From: Jeff Medina (analyticphilosophy@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Feb 11 2006 - 15:58:52 MST
On 2/11/06, Shane Legg <shane@vetta.org> wrote:
> To my surprise some people turned up to defend the idea that
> faith healing is indeed relevant to the singularity. I had expected
> the complete opposite reaction.
>
> Is there really a sub-group within the singularitarians with this view?
Not "within the Singularitarians", but distinct from the SIAI-breed(s)
there are the fans of Terence McKenna, who used the term 'singularity'
at some point for one of his ideas. I would wager the folks you
encountered are using the term in McKenna's sense, as he was a very
New Agey, LSD-using, soul-believing sort of fellow (or this is my
impression from my limited knowledge of him). There's a blurb on him
at http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/terence_mckenna1 , and a
confused essay that conflates the two notions of singularity is
available at http://www.breakingopenthehead.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=18;t=000002
.
Perhaps an explicit dissociation from McKenna is in order. I wonder to
what extent people have come upon the SIAI-notion with a prior
knowledge of McKenna, presumed we were followers of his views, and
dismissed us without investigation on that basis.
-- Jeff Medina http://www.painfullyclear.com/ Community Director Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.intelligence.org/ Relationships & Community Fellow Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies http://www.ieet.org/ School of Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London http://www.bbk.ac.uk/phil/
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