Preface
As a member of the board of directors of the Singularity Action Group I have been given the opportunity to express my viewpoint on the singularity. As I am only one of seven board members, my views only reflect one seventh of the position of the organization. ;)
Topics
The Technological Singularity promises to be an epoch making event which will radically expand the possibilities and choices available to individuals. The exact definition of the Singularity has been discussed extensively elsewhere. Ideas about the exact nature and impact of the Singularity tend to stir the strongest emotions in people leading to irrationality and cult behavior. My purpose here is to attempt to describe the fundamental features and meanings of the singularity with the greatest possible rationality without, at the same time, expressing any personal fears, ambitions, or political agendas.
A Technological Singularity can be assumed to feature some form of super-human machine intelligence. Aside from what others believe, intelligence is equivalent to a muscle. A super-intelligent man is not fundamentally different, in relation to ourselves, from a man who can lift 400 lbs. The ability to manipulate and engineer arbitrary intelligences will be a tremendous asset to any human endeavor. While intelligence means ability it absolutely does not mean wisdom or goodness. While greater levels of wisdom may be available to a being with a super-human mind it does not at all follow that it will do wise things or even obey the law.
In discussions of the Singularity it is often taken for granted that AI will be something completely new and without precedent. I don't think this is so at all. When you look at the purpose of AI, which is to provide people with augmented mental abilities (directly or indirectly) and to provide people with the products of that intelligence which would be unattainable or attainable only with great difficulty without you find that the history extends far into the past.
The first intelligence augmenting device invented was the clay tablet and stylus. It is impossible to argue that the impact of this device, and its refinements through the ages, was not, itself, an epoch making event. It allowed people to extend their ability to calculate, remember, and communicate with astonishing results. In fact, the very definition of a civilized culture includes the use of a system of writing. In this time we see the construction of the pyramids, the hanging gardens of Babylon, and many other wonders known and unknown.
The first mechanization of calculation was in the form of the abacus. With its many beads it can be in any one of billions of possible configurations. A skilled operator of this device can dramatically reduce the time it would have taken to do the same calculation with pen and paper. Many other extensions followed. In around 250 BC the Greeks had invented the first mechanical computing device which they used to model the cosmos and make astronomical predictions.
Stretching out our time horizon all the way back to the formation of the Earth some 4.3 billion years ago, it can be argued that the singularity began some four hundred years ago, at the beginning of the modern age. In 1640 we see Pascal's adding machine. This extended the Greek's machine which modeled concrete things this new machine modeled the abstract world of numbers. Another breakthrough in that period was the mechanical clock which augmented a person's ability to measure the passage of time. Moving forward to the 1790s we come across the first programmable machine robot, the punch card driven loom. In 1828-1840 we see the invention of the first programmable computer by the genius engineer, Charles Babbage. In 1846 George Boole compiled and formalized the rules of logic into a work called "The Laws of Thought". In 1890 we see the first application of an electronic adding machine, used in this case to tabulate the 1890 census. By the mid thirties we had electronic databases and teletype machines. In the period between 1944 and 1950 a series of machines from Colossus through Univac. Since then our imaginations (in the form of computer simulations) has improved steadily from simple ballistic trajectory plots through the atmosphere to complex VR simulations of the Apollo missions to Quake III. With Computer Aided Drafting and design the numbers of products and our abilities to produce them efficiently has improved at a break-neck pace.
Also, in this period, we see the first autonomous robots. These are machines that are programmed with a set of instructions and can operate usefully for many hours without human intervention. Today there is a major push in Japan to produce the first practical domestic android. It is projects such as these that are likely to produce the best early generally intelligent artificial minds.
So what happens when this first general intelligence emerges? According to some very reasonable predictions it will be able to advance its technology radically in a very short time. It can be presumed that, with sufficient resources, all possible advancements in science, mathematics, and computer architecture will be made within a decade or less. While there are no necessary material effects of this event aside from the allocation of resources, the metaphysical impact will be profound. We will go from a civilization where one had to divide one's time between figuring out how to do things and doing them to a time when the only question that remains is "What do I do now?" This is a very scary question which gets to the heart of what is known as "existential angst". People such as Ray Kurzweil and the extropian movement dismiss this question by saying that the purpose of life is to evolve, and that we should grow at some large percentage of the maximum rate possible and the like. Other people take a more conservative viewpoint and say that we will all live a life of luxury in a world much like the present one.
The important thing I want to impress upon you is that our future is so open ended that neither is inherently more likely or desirable. The singularity is not a holy rapture or some other apocalyptic event but rather it is, baring calamity, a doorway to our hopes and desires. It is a period that will make everything that is possible available to us. What we do with it is purely a matter of choice.
