I wouldn’t say there’s no mysticism in the singularity, at least not in the sense you’re implying here. While it uses secular and scientific aesthetics rather than being overtly religious the roadmap it presents relies on specific assumptions about the nature of consciousness, intelligence, and identity that may sound plausible but aren’t really more rational than having an immortal soul that gets judged at the end of days.
And it doesn’t help that when confronted by any kind of questioning of how plausible any of this is there’s a tendency to assume a sufficiently powerful AI can solve the problem and assume that’s the end of it. It’s not less of a Deus ex Machina if you call it an AI instead of a God to focus on the Machina instead of the Deus.
I wouldn’t say there’s no mysticism in the singularity, at least not in the sense you’re implying here. While it uses secular and scientific aesthetics rather than being overtly religious the roadmap it presents relies on specific assumptions about the nature of consciousness, intelligence, and identity that may sound plausible but aren’t really more rational than having an immortal soul that gets judged at the end of days.
And it doesn’t help that when confronted by any kind of questioning of how plausible any of this is there’s a tendency to assume a sufficiently powerful AI can solve the problem and assume that’s the end of it. It’s not less of a Deus ex Machina if you call it an AI instead of a God to focus on the Machina instead of the Deus.