The Bewilderness

Liberal Democrats to be renamed in more truthful light: Sleazebags

The Liberal Democrats support statutory press regulation since news of such alleged behaviour as graced our rumbustious media in the last few days could probably be covered up. Alas, the cat was let out of the bag too soon!

If this has taken place in America, the whole debate would be framed in the partisan finger pointing of supposed liberal hypocrisy (possibly appropriate since they are the Liberal Democrats). 

But here, where all parties are liberal by US standards, the hypocrisy stems from their ability to shoot first with holier-than-thou bullets trading on an erroneous public reputation that they have highre standards of public behaviour than the other main political parties. Tuition fees, Huhne and now this....

sleazier than all the rest! 

Stripped of AAA

Moody's has decided to strip the United Kingdom of its AAA rating; rather a disappointment from the government's perspective after their three years of austerity rhetoric. This is not a surprise for onlookers. What did they expect after beating the drum about spending cuts? And avoiding any actual pain. The coalition government will be viewed as a missed opportunity. Monetizing debt on the backs of wages, foisting pain on to the next generation and avoiding the radical cuts required has led to a fatted state draining life from the private sector aided by the stagnation of zero interest rates.

There may be plenty of external headwinds but our predicament is predictable, political and homegrown. Plenty of pain all round.

The death of a dream?

We are now in a world where surprise is achieved by refuting the Singularity. An indication of how accepted the concept has become; not supported, but most definitely embraced. Now a neuroscientist writes, in the echo of an Emperor has no clothes, to deny that reproducing the brain in silico can occur. Neural interconnections are just too complex and non-linear.

This debate does tend to firm up speculative positions prior to the final evidence. Yet again, the novelty of the concept has struck academic animosity. Yet, even without the Singularity, the author predicts a slow and glorious summer of cyborgisation.

All politicians are scum

The record of the Coalition government and contemporary politics. A minority partner called the Liberal Democrats. They vote for illiberal measures and decided that non-equalised constituencies stand; a squalid organisation placing petty imagined slights above social justice. It is neither liberal nor democratic to retain an unequal system of representation.

A majority party called the Conservatives. The only conserve they have stuck to is the jammy bind we find ourselves in. They forget that Labour policies don't really work. So we seem to be at the Heath stage of the crisis here. And as for Labour: the party of the non-working classes; either public sector or benefits.

A whole swathe of mediocrity: spending our money and impoverishing us by majority rule. 

There will only be one Singularity

In the current landscape of slow growth, declining living standards and the blame game, few will raise their eyes above the contemporary to contemplate life in five or ten years. For one faction of the transhumanist community, the events during this timescale will bring forth evidence of how close the technological Singularity will be. The evidence will also enhance our understanding of its potential underpinnings.

Rick Searle sets out an interesting scenario in his discussion of the Singularity: that the event could be triggered more than once by a multiplicity of technologies. The path of the event will be determined by the successful research program. Where Searle departs from the overwhelming concept of the Singularity is his reduction of event by country and culture. This subordination of the event to human seedcorn is a critical attempt to grapple with the ideology of its proponents, not the prophecy itself.

Any event will be structured by its context. Yet, arguments of different Singularities in different countries does not work. Part of the beauty of the Singularity is its overwhelming, universal threshold: beyond which we cannot see, in the original Vingean. That is probably why I am unsure as to the reasoning for AGI as the basis: my preference is the increasing pace of change based upon the effective use of information.

Life will get faster!