If I have a religion, this is it. I believe that man will merge with machine, and it is happening in bits and pieces all over the world. It doesn't require belief. It doesn't require approval. The people working on AI will continue to work on AI. The people working on brain/machine interfaces will continue to work on brain-machine interfaces. Automation will continue to be be cheaper than human labor, and will only get cheaper. Providing we don't blow ourselves up first, we will become an interplanetary species within this century.
Fair enough. Know thyself. Waitwaitwaitbut ...since when have religions required "approval?" "and will create God in their own image" - see, that's a belief. "and will permit the perfect translation between organic being and silicon storage." See, that's a belief. "and demand curves will be repealed." See, that's a belief and one not particularly founded on anything. Fun fact: the printing press was invented in Crete and China and Byzantium before Gutenberg ever got to it but it didn't catch on because scribes were cheaper than movable type. The whole of the Ottoman Empire was an exercise in make-work in order to keep the young and unemployed from rising up and striking down the Caliph. Something they don't teach you in school: Gutenberg created movable type in 1440, a bare five generations or so after the Black Death reduced Europe's population by 30-60%. Scribes, in short, were in high demand so automation took over. I'm not going to question your beliefs... so long as you understand that they are beliefs, not statistical certainties. I can "believe" that the stock market will rise over the long run because mathematically, it is a positive sum game. I can "believe" that the sun will rise tomorrow because there's a lot of physics between that probability and any other. But I cannot "believe" in the Singularity the same way because And while you may think that people smarter than you understand Step Two? They're praying for miracles, too.If I have a religion, this is it.
I believe that man will merge with machine, and it is happening in bits and pieces all over the world.
It doesn't require belief.
It doesn't require approval.
The people working on AI will continue to work on AI.
The people working on brain/machine interfaces will continue to work on brain-machine interfaces.
Automation will continue to be be cheaper than human labor, and will only get cheaper.
You either misunderstand the quote, misunderstand bfv or both. Feynman was explaining the aesthetics of science, in that when you have a deeper understanding of something you appreciate it on a deeper level. His friend Jirayr initially stated, at a party he and Feynman were attending, that scientists could not truly understand aesthetics because they could only see the deeper level. It was this dispute that led to the wager between the two of them, to Feynman taking art lessons and for the two spending Sundays painting together for a number of years and, in no small way, reinforced Feynman's stance on the education of science because, from his perspective, Jirayr had been cheated by a liberal arts mentality that denigrated deeper understanding in favor of gestalt aesthetics. Norvig is stating that the AI insider's appreciation of AI is the trickster's appreciation of the trick, not the scientist's appreciation of aesthetics. One cannot simultaneously think the girl is sawed in half and magically rejoined while also appreciating the cleverness of the double box with hidden compartments. There is skill and mastery and aesthetic beauty in pulling coins from behind a kid's ear. There is not, however, any violation of the principles of thermodynamics. In order to appreciate the former you must reject the latter. Nature and art can be appreciated in whole or in part and the two approaches are additive. Magic and magic tricks, on the other hand, cannot for two are betrayals of each other.