I apologize for free-associating from one small phrase in Nick's message:
> Because of accelerating technological progress, humankind may be
> rapidly approaching a critical phase in its career.
I read "critical phase" and it reminded me of two phenomena: phase
transitions, and critical points, both of which are thermodynamic concepts
governing the behavior of solids, liquids and gases.
I wonder if we could be said to be approaching a phase transition?
Perhaps our concept of the Singularity could be said to represent a
phase transition in human affairs. We could be moving from a solid to
a liquid, or a liquid to a gas. The new state would be characterized
by having many more degrees of freedom.
How much more can we milk out of this somewhat ill-fitting analogy?
When phase transitions occur, they often start at an interface between
the two phases, which then grows, one phase gaining at the expense of
the others. Think of bubbles at the bottom of a pan growing as molecules
transition from the liquid to the gas phase until the bubble breaks free.
In this model, the Singularity would start with a small group and then
expand, more and more people being invited (or compelled) to join,
each undergoing a sudden transition, a Vastening.
We could even think of this rather literally, a nucleation site which
is a source of knowledge, people clustering around it and gaining the
knowledge needed to Transcend, then breaking free like a bubble and they
are gone, waiting for the next group to undergo the same sequence of
steps. This is something like Vinge's scenario in Marooned in Realtime.
I'm trying to work the critical point into this imagery. It is the
point at which the distinction between water and gas becomes moot. See
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/phchem/deiters/persons/globass/critical.html.
This might represent a "soft" transition to a Singularity. Rather than
a specific interface with people on one side or the other, we instead
have gradual increases without any sharp, well-defined transition,
until suddenly, to our surprise, we find ourselves having Transcended so
gradually that we never noticed. In the diagram above, we'd take a path
which circles around the critical point, the liquid-to-gas line endpoint,
something like the dotted arrows shown. We'd go from one phase to the
other without transition.
Hal
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