The Futurist

Timing the Singularity, v2.0

Exactly 10 years ago, I wrote an article presenting my own proprietary method for estimating the timeframe of the Technological Singularity. Since that time, the article has been cited widely as one of the important contributions to the field, and a primary source of rebuttal to those who think the event will be far sooner.  What was, and still is, a challenge is that the mainstream continues to scoff at the very concept, whereas the most famous proponent of this concept persists with a prediction that was too soon, which will inevitable court blowback when his prediction does not come to pass.  Now, the elapsed 10-year period represents 18-20% of the timeline since the original article, albeit only ~3% of the total technological progress expected within the period, on account of the accelerating rate of change.  Now that we are considerably nearer to the predicted date, perhaps we can narrow the range of estimation somewhat, and provide other attributes of precision.  

In order to see if I have to update my prediction, let us go through updates on each of the four methodologies one by one, of which mine is the final entry of the four.  

1) Ray Kurzweil, the most famous evangelist for this concept, has estimated the Technological Singularity for 2045, and, as far as I know, is sticking with this date.  Refer to the original article for reasons why this appeared incorrect in 2009, and what his biases leading to a selection of this date may be.  As of 2019, it is increasingly obvious that 2045 is far too soon of a prediction date for a Technological Singularity (which is distinct from the 'pre-singularity' period I will define later).  In reality, by 2045, while many aspects of technology and society will be vastly more advanced than today, there will still be several aspects that remain relatively unchanged and underwhelming to technology enthusiasts.  Mr. Kurzweil is currently writing a new book, so we shall see if he changes the date or introduces other details around his prediction.  

2) John Smart's prediction of 2060 +/- 20 years from 2003 is consistent with mine.  John is a brilliant, conscientious person and is less prone to let biases creep into his predictions than almost any other futurist.  Hence, his 2003 assessment appears to be standing the test of time.  See his 2003 publication here for details.  

3) The 2063 date in the 1996 film Star Trek : First Contact portrays a form of technological singularity triggered from the effect that first contact with a benign, more advanced extraterrestrial civilization had on changing the direction of human society within the canon of the Star Trek franchise.  For some reason, they chose 2063 rather than a date earlier or later, answering what was the greatest open question in the Star Trek franchise up to that point.  This franchise, incidentally, does have a good track record of predictions for events 20-60 years after a particular Star Trek film or television episode is released.  Interestingly, there has been exactly zero evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in the last 10 years despite an 11x increase in the number of confirmed exoplanets.  This happens to be consistent with my separate prediction on that topic and its relation to the Technological Singularity.  

4) My own methodology, which also gave rise to the entire 'ATOM' set of ideas, is due for an evaluation and update.  Refer back to the concept of the 'prediction wall', and how in the 1860s the horizon limit of visible trends was a century away, whereas in 2009 it was in perhaps 2040, or 31 years away.  This 'wall' is the strongest evidence of accelerating change, and in 2019, it appears that the prediction wall has not moved 10 years further out in the elapsed interval.  It is still no further than 2045, or just 26 years away.  So in the last 10 years, the prediction wall has shrunk from 31 years to 26 years, or approximately 16%.  As we get to 2045 itself, the prediction wall at that time might be just 10 years, and by 2050, perhaps just 5 years.  As the definition of a Technological Singularity is when the prediction wall is almost zero, this provides another metric through which to arrive at a range of dates.  These are estimations, but the prediction wall's distance has never risen or stayed the same.  The period during which the prediction wall is under 10 years, particularly when Artificial Intelligence has an increasing role in prediction, might be termed as the 'pre-Singularity', which many people will mistake for the actual Technological Singularity.  