As we enter the critical phases of the singularity society will undergo a number of stresses. Our challenge is to find a path through the singularity that does not totally disrupt our society and the social order. Our machines may be a great deal faster than we are and they may think that they know what is right. They might even presume to make modifications to the social structure in an the blink of an eye. From the human perspective it is vital that they be restrained from doing so. The principles of freedom and democracy demand that everyone be given all the time they desire to do anything they want. If they want to establish a jolly old kingdom with knights and castles then it is their right to do so for as long as they want and with real atoms and molecules too.
Between there and here are a few roadblocks. The most obvious, at this date, are the conservatives who say that we should not pursue advanced technologies and continue to live the lifestyles of our ancestors. These people are wrongfully seeking the power to control people's lives by denying them things that they want and would be otherwise available to them. In so far as effective legal and, if necessary, military controls are maintained there is no reasonable objection one could make about what others do in such a way that doesn't threaten their own way of life. The key here being that changes should be adopted rather than imposed.
All appeals to ancient moral systems and religion are bunk nonsense. They have absolutely no place in a contemporary discussion of political policy.
The other extreme, that I will return to repeatedly in this text, is an extreme that says that we should take these technologies and modify ourselves and society in some radical way. The specifics are of no concern. It doesn't matter how well intentioned or well considered the plan is. If it is a social agenda that the people affected by it didn't agree to it is wrong by definition. Some people paint the singularity as a catastrophe which people must be saved from. Others want to create a gray apocalypse with no regard for others they call "sheeple" or worse. People who think that they know anything about what the future should be like and seek to impose these opinions should be restrained by the proper and justified application of legal and military force.
The fears of the singularity can lead people to put their faith blindly into those who make sweet promises about what things will be like afterwards if it is their agenda that is actualized first. Promises of paradise tend to cloud critical thinking. Demagogues use this along with claims about the inferiority of the human mind to put a leash around those willing to follow. Even with its flaws and limitations the human mind is an amazing thing. It has conquered everything from the neutrino to the moon. People who wish to control it (your mind) first disparage its innate capacities. Take pride in yourself. Don't allow anyone or anything to dominate your life.
It is okay to allow your neighbor to seek and acquire whatever personal attribute he likes. This will not change your life at all. His bragging might become annoying but then there's a good chance your neighbor is like that already. Still, no matter what he does to himself, or where he came from, do not accept him, or anything else, as a god over yourself. It is your duty to yourself to remain your own status as final arbitrar over your own future. In performance of this duty you must remain vigilant against anyone who seeks to diminish you from this status.
The general politics and economics of the singularity, or at least a benign singularity, are fairly straight forward. The best approach is to move to a libertarian government. Yeah, I say that cuz I'm biased. ;) Actually a fiscally conservative non-redistributionist policy combined with an unwavering commitment to human rights will be sufficient. The philosophy of libertarianism itself is the deliberate separation of direct political agendas from government action. The government's proper role is that of a moderator of the political discourse. It really doesn't matter how far the most advanced goes so long as that entity does not turn around and commit criminal acts against our persons and properties. Though it may take several years, enhancement technology will be used at a steady and increasing rate. As wealth increases all will be able to participate. As long as the rule of law can be maintained, this can be an optimal outcome. Persons of lower economic class (including myself who has practically no money) need only wait.
These are the two pillars of Libertarianism. They deserve reviewing here because they play a central role in ensuring safety for all through the coming gigayears. This means safety for men, safety for women, and safety for anyone else who might seem to be a bit behind the times. This is the definition of freedom. You can't be free unless you are free to be the person you are as well as free to become the person you want to be. This means that every person should have at least a fighting chance to try any possible transformation. This freedom must not be abridged in any way. This freedom should be maintained by a duly elected and accountable government or some community of authorities that maintains, within itself, a system of checks and balances maintaining stability.
Many have suggested that the ultimate inevitable or, in some cases, desirable end of the singularity is some form of "singleton" entity. Only a fool wants this. Such an entity could easily break or go insane or fail in any one of countless numbers of ways and the result would be an existential catastrophe. Worse than that, robs people of the free and dynamic universe which is their birthright.
The other side of freedom is responsibility. People who have some physical advantage, or any physical capability at all, have a responsibility not to use it to attack the life, liberty, or property of other people, even rednecks. This is the basic idea of fairness that goes back to the earliest legal thinking. This is responsibility in the negative sense. What does responsibility mean in the positive?
Some would propose that we have a responsibility, for the sake of possible lives saved and other reasons, to advance the date of the singularity. After the singularity some say that any being with god-like powers has the responsibility to actively protect, and even serve, lesser beings. This is not true. No such responsibility exists. There is no law that says that you must stop and help a man bleeding to death on the pavement. Even morally, it is wrong to involve yourself in the affairs of others. The positive responsibility of a person is not to meddle with the affairs of others but rather to uphold the law. This means that when you either witness or are told of a criminal violation, that has taken place, of someone's, anyone's, life liberty or property, and you are in a position of either granted or de facto power, your responsibility is to see that justice is done.
