Eclipse Phase

why wouldn't the singularity happen lol u just hatin

D20 or GURPS. Something really modular and easy to steal books for.

Eclipse Phase.

>>6171886 No, I don't think the singularity will actually happen (I'm not retarded)

7/10

>>6171905
Hey. Do you have any idea when this is supposed to be available in hard copy? I can't play from pdf and it's fucking unprintable there's so much going on on the pages.

>>6171925
The whole point of saying that was to avoid actually talking about whether or not the singularity will happen. D:

Does anyone have a link to Eclipse Phase, or a rapidshit of it?

>>6171931
Sometime this month, I think

>>6171944
Search /rs/

Also, the singularity WILL happen shut up shut up I won't be fag and ugly and unpopular for ever the technorapture will make me into a beautiful chrome angel angel angel fuck OFF MOM

>>6171944
please visit /rs/

>>6171945
Alright. I won't bother calling the local printing shop then.

>>6171974

we will all be able to live inside our own holodecks doing and experiencing anything we want and there will be no conflict or death until the eventual heat death of the universe ^___^

>>6171995
The singularity is essentially Christian Millenialism for people whose IQs are 110 instead of 90.

I love it how you stupid faggots mistake the bullshit transhumanfags spew about post-Singularity life for the concept of Singularity itself.

>>6171944
>>The whole point of saying that was to avoid actually talking about whether or not the singularity will happen. D:

Can't do it. Just like we can't have a 4e thread without it turning into an edition war.

>>6172004
Wow, yeah, 5/10, nice.

Imagine everyone being a simulation running on a big computer, and everyone playing second life version 5.8. Endless parade of fetish and mental masturbation with nothing of value produced until the computer running the simulation or the powerplant powering it breaks down. Nothing of value will be lost.

>>6172008

hahaha nobody's mistaking shit here you aspie retard

the concept leads to stuff and we talk about that stuff

just like how people talk about catholic priests being childtouchers instead of WHAT IS A CATHOLIC PRIEST ACTUALLY

>>6172060

Yep, it's totally Aspie to be pissed when stupid fuckspods rave about an impossible Utopia and dipshits like you take their idiocy as a flaw in the idea of Singularity. Sure is.

Enjoy your shitty setting.

>>6172014
I'm not trolling. This is what I actually believe.

Let's review the facts.

Both are based on a fallacy-ridden view of history. The Christians bend history to fit prophecy, the Singularity-believers bend history to create the illusion of graphable "progress". In reality, history does not fit prophecy and the only way to actually graph "progress" is to graph raw measures of power like calculations per second by microprocessors, which we know are subject to diminishing returns.

Both are largely based on the idea of some greater-than-human force coming along and solving all our problems. God will TOTALLY COME OUT OF NOWHERE AND RAPTURE US TO HEAVEN, Computers SMARTER THAN PEOPLE WILL SELF-IMPROVE AND SOLVE EVERY PROBLEM EVER. Ignoring the fact that there's no reason to think that God would give a shit about humanity, or that there's no reason to believe that self-improving computers would do anything but put all the computer scientists out of work.

Both arrive from a mythological view of the subject matter that rejects actual academic inquiry. Christian Millenialists are mostly decried by serious biblical scholars, belief in the singularity stems from the same kind of mystical view of technology that Sagan bemoaned was inevitable in demon haunted world.

They're. The. Same. Thing.

Can we get some pictures for sad children up in hyah?

The Singularity is a way of saying that in the Future being Rich and White will be EVEN BETTER.

>>6172084

sure is incoherent projection in here

the point is the super crazy singularity that everyone thought would be super crazy cool if it happened ain't happening so who gives a shit

go get some juice and be angry about semantics in your hugbox

>>6172100
People like to ignore Diminishing Returns, because it means that the last two hundred years of explosive progress might be bottoming out.

People don't like to think that. D:

Well now hold on, aint tech advancin at a faster and faster rate?

Who's to say it won't keep going on like that?

>>6172004
Despite it being couched in religious/sentimental terms, the Singularity is actually likely to happen. The idea is just the logical continuation of current technological trends.

>>6172173

if it is then I expect to have seen some crazy shit by the 2050s equivalent to the lunar landing

>>6172134
?

>>6172100
The singularity takeoff is more about AIs smart enough to write more efficient AIs than it is make an AI, wait a couple months, Benevolent Computer God.

We can already build supercomputers with more raw processing power than a human brain; it's a question of software.

>>6172173
Actually it isn't. At least, not how you'd think.

