2 min and 11 sec to read, 546 words

Having just finished Kurzweil’s latest, interesting , book The Singularity Is Nearer (2024) I am still left with some unease about the argument in it, and I think it has to do with something very simple – baselines. When ever we are asked to predict something, Tetlock teaches us to start out thinking about baselines, the knowledge we have about different kinds of precedents and patterns that we already know. If I am asked to predict if a certain bill will pass in Congress in the US, I should start from looking at what percentage of introduced bills are actually passed, and then adjust as I fermize the problem into a lot of different factors.¹ A nice start can be made here https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics

So, if I am asked if I believe that a certain curve that is currently exponential will continue to be exponential or develop into a logistic curve, or an S-curve, I should ask what frequency of exponential curves have turned out to be persistently exponential and what frequency have turned out to be logistic. And this is where it is really hard to find any kind of evidence for exponential curves not turning into logistic ones. So the baseline expectation we should have for the prediction of if a particular exponential curve will turn logistic should be, well, 100%.

But, wait, you may say — that is not what Kurzweil argues at all — he does not say that the exponential change we see in an individual technology will continue forever. He is arguing that it will generate a new technology, and that will in turn create an exponential change and so on. What he is really trying to do is to predict the pattern of logistic curves of change, suggesting that they themselves map out a kind of macro-curve that is, ultimately, exponential.

And this curve is unlike the individual development curves for specific technologies, because it is a curve for technology in general. But, then, it is still an exponential curve, and we are still being asked to predict it — and so why should we not argue that even for this aggregated exponential the baseline expectation should be that it turns logistic rather than continues exponentially into the future?

In some ways, Kurzweil’s argument strikes me as an argument against limits – and this may be how we have to understand it: what is the probability that there are no limits for the overall development of technological capability in society? Here it feels like Vaclav Smil would be exploding, eager to get a word in — and I would love to see a discussion between the two of them – but that may be long coming.² Smil offers a rebuttal here that is quite interesting https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-progress-is-slowing-down-b7fcaee0 — and one way to think of Smil is as the philosopher of limits. The notion of the limit is deep and ill-explored in general, and something that we should spend more time on, I suspect.

All in all there is a lot here, and the book is really well-researched and argued, and I do sympathize with Kurzweil’s insistent reminders of the fact that things are getting better, but the argument feels unfinished.

Footnotes and references

• 1
  A nice start can be made here https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
• 2
  Smil offers a rebuttal here that is quite interesting https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-progress-is-slowing-down-b7fcaee0 — and one way to think of Smil is as the philosopher of limits. The notion of the limit is deep and ill-explored in general, and something that we should spend more time on, I suspect.