The one point that I want to emphasize here is that the law must be purely reactive. To interfere with someone before a crime is, itself, a crime. Only when criminal intent can be proved can some intervention be justified though no such intervention is ever mandated. A single exception to this rule is that of the existential risk. Global risks such as the rise of a single dominant AI entity warrant any action required to stop them in accordance with the idea of "clear and present danger." While I resist any attempts to regulate any science or technology I must concede that there are, potentially, defense issues in which the people have every right to muster any forces necessary to protect basic rights and freedoms.
To this point, in the discussion, I have focused almost exclusively on the nature of the singularity and how we must try to navigate the rough waters between all of the competing interests. This piece would be a total waste if I didn't take at least a little time to take a look at the possibilities of the future. So lets look forward!
The first possibility I want to discuss continues my earlier theme. You will have the choice to remain exactly as you are and live in relative affluence for the rest of your natural life. This goes for anyone who could possibly read this and I back it with a pledge. I promise to defend your right to choose not to use or directly take advantage or be otherwise affected by these technological developments. I will continue to be active and vigorous in your defense.
I would think that at least some people, some small portion of the population at least, would be interested in more. Of the more popular opportunities will be in performance enhancements. These will include bionics and other implanted devices that will serve to upgrade your existing systems for any purpose you desire. The singularity isn't for nerds only. If you are a jock and you want to run faster, jump higher, or whatever there will be options and products for you. I mentioned above that science and certain engineering fields would be finished shortly after the singularity. I carefully left out the field of inventions and designs. While there are only so many flavors of quarks in the universe, the design space for inventions and products is infinite. If nothing else we can spend eternity playing with newly invented toys.
Another subject, one that I expect to take some heat for, is sexual modifications. The culture in America today is much more liberal than it used to be but still it continues to have some very significant hang ups which are both a natural result of our cognitive structure and interactions as well as part of our puritanical legacy from the founding of the country. It would be inappropriate for me to mention anything specific here but in general there will be some very, er, creative minds at work here that will stretch the limits of even the most advanced technologies. The things that people will do to themselves will blow your mind. As a society we must be tolerant of these experiments. What would life be without the spice? If we have one natural resource that we must struggle to preserve through the future it is our diversity. It is one of our principal weapons against boredom and stagnation.
The most radical transformation that I would consider to be meaningfully possible for a human is that into a cyborg. We will be able to dip our bucket into the well of creation once more and bring out totally new biologies. Biologies that can withstand the rigors of space travel. Bodies that can shape-shift. Minds that can reach beyond the cranium. The power to take advantage of machine intelligence. The power to direct secondary robotic platforms. These can be ours. Unfortunately, migrating our mind into a better computing architecture, which is not at all the same as substrate or hardware, is an extremely difficult problem that I don't expect to be able to solve in an ad hoc writing such as this.
Beyond this we have choices. One idea that has been proposed in various places is the idea to merge on some level. Usually this is considered on a mental level though I wouldn't deny the physical level either. This is a major choice that goes far beyond swapping out your hand for a tool-arm when you go to work on your sculpture (if that is what you choose to do). This is a type of choice that will have a very profound effect on the nature of your being and one that is utterly unprecedented in all of history. You will also have the power to create new life in any form that you can conceive and build. Of course you must consider carefully the design of such an offspring such that it will have fewer limitations in the potential to transform than your current mind. Some people have expressed quite openly a choice to commit an odd type of suicide such that the pattern of their brain can be simulated within a computer. They would continue this running pattern a continuation of themselves. Some are so convinced that this is the future that they pose an active threat of existential annihilation to all humanoid life forms. (and therefore should meet with proportionate military response.) This leads me into my next topic.
Stupid Mistakes and False Assumptions
The Singularity has inspired many ideas. Many of these ideas are quite good. Others are misguided, and many many more are flat out wrong. Angst about the future both material and existential has driven people to construct false frameworks which lend meaning to their lives but which are objectively irrational. Other ideas appeal to our emotions or some other sense we acquired during our lives which would, at first, seem like a perfectly good idea but ultimately and inevitably lead to catastrophe should they be put into practice.
The first falsehood, and the one that I think is by far the most destructive, is that there is any inherent direction to the universe. To construct a metaphor, lets say that you are standing in the middle of a vast desert. The ground is almost completely flat and there are no landmarks on the horizon. The sun overhead is stationary and offers no bearings. You stand there and you can find that you can go in any direction, walk around in circles, pace back and forth, sit down, jump up and down and there is nothing in this universe to even tell you which way is East much less whether you should travel towards or away from it or in some other direction, or even whether to travel at all. This is the core of existential angst. As you gain freedoms through singularity technologies you loose the convenience of necessity. You loose the necessity to go find an oasis to get your water. Or the need to hunt for food.
