ARRA News Service
News Blog for social, fiscal & national security conservatives who believe in God, family & the USA. Upholding the rights granted by God & guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, traditional family values, "republican" principles / ideals, transparent & limited "smaller" government, free markets, lower taxes, due process of law, liberty & individual freedom. Content approval rests with the ARRA News Service Editor. Opinions are those of the authors. While varied positions are reported, beliefs & principles remain fixed. No revenue is generated for or by this "Blog" - no paid ads - no payments for articles. Fair Use Doctrine is posted & used.
Blogger/Editor/Founder: Bill Smith, Ph.D. [aka: OzarkGuru & 2010 AFP National Blogger of the Year]
Contact: editor@arranewsservice.com (Pub. Since July, 2006)
    Home Page
   

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato (429-347 BC)

Monday, January 18, 2016

Singularity: Another Collectivist Myth

by Nelson Hultberg: A fashionable concept in today's computer - IT world is the idea of "singularity" first pioneered by Ray Kurzweil throughout the 1990s and specifically in his 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. The thesis of Kurzweil, who is presently Director of Engineering at Google, is that technology's growth increases faster than humans can adapt. Progress is a devil in disguise that will outstrip humans' ability to grasp it. This will bring about profound changes in human beings and their societies. The fields of computers, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics, integrated circuits, etc. will overwhelm the human race and by 2045 bring about a life shattering revolution that Kurzsweil calls "singularity" in which "artificial intelligence" takes over our lives.

Mighty scary scientific futurism from a man recognized as a genius around the world. One thing for sure, Kurzweil's intelligence is not "artificial." He's a bona fide thinker of huge dimensions, and he has convinced a sizeable segment of today's creative minds that his predictions have substance.

This is all very unfortunate. I believe that Kurzweil, like most modern intellectuals, has succumbed to philosophical collectivism's flawed "manner of thinking" that posits individuals as impotent, the collective as all-important, science as an omniscient oracle, our minds as nothing but matter, and freedom as dubious. In a nutshell, Kurzweil's "manner of thinking" concludes that capitalism and freedom are inherently self-destructive, and that the cerebral essence of humanity is a weak reed in a vast torrent of evolutionary forces. Thus the mind of man is fated to be replaced by "nonbiological intelligence" spawned by exponentially growing technology that transforms human life into something far removed from what we now know.

Kurzweilian Irrationality
I believe "singularity" is a fallacy flocked to by misinformed modern minds who have been cut loose from reason (and thus from truth) by the revolution of collectivism's big three philosophers - Jean Jacques Rousseau, Auguste Comte, and Karl Marx. This revolution has been metastasizing throughout the West for over 200 years.

From the beginning, Rousseau, Comte and Marx were bent on demolishing Western civilization's moral-philosophical-political premises. And they dealt severe blows to those premises. But their attacks were built on sophistry and myth. Consequently they did not bring "truth" to mankind, but suffocating "tyranny." Singularity advocates are merely another outgrowth of collectivism's flawed "manner of thinking." Here are some insights that will explain why we should not put stock in their sinister predictions:

1. The Luddite movement of 1811-1816 England (named after the apocryphal textile worker, Ned Ludd) was a powerful manifestation of the collectivist myth that animates the Kurzweilians. It declared that the technological innovation of that day was evil because it led to massive unemployment and misery for the workingman. Thus mobs of "Luddites" proceeded to stomp through English towns trying to destroy all new inventions - the looms, presses, machines, etc. of the Industrial Revolution that were transforming England from a rustic Medieval land into an urban, corporate land of hustle and complexity.

2. Karl Marx preached that capitalism and freedom would grind workers down to starvation wages, which of course was proven to be wrong. Just the opposite took place. But his cataclysmic thinking led to the mass hatred of capitalism and distrust of freedom that dominate our government, our schools, our literati, and our media today.

3. Numerous pundits over the past 200 years have preached that the various technological inventions of capitalism would destroy the sanity of life and the safety of society. The locomotive would prove to be way too powerful and fast for humans. Automobiles would soon reach 60 mph and be far too dangerous in which to travel. Supersonic jets would create unimaginable harm when they broke the sound barrier.

4. Today's environmentalists protest that capitalist technology creates global warming and cannot be trusted. Thus it must be controlled by big centralized government.

5. Keynesian economics teaches that freedom leads to insufficient demand and nasty depressions. Thus banking must be taken over by government, and the money supply must be continually inflated to avoid booms and busts. But Keynes disingenuously built neo-Luddite fallacies about disaster into capitalism as a system. The result of such charlatanry is that $100 trillion plus in debt now hangs over our society to end any hope of our children ever living a decent life.

