An intelligence with no physical source? Well, we have no evidence that such a thing exists, or even could exist, so no, I don’t buy it.

Posted: January 22nd 2010

See all questions answered by Mike the Infidel

Seems like a lot of malarkey to me, especially its specific formulation by de Chardin. In formulating his Omega Point hypothesis, de Chardin relies on his other idea that complexity in the universe is constantly, irrevocably increasing (what he called the “law of complexity/consciousness”). He reasons that if complexity constantly increases, there must be some ultimate limit for how much complexity there can be, and we humans will reach this limit within finite time. He further argues that when we reach this limit, we will transcend into some sort of godly state.

This argument is wrong at every point.

1. Complexity doesn’t usually increase. On the whole, it decreases. This very basic fact has a name: the second law of thermodynamics.
2. There’s no reason to imagine that complexity has some upper bound, some level of complexity that can’t be beat.
3. Even if such a limit existed and even if complexity were increasing constantly, it does not follow that we would reach this limit in finite time.
4. Even if we did reach this limit, there’s no reason to think that this would mean attaining some sort of godliness. I can’t imagine any way to predict what this limit is like.

Points one through three can be amended to look more like a technological singularity argument: We observe growth of information. We track the rate of this increase and observe that, this trend predicts that there will be infinite information within finite time. I don’t like this argument much either. For one thing, it depends heavily on quantifying the amount of information we have possessed during all periods in history, which is clearly tricky. Secondly, you have to show that the trend will not alter its apparent trajectory before we reach the singularity.

Any attempt to show that there will be infinite anything must fail, generally speaking. Simply put, infinite information requires infinite matter to process and/or store it.

Even if the increase of information and processing power doesn’t actually reach infinity, it’s still possible that these things could grow beyond our capacity to understand. Suppose it’s possible and it does happen. Would this mean that we would approach a godlike state? That’s certainly not what it means. It means that something will happen that you and I can’t possibly understand. It doesn’t even have to involve us (for instance, it could happen to computers that didn’t communicate with us).

Finally, let’s examine what “Clarke’s 3rd law”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws says: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” No human has ever made a convincing case that anything resembling magic does exist. So, for the same reason we don’t believe in unicorns, we shouldn’t believe that technology indistinguishable from magic exists. (It may exist somewhere in the universe, but I have no reason to think it exists on Earth.) In other words, if there’s some magic-like technology being used on us, it’s not just indistinguishable from magic, it’s indistinguishable from nature. Until we find something that stands out from natural law, there is nothing to suggest that something more than plain old nature controls the world.

Posted: November 16th 2009

See all questions answered by George Locke

Well, it’s certainly “conceivable”, since there are obviously science fiction stories that talk about it.

The question is whether there is evidence to suggest that it is real, and in fact the evidence for divine intervention is thin at best.

Posted: October 5th 2009

See all questions answered by Eric_PK

Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” That only implies that if the scenario you describe comes to pass, we will probably think it’s magic, or a miracle. It’s conceivable, all right, just like any concept of a god or godlike entity, but it hardly guarantees that it will happen.

Furthermore, as I think I see where you’re going with this, there is no available evidence that it has happened in the future and that any present-day deity has resulted, any more than there is evidence for any other flavour of deity.

The Omega Point, something akin to the Technological Singularity, is an interesting concept that provides an origin story for a present-day “god”, but without creating a major paradox it has no power to explain the initial (god-free) genesis of the being who eventually becomes a god.

Posted: September 30th 2009

See all questions answered by SmartLX