Some of Kurzweil’s predictions in 1999 about 2019:

A $1,000 computing device is now approximately equal to the computational ability of the human brain. Computers are now largely invisible and are embedded everywhere. Three-dimensional virtual-reality displays, embedded in glasses and contact lenses, provide the primary interface for communication with other persons, the Web, and virtual reality. Most interaction with computing is through gestures and two-way natural-language spoken communication. Realistic all-encompassing visual, auditory, and tactile environments enable people to do virtually anything with anybody regardless of physical proximity. People are beginning to have relationships with automated personalities as companions, teachers, caretakers, and lovers.

Also:

Three‐dimensional nanotube lattices are now a prevalent form of computing circuitry.

And:

Autonomous nanoengineered machines can control their own mobility and include significant computational engines.

And:

ʺPhoneʺ calls routinely include high‐resolution three‐dimensional images projected through the direct‐eye displays and auditory lenses. Three‐dimensional holography displays have also emerged. In either case, users feel as if they are physically near the other person. The resolution equals or exceeds optimal human visual acuity. Thus a person can be fooled as to whether or not another person is physically present or is being projected through electronic communication.

And:

The all‐enveloping tactile environment is now widely available and fully convincing. Its resolution equals or exceeds that of human touch and can simulate (and stimulate) all of the facets of the tactile sense, including the sensing of pressure, temperature, textures, and moistness. Although the visual and auditory aspects of virtual reality involve only devices you have on or in your body (the direct‐eye lenses and auditory lenses), the ʺtotal touchʺ haptic environment requires entering a virtual reality booth. These technologies are popular for medical examinations, as well as sensual and sexual interactions with other human partners or simulated partners. In fact, it is often the preferred mode of interaction, even when a human partner is nearby, due to its ability to enhance both experience and safety.

And:

Automated driving systems have been found to be highly reliable and have now been installed in nearly all roads.

And:

The type of artistic and entertainment product in greatest demand (as measured by revenue generated) continues to be virtual‐experience software, which ranges from simulations of ʺrealʺ experiences to abstract environments with little or no corollary in the physical world.

And:

The expected life span, which, as a (1780 through 1900) and the first phase result of the first Industrial Revolution of the second (the twentieth century), almost doubled from less than forty, has now substantially increased again, to over one hundred.

“Humans are generally far removed from the scene of battle” (if you don’t count the people that the drones are blowing up)

Some of Kurzweil’s predictions in 1999 about 2009:

• “Unused computes on the Internet are harvested, creating … human brain hardware capacity.”
• “The online chat rooms of the late 1990s have been replaced with virtual environments…with full visual realism.”
• “Interactive brain-generated music … is another popular genre.”
• “the underclass is politically neutralized through public assistance and the generally high level of affluence”
• “Diagnosis almost always involves collaboration between a human physician and a … expert system.”
• “Humans are generally far removed from the scene of battle.”
• “Despite occasional corrections, the ten years leading up to 2009 have seen continuous economic expansion”
• “Cables are disappearing.”
• “grammar checkers are now actually useful”
• “Intelligent roads are in use, primarily for long-distance travel.”
• “The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) software”
• “Autonomous nanoengineered machines … have been demonstrated and include their own computational controls.”

In the first Foundation story, there’s a weird mention of applying symbolic logic to human language that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. Campbell insisted upon it because

he felt in our discussions that symbolic logic, further developed, would so clear up the mysteries of the human mind as to leave human actions predictable. The reason human beings are so unpredictable was we didn’t really know what they were saying and thinking because language is generally used obscurely. So what we needed was something that would unobscure the language and leave everything clear.

Clear being a fortuitous choice of wording on Asimov’s part there, given, well.

TESCREAL and Scientology don’t just share methodology; they both descend directly from “Golden Age” science fiction. In this essay I will

“And a waifu is only a waifu, but a good cigar is a smoke.”

Mastodon has Reply Guys. Lemmy has Cater To Me Whilst I Am Literally, Not Figuratively, Taking a Shit Guys.

banned for obnoxious not-pology

If we trace one ancestry path back to science-fiction fandom, well, there’s John W. Campbell.

I’m trying to think of a polite way to say “in short, no” and “the linked tweet having “effectivealtruism” in it twice should have been a clue”, because I’m not that mean, but I probably need more coffee too.

“Pronouns” with a hard R

Bio people here are poorly informed. Just in general some of the presentations are factually incorrect

B-but rationalists are experts at covalent bonds

Also meeting people… as a woman I have never felt as ignored and disrespected as I have in some instances the pa…

I’m sure the feedback becomes more positive in the cut-off part, no doubt about it

More-crap-ter Projection

It’s still hard to beat the dck pck

Lightcone (of shame)

My “I have no specific views on eugenics” T-shirt has prompted many questions already answered by my T-shirt

You are not worth responding to. Goodbye.

Quoth Yud:

There is a way of seeing the world where you look at a blade of grass and see “a solar-powered self-replicating factory”. I’ve never figured out how to explain how hard a superintelligence can hit us, to someone who does not see from that angle. It’s not just the one fact.

It’s almost as if basing an entire worldview upon a literal reading of metaphors in grade-school science books and whatever Carl Sagan said just after “these edibles ain’t shit” is, I dunno, bad?

Making an analogy to something more familiar, or to anything that actually happens in real life, is too pedestrian for a true visionary.

(It’s just a guess on my part, but given the extent to which conspiracy theorists are all marinating in a common miasma these days, I’d expect that a 9/11 twoofer would be more likely to deny relativity for being “Jewish physics”.)

whomst among us has’nt err’d?

Carl T. Bergstrom, 13 February 2023:

Meta. OpenAI. Google.

Your AI chatbot is not hallucinating.

It’s bullshitting.

It’s bullshitting, because that’s what you designed it to do. You designed it to generate seemingly authoritative text “with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence,” i.e., to bullshit.

Me, 2 February 2023:

I confess myself a bit baffled by people who act like “how to interact with ChatGPT” is a useful classroom skill. It’s not a word processor or a spreadsheet; it doesn’t have documented, well-defined, reproducible behaviors. No, it’s not remotely analogous to a calculator. Calculators are built to be right, not to sound convincing. It’s a bullshit fountain. Stop acting like you’re a waterbender making emotive shapes by expressing your will in the medium of liquid bullshit. The lesson one needs about a bullshit fountain is not to swim in it.