6. The doomsday prophets of Christ's day preached that society had reached what was known as "end times." Prepare for Armageddon, they warned. Is this not also what the Singularity doomsdayers are saying - that apocalyptic "end times" are coming?

7. Freedom is, and has always been, feared by the majority of humans. The speed of technology today and its alleged "approaching Singularity" is just a new rendition of the "freedom leads to doom" scenario that collectivist mentalities have preached over the millennia. Kurzweil's futurism is merely the crazed prophecies of ancient Judea and the primitive plunder of Luddite England dressed up in MIT algorithms and modern bio-genetic razzle-dazzle.

8. Singularity is a fallacy because the marketplace ultimately gears itself toward technology that human beings are capable of handling in their lives. The free-market doesn't build locomotives that go 500 mph and derail. It doesn't develop human services that swallow up rightful institutions in destruction and chaos. Men and women are rational creatures and thus capable of moving the marketplace back in the direction of salubrity when it has gone astray. This rationality is continually brought about by Adam Smith's famous "Invisible Hand." But only if it is left unhampered by government is this "Invisible Hand" able to guide us toward rationality and the ability to make adjustments.

9. Society is, indeed, heading for doom today. But it is not because of the speed and complexity with which technology develops. It is because of government's massive intervention into free-market capitalism and the centralized controls that come about as a result. Our problem is Big Government, not Fast Technology.

A Common Sense Conclusion
Ironically Kurzweil is not a pessimist; he believes that life ultimately moves toward positive values. He believes the transition of life away from its biological roots (that he predicts will take place) is a new form of religion. He tells us that humans will transcend the "limitations of our biological bodies and brain," that "future machines will be human even if they are not biological," that their intelligence will be artificial, yet superior to that of man's.

What is the major flaw in all this Buck Rogers ideology? The fact of consciousness and the presence of spirit are attributes of human beings. But no matter how sophisticated the technology of man becomes, its resultant machines will always lack these two elemental forces of consciousness and spirit. Why? Because they derive from the Source of Life, not from the machinations of man.

Unfortunately hubristic man dominates today's world, and he thinks otherwise. Hubris leads ignorant minds to believe that the laws of nature can be circumvented with high-tech wizardry, that God-endowed attributes can be duplicated by man, and that the future can be comprised of life without limits.

Biologist, P.Z. Myers, says the problem with Kurzweil's theories is that they're "a very bizarre mixture of ideas that are solid and good with ideas that are crazy. It's as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad."

Such is the nature of modernity. Good and evil are now treated as indistinguishable.
---------------
Nelson Hultberg is a contributing author to the  ARRA News Service. He is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas and the Director of Americans for a Free Republic and author of The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values.

Tags: Nelson Hultberg, Americans for Free Republic, Singularity, Another Collectivist Myth To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Posted by Bill Smith at 11:30 AM - Post Link

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home


View U.S. National Debt

Don't miss anything!
Subscribe to the
ARRA News Service
It's FREE & No Ads!

You will receive a verification email
& must validate you subscribed!

You Then Receive One Email Each AM
With Prior Days Articles / Toons / More


Also, Join & leave conservative posts & comments on
Facebook.com/ARRANewsService


Recent Posts:
Personal Tweets by the editor:
Dr. Bill - OzarkGuru - @arra
#Christian Conservative; Retired USAF & Grad Professor. Constitution NRA ProLife schoolchoice fairtax - Editor ARRA NEWS SERVICE. THANKS FOR FOLLOWING!

Action Links!
State Upper & Lower House Members
State Attorney Generals
State Governors
The White House
US House of Representatives
US Senators
GrassFire
NumbersUSA
Ballotpedia

Facebook Accts - Dr. Bill Smith
Pages:
ARRA News Service
Arkansans Against Big Government
Alley-White Am. Legion #52
Catholics & Protestants United Against Discrimination
End Taxpayer Funding of NPR
Overturn Roe V. Wade
Prolife Soldiers
Project Wildfire 4 Life
Republican Liberty Caucus of Arkansas
The Gold Standard
US Atty Gen Loretta Lynch, aka Eric Holder, Must Go
Veterans for Sarah Palin
Why Vote for Hillary (Satire)
FB Groups:
Arkansas For Sarah Palin
Arkansas Conservative Caucus
Arkansas County Tea Party
Arkansans' Discussion Group on National Issues
Blogs for Borders
Conservative Solutions
Conservative Voices
Defend Marriage -- Arkansas
FairTax
FairTax Nation
Arkansas for FairTax
Friends of the TEA Party in Arkansas
Freedom Roundtable
Pro-Life Rocks - Arkansas
Republican Network
Republican Liberty Caucus of AR
Reject the U.N.

