![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistAndrew is listening to podcasts about the Singularity, which I don't like.
Not the podcasts, the Singularity. As in, the geek rapture.
"You know this is on the list!" I scolded him melodramatically.
I only recently made the list explicit, but really it's been around for years. One night when I was trying to go to sleep and Andrew was telling me about the Omega Point (especially as espoused by Frank Tipler, which makes it even worse, if possible), I said "It's dark out! You shouldn't be allowed to talk about this when it's dark!"
The Singularity also goes on the list. Because not only does the idea of being a brain in a jar sound dreadful, but also becaue it is, like any other religion, about how the world is bad and getting worse. The only problem is, because these are nerds, there's a certain amount of facts involved: that we're running out of oil and the population is exploding and there won't be enough food and we're running out of everything. But also, because they're nerds, there's not too much about the panic and misery that this will entail for people, especially if they do get their way and something like immortality (or llifespans of a handful of centuries, anywa) can be achieved, the world will be all the more overpopulated and even more two-tier than it is now, with anyone not clever or rich enough to be immortal living a very dreadful life indeed.
The other thing on the list is quantum. I remember, on a Greyhound bus going across Wisconsin in the middle of the night, neither of us could sleep and Andrew got to telling me about how photons will behave like particles if you measure them with some apparatus that's looking for particles and waves if you're looking for waves, even if you don't know until afterwards which you're measuring. The photon, he told me, knows.
The bus had a little light near where we were sitting, in the back by the toilets, and after he said this I was spooked by it and made him shut up.
Not the podcasts, the Singularity. As in, the geek rapture.
"You know this is on the list!" I scolded him melodramatically.
I only recently made the list explicit, but really it's been around for years. One night when I was trying to go to sleep and Andrew was telling me about the Omega Point (especially as espoused by Frank Tipler, which makes it even worse, if possible), I said "It's dark out! You shouldn't be allowed to talk about this when it's dark!"
The Singularity also goes on the list. Because not only does the idea of being a brain in a jar sound dreadful, but also becaue it is, like any other religion, about how the world is bad and getting worse. The only problem is, because these are nerds, there's a certain amount of facts involved: that we're running out of oil and the population is exploding and there won't be enough food and we're running out of everything. But also, because they're nerds, there's not too much about the panic and misery that this will entail for people, especially if they do get their way and something like immortality (or llifespans of a handful of centuries, anywa) can be achieved, the world will be all the more overpopulated and even more two-tier than it is now, with anyone not clever or rich enough to be immortal living a very dreadful life indeed.
The other thing on the list is quantum. I remember, on a Greyhound bus going across Wisconsin in the middle of the night, neither of us could sleep and Andrew got to telling me about how photons will behave like particles if you measure them with some apparatus that's looking for particles and waves if you're looking for waves, even if you don't know until afterwards which you're measuring. The photon, he told me, knows.
The bus had a little light near where we were sitting, in the back by the toilets, and after he said this I was spooked by it and made him shut up.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-27 12:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-27 09:22 pm (UTC)