Through my old article, The Impact of Computing, which was the precursor of the entire ATOM set of ideas, we can estimate the progress made since original publication.  In 2009, I estimated that exponentially advancing (and deflation-causing) technologies were about 1.5% of World GDP, allowing for a range between 1% and 2%.  10 years later, I estimate that number to be somewhere between 2% and 3.5%.  If we allow a newly updated range of 2.0-3.5% in the same table, and an estimate of the net growth of this diffusion in relation to the growth of the entire economy (Nominal GDP) as the same range between 6% and 8% (the revenue growth of the technology sector above NGDP), we get an updated table of when 50% of the World economy comprises of technologies advancing at Moore's Law-type rates.  

We once again see these parameters deliver a series of years, with the median values arriving at around the same dates as aforementioned estimates.  Taking all of these points in combination, we can predict the timing of the Singularity.  I hereby predict that the Technological Singularity will occur in :

2062 ± 8 years

This is a much tighter range than we had estimated in the original article 10 years ago, even as the median value is almost exactly the same.  We have effectively narrowed the previous 25-year window to just 16 years.  It is also apparent that by Mr. Kurzweil's 2045 date, only 14-17% of World GDP will be infused with exponential technologies, which is nothing close to a true Technological Singularity.     

So now we know the 'when' of the Singularity.  We just don't know the 'what', nor can we with any certainty. 

 

Related :

Timing the Singularity, v1.0

The Impact of Computing

Are You Acceleration Aware?

Pre-Singularity Abundance Milestones

SETI and the Singularity

 

Related ATOM Chapters :

2 : The Exponential Trendline of Economic Growth

3 : Technological Disruption is Pervasive and Deepening

4 : The Overlooked Economics of Technology

 

 

Changes

It is the end of an era here at The Futurist.  As long-time readers know, this has been a blog of two individual bloggers who did not distinguish themselves from each other.  This was a worthwhile experiment at the inception of the website in early 2006.  But now, the goals have changed.  The technology blogger will be the primary blogger here, taking a slightly different direction for this site.  The political blogger has, for the most part, retired from blogging, and has discontinued participation in some of his other online communities (such as anti-misandry).  

The technology blogger has been working on a related project of much more comprehensive scope, and will be linking it here to The Futurist.  Hence, this blog will be primarily devoted to technological and economic topics, with very little political content going forward.  Both bloggers will write under their real names.    

From Imran Khan (the political blogger) :

Many of my fans from the anti-misandry sphere have wondered why I drifted away from there in 2014.  Well, it was a combination of several factors :

1) My Work There Was Done : The predictions in The Misandry Bubble were solidified and part of the DNA of the 'androsphere'.  Existing bloggers keep up with current events and parse the news through the anti-misandry filter, but my contribution was just comments, after The Misandry Bubble over 6 years ago.  Over time, much of the content in the androsphere trends toward repetition.  When 2020 arrives, we will do an assessment scorecard of the predictions made a decade prior.  

2) Not Enough Activism : Anti-misandry ideas have spread to the mainstream through the effort of some great bloggers (like Dalrock and PM/AFT).  But too many of the other participants do far too little beyond Internet commenting.  I mentioned this in The Misandry Bubble about 'Why There is no Men's Rights Movement', and this continues to be true.  I even invented a strategy and campaign uniquely tailored to operate within the constraints of anonymity, cost, and decentralization that were needed for any real Men's Rights Activism, but only half a dozen men did the legwork despite everyone hailing it as highly effective.  To this day, there is minimal activism beyond about five key people, while far smaller causes immediately manage to get the apparatus of activism established. 

3) Too Much Infighting : The blogs I commented at do an admirable job of attracting and keeping civil commenters.  But elsewhere, some major figure in the androsphere is in an acrimonious battle with another almost every month.  The reasons are usually just poor communication between the two parties.  For a community of just 300 or so active participants that is up against an evil that outnumbers and outspends them by a ratio of several million to one, there is too much wasteful infighting among people who agree on 90% of their views.  Such a 'movement' makes little real movement.