See, we can't graph how technology is advancing. Most singularians, regardless about how they feel about his futurism, use Kurzweil's method of tracking progress. That is, they pick arbitrary milestones and connect them. This view we can dismiss outright because it's retardedly subjective.

The more intellectually honest ones focus on computer processors, specifically calculations per second. the problem with this is that while this (and a handful of other, similar metrics) are improving at an exponential rate, there's a growing body of research that suggests that this exponential rate is subject to diminishing returns.

What this means is that while the metric still shows exponential progress, the improvement is largely a mirage.

>>6172100
Well no, they aren't. There's plenty of evidence that technological advancement will accelerate to the point that human intervention will no longer be necessary.

It'll suck for humans, because they really won't have much to do anymore, but anyone who sees it coming won't stay human for long anyway.

>>6172190
I'm a neuroscientist with an interest in futurism. The next few decades are going to blow your fucking mind. We're getting into some crazy shit here.

>>6172210
Benevolent computer god is essentially the desired and predicted end state though.

>>6172210

>software

massive understatement

that's like saying understanding the human brain is a question of biology

>>6172210
>>We can already build supercomputers with more raw processing power than a human brain;

No we can't. Human brain "processing power" estimates are usually based on optimistically handwaving away anything we don't understand and lowballing everything we do. We won't actually get there until 2030 or so, and it won't be until 2050 that we'll be able to emulate a human brain.

>>6172229
Umm... it is.

You know what's stupid? Those THE FUTURE IS GONNA BE CRAAAZZY documentaries

apart from Michio Kaku who is always on these fucking things and giving dumbed down analogies from the average dipshit who channel surfed in from watching mtv

they almost always show off the dude who implanted a RFID chip into his arm

he's pretty much the gimmicky poster child for transhumanism

>>6172268
Yeah but it's-

What it means is that actually understanding the brain will take (while not unprecedented) utterly extraordinary leaps in our understanding of biology. You can't just say OH IT'S JUST BIOLOGY.

That's like saying OH IT'S JUST SCIENCE. Like that makes it /easy/

Eclipse Phase is only partially post-singularity.

A singularity was achieved, yes. The result was a group of god-like AI transcending everything humanity understood and disappearing from time and space, leaving behind nothing but a totalled planet Earth.

>>6172215
>>there's a growing body of research that suggests that this exponential rate is subject to diminishing returns.

Moore's law naysaying has been around since the 80s. Certainly there is some kind of maximum limit to how much computation you can get from a piece of material, and there will be diminishing returns leading up to it, but we don't know what that limit is and all evidence suggests we're nowhere near it yet. That doesn't stop people from claiming it though.

>>6172215
But the diminishing returns arn't here yet, and in the instances you just mentioned rely on no new technologies only re-engineering old ones.

And I think we can objectively say that technology as a whole has been picking up rather fast over the last 100 years.

I'm not saying tech advancement rates are false, but you're doing a damn poor job of proving otherwise.

>>6172268

it's a very very nearly insurmountable task, just like coding a sentient self-aware AI, despite the hype about breakthroughs every so often

just like how the cure for aids is always around the corner

in ten years we will have amazing hentai games just you watch

>>6172293
No-one's saying it's easy. What they're saying is we've got the technology already, we just (a pretty bit JUST, admittedly) need to code the damn things correctly without the whole mess fucking up and ending up turning the entire solar system into computronium.

Why do you all say that singularity leads to god-machines?

I thought that the thought process went that technology would reach a phase where culture and society would reach post-scarcity.

I don't think post-scarcity is impossible to achieve.

>>6172293
It's still just a question of biology. Just because it's a LOT of biology doesn't mean it's not still biology.

>>6171886
How does one quantify scientific advancement?

>>6172327

>culture and society

OH GOD THOSE THINGS

>>6172299
Eventually we'll get to monomolecular scale transistors and have to come up with something new. Possibly quantum computing, but both of these are decades off.

>>6172301
Actually they are. Depending on who you talk to, we may have actually hit peak computer in 2003.

Eclipse Phase

>>6172347

JUST HIT END TURN THREE TIMES AND BOB'S YOUR UNCLE

>>6172332
You don't.

That's an oversimplification, but it's true.

You just have to look at the gains made at specific intervals, starting with the foundation of modern science and leading up to today, and expound upon the observed trends.

Everything we have says that new technology advances faster and faster as time goes on.

>>6172327
I'm an economics grad student. I was going to explain to you why Post-Scarcity is stupid, but if you can't see why yourself, you're not worth the effort.

>>6172349
That would be "peak computer constructed using current technology". The peak computer ever is the one whose operation is limited only by the physical constants of the universe.Ours are most obviously not, being limited by sub-perfect transmission and similiar issues.

