Re: Constraints on the "singularity"

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
13 Oct 1997 19:52:01 +0200


"Ramez Naam (Exchange)" <ramezn@EXCHANGE.MICROSOFT.com> writes:

> My apologies for the misleading language.  By "level off" I actually
> meant "continue on a /less than hyperbolic/ growth rate.  Ie, one that
> does not lead to a vertical asymptote in the graph of computational
> power vs. time".

It is fairly obvious that you cannot have a vertical asymptote of
technology, since the Bekenstein bound (I know, I always bring it
up; it's neat!) says that we can only store a finite amount of information
in a sphere of a certain radius containing a certain amount of matter
or energy.

I have written a small essay about the limitations of the singularity
idea at http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Singularity/Singularity_limits.html

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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