4) Too Much Anger Towards Average Women : As The Misandry Bubble states, the hierarchy of misandric zeal is Hardcore 'Feminist' > Mangina > Average Woman.  The average woman does not seethe with a desire to harm any and all males the way a full-time 'feminist' does.  The average woman just wants to side with whoever is winning, which is an evolutionary mechanism that helped women survive.  I always maintained that ordinary women were being harmed by 'feminism' just as much as ordinary men, since what average women value most has been taken away from them by 'feminists'.  As I have maintained, it is impossible to harm one gender without harming the other.  

Some parts of the 'sphere have too much anger towards average women, and too little towards the sleazy men who think groveling to 'feminists' will improve their social status.  These 'manginas' are universally hated by normal men, normal women, and even hardcore 'feminists', yet do most of the heavy-lifting that keeps the hate-cult going.  If there is an Achilles heel that can be attacked to bring the edifice down, it is these manginas.  The inability of Men's Rights to focus on the weakest target ensures a lack of progress.  Speaking of manginas....

5) Too Many Neo-Nazis : The androsphere has been infested by a strain of Neo-Nazis (describing themselves as 'white nationalists') who are both racial supremacists and economic leftists.  Their views are wrong on both of those counts, but that is not even the worst thing about them.  They are antithetical to the notion of Men's Rights since they believe that a woman of their race is far more valuable than a man, to the extent of being a goddess.  It is apparent that any ethno-centric ideology will default to an obsession with fertility rates, and since women are the scarcer reproductive resource, such ideologies invariably become nothing more than fertility goddess cults.  This is true, of course, of any ethno-centric ideology, not just whites.  In fact, it is a testament to white maturity that 'white nationalists' never get any real traction among their own population.  This is precisely why whites are successful - they do a better job marginalizing their own degenerates than other groups do.  

My debates with the Neo-Nazis were funny.  I would routinely point out that 90% of American whites are just not racist, and they would counter that they indeed are, contrary to my observation.  In other words, I would insist that their group is not racist, which they see as a bad thing (as it explains their poor recruitment), leading them to insist that more whites are.  And I am not just brown, but a Muslim too.  

Remember that 'white nationalism' recruits only the least successful white men, almost entirely due to their desire to obstruct a white woman's choice to date outside her race.  This is leftist protectionism demanded by uncompetitive actors, nothing more.  The coup de grace I apply in such debates is to point out that there is almost zero female participation in 'white nationalism', despite it being an ideology wholly dependent on white women having more babies.  The hilarity of an ideology built around higher reproduction nonetheless finding itself to be 98-99% male is self-evident.  Women have a natural radar that steers them away from loserdom, and manginas (whether general or Neo-Nazi) always create this effect.  

Since the ideologies of Neo-Nazis and 'feminists' have substantial overlap, Men's Rights cannot advance without a purge of these Neo-Nazis.  Over time, this purge will happen, but my time is better spent elsewhere.  

6) The Futurist has a Different Destiny : My technology co-blogger has created something of grand purpose, something so profound that it has a higher significance.  It is valuable enough that this website should be devoted exclusively to it, without tangential distractions, given that he is more of a political moderate than I.  

For these reasons, my participation in the androsphere has drawn to a close.  The Misandry Bubble will remain where it is, but it should be seen as a time capsule of predictions, to be opened 10 years hence from original publication.  

 

Welcome to The Futurist

Welcome to this new addition to the blogging universe, The Futurist, on this day of January 24, 2006.

The goal of The Futurist is to analyze current trends to make future prediction, specifically more complex predictions that require the convergence of multiple trends.  These tend to be the predictions that most others get wrong, as they are only projecting one trend forward, with no accounting of multi-trend convergence.  

There are two co-bloggers here, one with a more technological bent, and the other with a more political (an Independent who leans right) bent.  We will not distinguish between the two of us, in terms of who posted what, and which person is commenting.  Among many experiments, one will be if two different minds can create a unified, superior output.

We may alternatively comment as 'The Futurist' or as 'Genghis Khan', abbreviated as 'GK' (an inside nickname here).  

Thank you, and may we produce content that you find compelling.