>>6172373
Conventional economics don't apply when no one actually needs anything.

Post-scarcity isn't "everyone gets enough" it's "Everyone is completely self-sufficient."

This can only happen with postbiological entities.

>>6172347
>>and have to come up with something new.
Which we always have. I'd suggest parallel processing to buy some time. The brain is massively parallel anyway, so if we're still talking about a race to brain emulation capability, that actually speeds us up.

>>6172370

diminishing returns

Yes, I too believe in the scientific inevitability of global socialism through superior technology, lol.

>People like to ignore Diminishing Returns, because it means that the last two hundred years of explosive progress might be bottoming out.

>The singularity takeoff is more about AIs smart enough to write more efficient AIs than it is make an AI, wait a couple months, Benevolent Computer God.

That's why I like Stanislav Lem: Hey guys, we created a gigantic fish god and now we wonder why it would rather do fish things than help us solve our mess.
But luckily, the second version turned out to be rather joval. It bothered to give us some hint before it left for the ocean.

I don't believe the Singularity will happen in the way suggested but I think the level of technological dominance it implies is inevitable. I mean, nanotechnology and bio-enchancement are sane predictions of the endpoint science of things we look at today.

>>6172373
>economics grad student

Go ahead and get the fuck out of this thread.

Your shit doesn't make sense in your own goddamn fields.

This is a horrible thread.

OP, use Eclipse Phase or D20 Modern.

>>6172426
>Baww I can't understand soft sciences because I'm an aspie

>>6172349
And they're wrong.
Seriously, what the fuck are you or they talking about?
Where has development slowed that it's indicative of the whole?
lotta niggas in this thread sound like the patent office in the early 1900's

>>6172373
Sorry, can you explain why Post-Scarcity is stupid, please? Because it puts you out of a job?

I'm talking about it as solely applied to materials here. If you enforce scarcity when the technology to do otherwise is available, it's not like the current situation we have now. To put it in D&D terms, it stops being Neutral and becomes Evil.

>>6172406
This.

It always bothers me when people cite diminishing returns on current technology and say that because of this, science will eventually just quit, instead of inventing new, better methods with their own potentials for advancement.

I'm guessing these are the kind of people who don't think we should go to the moon, "because it's hard."

>I'm an economics grad student.

Was it your people that completely failed to predict the current crisis happening?

>>6172454
How would materials not be scarce in post-scarcity? You've still gotta build shit.

>>6172444
I wish we could call soft sciences 'investigative' or 'business' fields because they're nothing like real ones.

This thread is a perfect example of why Singularity will never happen, because this generation will be the ones working on the tech.

>>6172472
In any society wherein it's possible to reconstruct materials to abundance building isn't going to be an issue.

>>6172472

nanobots break down anything

>>6172444
Again, I repeat, there is no consensus in your field on any topic worth mentioning, and those with influence, like friedman, are often wrong, wrong, wrong, but keep going with their bullshit anyway.

HEllooooooo Pinochet

>>6172480
No, the brightest of this generation will be the ones working on the tech. What do you do? Have you revolutionised your field any time recently? No? I bet someone else has.

>>6172472
Most post-scarcity apologists assume(I'm not saying rightly or not) that to get to the po-sca we'll have working sub-atomic manipulation easily availible. In other words, you throw mud in, and pull a computer out.

>>6172480
The smart people are doing schoolwork right now. We're just along for the ride.

>>6172475
We do. The euphemism is "social science." Trust me, whenever you use the term any chemists, physicists or biologists in earshot snicker inside.

>>6172502
...Apologists?

What are you bringing in to this?

>>6172499

Lol irrelevant.

As soon as we get close to an exponential AI some fuckwit will blow it up.

>>6172472
Because you can work out how to use materials much more motherfucking efficiently if you've got the materials science, that's why. As well as advanced methods of mining and other harvesting methods, you could potentially use alternate substances for quite a bit of stuff. How about using silicon alloy buildings that are stronger than steel? You're not going to run out of rock any time soon. Etc

>>6172459
Economics is not about predicting the future, it's about explaining behavior.

Everyone, in every field, is too caught up in their biases to predict the future with any accuracy. So fuck this thread.

>>6172472

Because, figuratively speaking, the one who reaches post-scarcity technology first will probably drink everyone's milkshake. And there's nothing they can do about it.

>>6172459
Actually, my particular school's been saying that derregulation was going to bite us in the ass ever since Reagan did it. So no. You're thinking of the Neoliberals.

>>6172522
The three 'main' sciences are all predictive. Even biology.

>>6172522
AHAHA, look at the asshurt fake 'science' major.

