Earlier today, there was a second, which in local Central Daylight Time, was earmarked by a numerological confluence of ascending integers.

Before you get all religio-nutty on me, let me point out that this concidence is purely an artifact of the many historical events that gave us the choice of the Anno Domini calendar, the twelve months and the Gregorian allotments of dates, the choice of , and the archaic sexagesimal system of subdividing periodic quantities (angles being the other surviving quantity still in common use) into minutes and seconds.

Personally, I think the singularity concept is a grain of truth swimming in a vast overhyped sea of BS. (Why am I bothering to critique this? Because most of the counterarguments also belong the same category of populist, superficial pap that the proponents belong to also.)

Yes, computing will gain a critical mass and cause a qualitatative change in the way we live our lives, above and beyond the advent of personal computing and the Internet. Yes, our ability to predict what will happen will eventually break down. Framed in the original language of Verner Vinge, this prediction is practically a tautology. All through history, the advent of technology and its impact on our lives have always been either severely overestimated or severely underestimated. But implying that there will exist a sharply-defined cutoff where historians will place a dot in their textbooks and proclaim, “and thus was born the intelligent machine” is patently ridiculous.

The universe is NOT going to explode today, there will NOT a sudden and dramatic change in our lives, and superhuman intelligence is NOT going to take over the world. (With the possible exception of semiintelligent darmons overrunning Kevin’s blog, but that’s another story.) Rosie the domestic robot isn’t going to start selling in stores today, along with the AntiGrav SuperBelt 39954-X and right next to the miniaturized Toyota Pruises in the clearance rack at Wal-Mart.

Most of the other predictions in Vinge’s paper come across as either incredibly naive, or patent nonsense. Those made by others since the original paper, if anything, are even worse. (Kurzweil, whose book appears on Kevin’s blog, has already been debunked nicely here.) For example, implying that the pace of change will accelerate to infinity and stay there is incredibly naive, and a non sequitur that mathematicians (or anyone who has taken analysis) will recognize instantly. It’s ignoring the basic tenets of economics: the amount of resources will NOT increase exponentially indefinitely to support an unlimited exponential increase in change. It’s also arguably ignoring fundamental laws of mathematical physics: even if human society will arguably exhibit a phase transition in the future, it is really, really, really unlikely to stay in transition for all eternity.

The reason why not is embarrassingly simple: it’s the reason why Malthus was wrong; it’s the reason why industrialized countries are facing a demographic crisis in the form of an ageing population; it’s the reason why global warming is a big deal today, here and now; it’s the reason why Moore’s Law is starting to break down, and why quantum computing is such hot shit right now, because so many blithering idiots are counting on “weird” and “incomprehensible” quantum mechanics to keep delivering cheaper, faster chips into their sorry hands.

I know computer scientists like to idealize, but the truth is, the universe will eventually run out of coal/oil/uranium/hydrogen in the universe to run those damn Singularity machines. And even if superhuman intelligence gets invented somewhere, somewhen, and decides to take over the world, its ambitions will most likely be limited most severely by the restricted intelligence of its merely human peons. Such as the people who truly and honestly believe the Singularity is the End of Days.

Maybe I’ll believe it when computer scientists come up with a way to write code in a way that is guaranteed to work. (It’s a problem which I suspect can be reframed in the language of computability and stoppability, in which case it may provably never happen.) It’s not pretty for robots bent on world domination

So back to the numerology: what was I doing at 01:02:03 04/05/06?

No I wasn’t sleeping, unlike other lazy bums. ;-) I was working on my literature seminar, which is on the adiabatic-chaotic transition in the microwave-driven dynamics of Rydberg states. (Yeah I know, with a topic like that, and a two-page abstract, why aren’t I asleep just thinking about it?) A talk which I have stopped working on to procrastinate and work on this. :D

Update: at the *other* 01:02:03 04/05/06 in the post meridian, I found myself reading about myself on Kevin’s blog about how I am a wet blanket, then checking the little clock on the taskbar. I remember going “hot dang!”

Anyway, the presentation is inching ever so slowly toward presentability. And I realized that I voided a $25 rebate coupon by throwing away the UPC code on the original packaging. *Mentally kicks self* And I will seriously be upset at myself if I don’t file my tax return by tomorrow.