Patriots
Exchange
Links

Request Via
Article Comment

Links to ARRA News
A Patriotic Nurse
Agora Associates
a12iggymom's Blog
America, You Asked For It!
America's Best Choice
ARRA News Twitter
As The Crackerhead Crumbles
Blogs For Borders
Blogs for Palin
Blow the Trumpet Ministry
Boot Berryism
Cap'n Bob & the Damsel
Chicago Ray Report - Obama Regime Report
Chuck Baldwin - links
Common Cents
Conservative Voices
Diana's Corner
Greater Fitchburg For Life
Lasting Liberty Blog
Liberal Isn't Amy
Marathon Pundit
Patriot's Corner
Right on Issues that Matter
Right Reason
Rocking on the Right Side
Saber Point
Saline Watchdog
Sultan Knish
The Blue Eye View
The Born Again Americans
TEA Party Cartoons
The Foxhole | Unapologetic Patriot
The Liberty Republican
The O Word
The Path to Tyranny Blog
The Real Polichick
The War on Guns
TOTUS
Twitter @ARRA
Underground Notes
Warning Signs
Women's Prayer & Action
WyBlog

Editor's Managed Twitter Accounts
Twitter Dr. Bill Smith @arra
Twitter Arkansas @GOPNetwork
Twitter @BootBerryism
Twitter @SovereignAllies
Twitter @FairTaxNation

Editor's Recommended Orgs
Accuracy in Media (AIM)
American Action Forum (AAF)
American Committment
American Culture & Faith Institute
American Enterprise Institute
American Family Business Institute
Americans for Limited Government
Americans for Prosperity
Americans for Tax Reform
American Security Council Fdn
AR Faith & Ethics Council
Arkansas Policy Foundation
Ayn Rand Institute
Bill of Rights Institute
Campaign for Working Families
CATO Institute
Center for Individual Freedom
Center for Immigration Studies
Center for Just Society
Center for Freedom & Prosperity
Citizens Against Gov't Waste
Citizens in Charge Foundstion
Coalition for the Future American Worker
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Concerned Veterans for America
Concerned Women for America
Declaration of Am. Renewal
Eagle Forum
FairTax
Family Research Council
Family Security Matters
Franklin Center for Gov't & Public Integrity
Freedom Works
Gingrich Productions
Global Incident Map
Great Americans
Gold Standard 2012 Project
Gun Owners of America (GOA)
Heritage Action for America
David Horowitz Freedom Center
Institute For Justice
Institute for Truth in Accounting
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Judicial Watch
Less Government
Media Reseach Center
National Center for Policy Analysis
National Right To Work Foundation
National Rifle Association (NRA)
National Rifle Association (NRA-ILA)
News Busters
O'Bluejacket's Patriotic Flicks
OathKeepers
Open Secrets
Presidential Prayer Team
Religious Freedom Coalition
Renew America
Ron Paul Institute
State Policy Network
Tax Foundation
Tax Policy Center
The Club for Growth
The Federalist
The Gold Standard Now
The Heritage Foundation
The Leadership Institute
Truth in Accounting
Union Facts



Blogs For Borders

Reject the United Nations

Presidential Prayer Team

Thousands of Deadly Islamic Terror Attacks Since 9/11


FairTax Nation on FaceBook
Friends of Israel - Stand with Israel
Blog Feeds
Syndicated - Get the ARRA News Service feed Syndicated!
ARRA Blog Feed

Add to Google Reader or Homepage

Add to The Free Dictionary

Powered by Blogger


  • To Exchange Links - Email: editor@arranewsservice.com!
  • Comments by contributing authors or other sources do not necessarily reflect the position the editor, other contributing authors, sources, readers, or commenters. No contributors, or editors are paid for articles, images, cartoons, etc. While having reported on and promoting principles & beleifs beliefs of other organizations, this blog/site is soley controlled and supported by the editor. This site/blog does not advertise for money or services nor does it solicit funding for its support.
  • Fair Use: This site/blog may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of political, human rights, economic, democracy, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as provided for in section Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Per said section, the material on this site/blog is distributed without profit to readers to view for the expressed purpose of viewing the included information for research, educational, or satirical purposes. Any person/entity seeking to use copyrighted material shared on this site/blog for purposes that go beyond "fair use," must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
  • © 2006 - 2020 ARRA News Service
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.