Economists DO pretend to predict the future with astonishing regularity considering how often they get shit wrong.

>>6172455

the point with the whole diminishing returns thing is that things slow down and will keep slowing down unless some huge mindfuck breakthrough is made

it is not realistic to always expect these mindfuck breakthroughs.

>>6172516
The problem is we're more like to stumble over making a self-improving AGI and not realise it until it's infected half the web before anyone even gets the news out.

>>6172516
It doesn't have to be an exponential AI. To bring on Singularity-like materials science and human benefits, we need either the ability to create microbiological organic life or the ability to create machinery of an equivalent size.

Either one of them offers the more enormous of the potential benefits of the singularity.

>>6171886

cool thread man

>>6172537
So do specialists in other fields.

>>6172502
>>Most post-scarcity apologists assume(I'm not saying rightly or not) that to get to the po-sca we'll have working sub-atomic manipulation easily availible.

So
>>6172486
>>6172492
it would seem. That doesn't follow though. The Singularity is called that exactly because it's an informational one-way road. Once AIs build AIs build AIs, there's no telling WHAT the fuck they'll do. That doesn't mean you're supposed to fill the gaps with masturbatory wish fulfillment.

>>6172540
They always have been made, though. Sure, there are periods of stagnation but technology is the defining revolutionary social change of the human race.

>>6172527
This has always pissed me off so much. WHY ARE THE RIGHT-WING ECONOMISTS THE LIBERALS? WHY? DO YOU JUST LIKE FUCKING WITH PEOPLE?

>The problem is we're more like to stumble over making a self-improving AGI and not realise it until it's infected half the web before anyone even gets the news out.

America is secretly being overrun by sentinent cars ever since 1953. Heros of humanity are fighting them as we speak.

>>6172564

THANK YOU.

Watching a whole thread of people failing to come out and say this was depressing.

>>6172568
Lot of money in it.

>>6172564
I posted one of them. Read my post at:
>>6172555
I'm not really backing the AI thing. Pretty sure we can manage the important stuff ourselves, it'll just take longer.

>>6172566

hopefully it won't take a fucking world war to do it this time like it did the last time

>>6172537
So, they're like meteorologists, but when your TV weather forecast gets things wrong, you just end up wet and cold, but when your TV economist gets things wrong you end up with a nation-wide panic and stock exchange crash?

>>6172540
And yet they always show up!

Magic.

>>6172405
at the very least, you are splitting hairs.
at worst, you are wrong.

If "everyone has enough", which can be looked at the other way as "nobody lacks anything"
then that, is post scarcity, by the definition OF scarcity

"everyone being self sufficient", sounds far too much like individualist, back to the land wank material

>>6172540
Uh... of course any expansion of intelligence will have to be limited EVENTUALLY. It's just you can get to that next plateau of non-advancement significantly faster with more intelligence.

Look, think of this like a company. Say you're a small operation. You manage to make a bit of money, and now you can hire another person. Now, you're making slightly less than twice as much money. You can hire two new people after a while. Then four more. Soon you're buying new machinery and your overheads are rising. Eventually you're on the PLC listings, and you can't expand due to other factors. But you've still managed to get much, much bigger.

>>6172520
That's not POST-scarcity, that's an era with suddenly cheap resources. You're not going to run out of rock soon, but you will run out of rock. Scarcity is still there. Entropy doesn't just fuck off and pout in a corner.

>>6172587

everyone forgets that economists are people too

>>6172603
I'm a geologist and let me put it this way: We are never going to run out of rock.

>>6172613

After all, you can't kill the metal.

...this was better in my head.

>>6172594
Not in the least. I was suggesting that nobody would need more resources than they produced.

Farmers need air and water.


I suggest that we just write our minds into the cosmos itself and exist without conditions, like the laws of nature themselves.
Let's drop all this mindless bickering and agree on one thing.

It will be awesome when we are gods.

>>6172603
...You don't get it, do you? Post-scarcity isn't being able to produce infinity of stuff for everyone. It's enough produce enough stuff that you're going to be able to build a decent house for everyone and feed them indefinitely as long as the sun holds out.

>>6172560
They're often right.

Unlike your voodoo magic of a field.

>>6172633
...And my actual point was, there's certainly enough rock to provide everyone with a damn house, that's for sure.

>>So I want to run a singularity-based game. No, I don't think the singularity will actually happen (I'm not retarded) but as flying car bullshit goes it's pretty cool.

sorry did you just imply that its impossible for something to be smarter than humans?

