitted by Phoenix5869 t3_yndodv in singularity
abc-5233 t1_iv8rv9n wrote
This reminds me of a Wired article about the game of Go. It was written in May 2014 and it described perfectly how computers weren't able to play Go, even at amateur level, and how they could probably never do so.
In March 2016, the algorithm Alpha-Go won a tournament against the world champion.
From not being able to play at amateur level, to super human in less than 2 years. That is the power of exponential growth. It is so deceiving that people have a very hard time grasping it.
To calibrate your exponential understanding try to answer this riddle: If a glass is doubling its content every day for a year (365 days) before becoming full, when is it going to be half full?
The answer for most people seems to be the obvious 6 months. Half the glass, half the time.
But this is exponential growth we are talking about, and in this subreddit most people will probably know the right answer: 364 days. If the content doubles every day, it will be half full one day before the end of the time period.
But here is one question that is trickier: When is it going to be at 1% of its capacity. At what time will it still have 99% to go?
The answer is one week before the year is over. Because from 1% to 100% there is 7 doublings: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, >100 (128).
If you understand that medicine is now an information technology, that is doubling its understanding and command of the human body at an exponential rate, and the doubling of its understanding takes 2 years, and that the Singularity is happening in 2045, it reasons to expect major significant advances in the 2040's, and not before.
Awkward-Loan t1_iv9kqa0 wrote
💯
ChoosenUserName4 t1_iv9cl9d wrote
It takes up to a billion dollars and often 10 years to get something from research through FDA approval. Tell me again how it's the same as solving the Go game a little bit early in the timeline.
The majority of R&D today, experimental verification of hypotheses, and overcoming political, economical, and financial challenges are not exponential. They are also not on the brink of being exponential. Therefore, the speed at which life-changing innovation becomes available is not going to go up fast, soon.
This has nothing to do with me underestimating exponential progress. Biological innovation going to the application stage is very much limited by things in which there's no exponential progress possible.
abc-5233 t1_iva9u6z wrote
“The majority of R&D today…” keyword: today. The COVID Vaccine from Moderna was ready 2 days after the sequencing of the virus DNA which took like 2 hours. It could have been available to the general public in a week if the simulated biology testing was good enough. Simulated Biology testing is not good enough today.
Deepmind is already working in a virtual cell that will allow for digital testing of all biological processes in the future.
If I had to guess, I would say that digital medicine is now at 0.1% complete. Meaning, we have 99.9% to go. So, we’re almost there! Just 10 doublings, if every doubling takes 2 years, 100% digital medicine will be ready in 20 years. Just in time for the singularity.
ChoosenUserName4 t1_ivaapld wrote
The delivery mechanism of the Moderna vaccine was in R&D for multiple decades. The only reason to go to market went that fast was because of the global pandemic, otherwise there would have been another decade of safety testing.
And what does a simple vaccination against a virus have to do with the complexity of life prolongation? They're not even on the same scale.
abc-5233 t1_ivaer8s wrote
You are confusing the very concept of the Singularity. The Singularity is the increased complexity of the Universe, given by a side effect of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that Entropy in a closed system always increases.
That is, on average, systems tend to be more disorganized (increased entropy). The side effect of this universal law, is that there are pockets in the Universe where the exact opposite happens. Stars, planets, are places where entropy decreases, as a law of the universe. You can check the book The Romance of Reality for an in-depth explanation of this phenomenon.
The Singularity is the inevitable result of decreased entropy because we are in a pocket of the Universe where we entered a feedback loop of loss of entropy. Complexity has been increasing on Earth since its inception, and it will continue to do so until complexity cannot get any more complex. Starting from being created with most of the elements in the periodic table, to simple strands of DNA, to cells, multicellular life, human brain, technology and information technology. It is like being at the center of a star to be that is accumulating gas via gravity, and will ignite as a star when the critical mass creates fusion.
Focusing on a particular strand of this entropy loss is losing perspective of the whole phenomenon, and therefore, the ability to make predictions. Like trying to predict the path of a single ball in a Galton Board. It is absolutely impossible.
But predicting the overall distribution is super easy, because it is always the same.
The exact path that digital medicine is going to take is impossible to predict. But the fact that it will be complete by the time the Singularity happens is as sure as any other predictable physical phenomenon in the Universe.
