> We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection.
I don't know for sure whether superintellegence will happen, but as for the singularity, this is the underlying assumption I have the most issue with. Smart isn't the limiting factor of progress, often it's building consensus, getting funding, waiting for results, waiting for parts to ship, waiting for the right opportunity to come along. We do _experiments_ faster than natural selection, but we still have to do them in the real world. Solving problems happens on the lab bench, not just in our heads.
Even if exponentially more intelligent machines get built, what's to stop the next problem on the road to progress being exponentially harder? Complexity cuts both ways.
I don't know for sure whether superintellegence will happen, but as for the singularity, this is the underlying assumption I have the most issue with. Smart isn't the limiting factor of progress, often it's building consensus, getting funding, waiting for results, waiting for parts to ship, waiting for the right opportunity to come along. We do _experiments_ faster than natural selection, but we still have to do them in the real world. Solving problems happens on the lab bench, not just in our heads.
Even if exponentially more intelligent machines get built, what's to stop the next problem on the road to progress being exponentially harder? Complexity cuts both ways.