>but you will run out of rock.
Throw computer into McGyver Machine, get out rocks, throw them again, get out food. Throw shit into machine, get out computer. Sure, you're losing SOME in the process, but it'd be neglible amount for any but the longest perspective(that is, we might run out of earth rocks in, say few tens of billions of years). Even if we'd run out of them faster, the scarcity for humans is still brought to such miniscule level as to be nonexistant in those predictions.

>>6172613
qualification: until we become a Type II Kardashev civilization

>>6172647
And this kind of bullshit is why everyone laughs at you guys.

>>6172647
After a while we just eat the rest of the solar system and strike out for Alpha Centauri, becoming the greatest scourge the galaxy has ever seen, consuming all that lies before us in our insatiable hunger for more processing power.


Think Tyrannids, but with machines.

>>6172636
Yeah, when the hard sciences make predictions they often have a much higher success rate. Of course, that's because they make predictions like, "This metabolism is viable. It must exist." or "There's a gap here, an element must exist to fill it." Not "YOUR FINANCES WILL PROSPER!"

Society hits techno-singularity.

Mind-bending war.

Post-society.

Eclipse Phase

>>6172651
What size is the Type 2? I mean, you would really have to be pushing it to run out of rock. Useless rock is fucking everywhere in space.

>>6172663
Gentlemen, THIS is how you do "FUCK YEAH HUMANITY", not those piddly little "yeah, we killed some aliens once, we're cool now!".

>>6172628 It will be awesome when we are gods.

I'm guessing, you didn't bone up much on egyptian, greek, norse, celtic, & hindi mythology, did you?

>>6172694
If by "Bone up" you mean "Fucked them" then yes, I did.

>>6172685
type 2, by definition, is making full use of the resources of a solar system

>>6172690
It's true. All those terrifying elder races which consume mankind in sci fi, hungry for our resources and uncaring for our plight.

Yeah, we're those aliens.

>>6172592
>>6172597

you have to bring in more factors that just this theoretical self enclosed cycle of tech advancement

i.e. you presuppose that the resources to fuel said advancements will always be there.

>>6172731
See my previous "Humanity eats the whole goddamn universe" post.

>>6172713

that's the first time I've heard someone actually feeling physical attraction towards gods

they're interesting but not pornstar interesting

>>6172741

then we just need to go to the next universe.

np

>>6172685
Type 2: Basically we harness entire suns worth of power. Easiest way to do that is to shove a sphere round a star and call it Dyson.

It takes a LOT of rock to make a sphere that big.

>>6172752
well, consider all the earthly poon Zeus got.

Eclipse Phase is your best option.

Also, The Singularity Might be possible. It depends if we can establish a new paradigm of computing (Quantum being a popular option, but others exist), and on the new limits we discover. There will always be new limits, and its not certain we'll overcome them. Each time new ones emerge, there's a chance we'll overcome them eventually, but the path of progress has a lot of increasingly large speedbumps. True, godlike singularity isn't impossible, simply extremely unlikely.

>>6172755 here

I wasn't exactly joking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rg3uNrI8tE&fmt=18

in before theoreticalrage

>>6172755
Exactly. Or, like, the fifth dimension. Everything there is like what we have here, only squared.

>>6172776

>only squared

INCLUDING...

DANGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>Yeah, we're those aliens.

Warmachines? Suck on our self-replicating mining vehicles!

>>6172788
DANGER. HIGH VOLTAGE. WHEN WE TOUCH.

>>6172776
You mean ^5/3, right?

>>6172769

it's more of zeus being the factor here rather than the personal taste of his conquests

>>6172798
...Yeah sure, whatever.

>>6172761
We'll just end up using Fusion reactors, I expect.

>>6172793
Okay, now I can't stop picturing an Imperial Titan covered in the mining ticks from Homeworld 2.

Matter of fact, why wasn't that in-game. "Mining fleet, start harvesting their mothership."

>>6172812
Yep.

Fusion reactors called THE SUN AND THE BILLION STARS OF MAN

>>6172761

seriously, the sun is just wasting shitloads of delicious hydrogen as we speak

what is it, four million tons a second or something?

>>6172804
are you SURE though?
were you there?

>>6172823
(inb4 someone says why stop at a billion, it's because by then we'd go to a type III civilisation, that's why)

>>6172831

nigger is you saying zeus doesn't have the godly magnetism and personality to get the ladies

>>6172842
<-
I mean, look at that Zeus man

>>6172823
Nah. Remember you have wastage over distance. I bet it's more efficient to have smaller fusion reactors than go to all that trouble to eclipse the sun with a big power plant.

>>6172967
And this is why we never will be FUCK YEAH HUMANITY.

Thread archived. I think it's earned it.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/6171886/