ChoosenUserName4 t1_ivai02u wrote
All this pseudo-philosophical nonsense about entropy isn't going to change the fact that there are major hurdles to be taken before we understand the full complexity of natural systems and have the ability to manipulate it in meaningful ways (escape velocity, immortality). These major hurdles are identification of the right targets / pathways, experimental verification, drug development and testing, and getting the money to finance all of this. None of these steps is currently on a exponential trajectory. Yes, we'll get there, eventually. Everyone in this thread will probably be long dead by then.
Also there's no law saying that there must be pockets of increased complexity to somehow counter balance entropy, that's just a consequence of self organization of molecules, you know the thing that eventually led to life itself.
abc-5233 t1_ivalary wrote
An honest question: if you think this is pseudo-philosophy, what do you think the Singularity is?
Meaning, do you actually believe there will be a Singularity? And why?
ChoosenUserName4 t1_ivatb6h wrote
As I've read it (remember it), the singularity is the point where new discoveries are made so quickly that it no longer makes sense to try to predict the future. Yes, I believe we will get there if we don't destroy ourselves before it happens. I don't believe it will happen in the next 10-20 years though.
The only way I see to biological immortality soon is to invent some sort of scanning device that can record an entire human being at the atomic level, and then a machine that can emulate hundreds of millions of copies of that human at the atomic level, preferably sped up by a lot, so that many experiments can be run quickly and in parallel. Not sure if that would be ethical for the simulated human, but that's another question. Of course, the machine should be able to design the experiments and learn from them.
I don't think there's a golden bullet for aging, very much like there doesn't seem to be one for cancer. It's probably a lot of slow processes that are all intertwined with many side effects of upsetting the balance.
abc-5233 t1_ivayqic wrote
Yes, but the reasoning for the fact that new discoveries will happen in an every increasing lower time span, is described by the Countdown to the Singularity. That is how you get the date 2045. It is not a guess. It is a calculation.
It might be a flawed calculation, for sure. But it is not something that was just guessed out of thin air.
That is why current events usually only distract people from the actual prediction. Because focusing on the small current advances make people lose track of the accuracy of the prediction that was made decades ago.
botfiddler t1_iv9qaf9 wrote
Many of the drugs and treatments they're looking into are already approved, but for other things. If it's not approved fast enough, people will go to other countries.
TopicRepulsive7936 t1_iv9huhn wrote
Did you foresee the success in go? It should have been easy for you.
ChoosenUserName4 t1_iv9xky4 wrote
Why, what does that have to do with anything? Non sequitur.
ipatimo t1_iv9t4yw wrote
FDA approves thing only in USA . There are plenty of countries that would be glad to become the world centers of rejuvenation by just loosing their regulations.
ChoosenUserName4 t1_iv9xfn5 wrote
Good luck making your money back, not being able to sell in the US or Europe.
ipatimo t1_iva0abj wrote
Istanbul is now a place where thousands of people travel to make their hair transplants. What would be If they could provide a rejuvenation service? Hair will grow back as a bonus.
ChoosenUserName4 t1_iva158i wrote
Drugs need to be safety tested on people and proven effective before anyone would be willing to use it. It's not like we would just scale up what Joseph Mengele did in the concentration camps during WWII. There's a reason clinical trials are expensive. You have to be very careful and very sure before you test things on the first person.
ipatimo t1_iva1wtk wrote
With the development of human's organs in test tube and AI systems the testing of new drugs can be drastically accelerated. And of course the work can be done to simplify regulations, keeping the same level of safety. But in countries like USA and EU the rigid Healthcare system is not ready for such changes.
ChoosenUserName4 t1_ivaauvo wrote
Man, I have been hearing that same pitch for the last 30 years. Any day now.
Also, if it doesn't happen in the EU and US, it's not happening. There's nowhere near the same amount of biological research. Follow the money, that's all.
Clawz114 t1_iv9u77n wrote
Another good example of the exponential growth is starting with a penny on day one and having it double every day for 30 days. Day one is a penny, day 30 is $5,368,709.12.
Exponential growth will enable things that today seem impossible.
FantasticCar3 t1_ivilbd0 wrote
>Exponential growth will enable things that today seem impossible
like me getting a gf?
[deleted] t1_ivct1jj wrote
I assume that OP is just as concerned about personally being able to access this tech which is an entirely different discussion to the exponential growth of tech.
We live in a harsh barbaric capitalist system that rarely even provides the bare necessities to most people. The main barrier to life extension for ordinary people is political and economic.
If you want life extension you need to join a political movement seeking a massive socialising of healthcare. Don’t bother becoming a scuentist; that part of the problem is actually super straightforward.
The political part of the equation has far less chance of success within our lifetimes. Better get started
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