This is, perhaps, the most terrifying thing in the universe. The more you accomplish the less you have. As most things distressing to people they look for a way around them. In this case they use their best reckoning and use the most subtle slope in the terrain to choose their course. They then take a few steps along this path that they have chosen and are quickly filled with a sense of uncertainty. They feel, at a most base level, doubts about themselves and their choices. They look ahead and see things that are horrifying on a visceral level such as destructive brain uploading on this path and begin to get scared. Instead of being honest and admitting this to themselves they concoct fictions about this being the One True Path for all sentience. They commit acts of criminal fraud by attempting to deceive the rest that this course that they have chosen for themselves is also the best for others as well. It is even reasonable to extrapolate that their all-to-human emotions of uncertainty and self doubt will cause them to coerce others to follow them on their own lonely roads just so that they won't feel so alone. While this is understandable it is very difficult to have sympathy for these people and the escalating series of crimes that they seem ready to perpetrate.
In discussions of bootstrap AI and other related discussions there is an implied assumption that when the commandment "Improve thyself" is issued the AI will do anything remotely similar to what one might expect. The simple fact is there is nothing in the universe to be called improvement. This is a natural extension of the desert metaphor. Improvement is exactly the same as travel towards a destination. As there is no north or south in the desert there is no better or worse. You must pick a destination before you can travel. Absent necessity, there is no direction. Here we run into painful truths such as the fact that the best apple is a pretty lousy orange. A great mainframe operating system, such as Unix, is a horrible PC operating system, and a great PC operating system, such as DOS, is a terrible mainframe OS. This is the fundamental nature of the universe.
Just as there is no such thing as improvement there is no such thing as "higher" or "lower" when it comes to states of existence. One of the greatest lies, one that exposes and makes naked the religious nature of many singularitan viewpoints is the use of the word transcendence to describe one or another of the transformative possibilities of the singularity. It is like standing in the desert and looking at the dirt path you have picked, almost at random, and saying "Hey look! my road is made of gold, follow me." as if it lead to some part of the world that was not a flat, featureless, desert. The only motivation for such a claim is insecurity and self doubt. When you say this to your traveling companions who are looking at the other fork you insult their intelligence and deny the legitimacy of their individuality. This type of thinking is flat out wrong and potentially criminal if it is implemented by force. Some people have even expressed an opinion that such "uplifting" is morally desirable. That is simply outrageous by any objective standard.
In AI there is a common assumption that once it "takes off" it will quickly, by default, convert all available matter into additional computational "substrate". This links into the bogus concept of improvement. While if the AI were specifically designed and constructed with a goal which could be translated into english as "maximize your information processing capacity" would do so by converting all mater in the inverse as described and then sit idle for the rest of eternity. That is the true stupidity of acquiring computational substrate for its own sake. The only thing that could motivate such a desire is the same type of emotion that a boy in a locker room would say things "mine is bigger than yours." Of course constructing motivations is more of an art than a science and must be expressed by programming structures which have a close approximation to the desired effect in the completed AI. A more useful motivational system would be general curiosity and playfulness in the benign sense. This will serve to develop a generally useful AI that is of relatively little danger to anyone. Later, through a series of verbal interactions, the user can direct the AI to improve and refine its design, seeking the optimal architecture on a given scale that it no larger than a few cubic meters. Further requests should always be suffixed by "Acquire whatever materials you require and can legally obtain for this purpose." A mindmaker that fails to control his creation should be held legally responsible for its actions.
This use of the word "require" is a very important principle Any mechanical construction or design change is only logical when it serves to further some desired goal. All goals other than survival are merely a matter of fiat. Some have expressed that a universal goal should be growth and an increase in complexity. That's fine as long as they pursue that goal responsibly and within the law. Someone such as myself would be more drawn to simplicity and would seek designs that are no less capable or intelligent but are designed to minimize total complexity of the system as measured by the quantity of information in its blueprints and sourcecode. The question is of desire. These are merely two different roads one may choose. You make a terrible mistake when you assume that just because one looks better than the other to you that this opinion automatically translates into it being better, in some fundamental sense, than anything else no matter how extensive your rationalizations are.
On the subject of good versus bad things people frequently like to take a whole category of human emotions and condemn them for being "bad". Of all the reasons one could choose to attempt emotional engineering one's self this is the most misguided. As I am trying to argue here, the concept of good and bad has little or no connection to the almost flat nature of reality. When evaluating emotions the best criterion is utility, that is does this emotional configuration serve my needs and interests for the future? Some will make the mistake of saying that since bad emotions can be destructive they serve no useful purpose. One must then wonder why we have them at all. The answer is, of course, that they served our ancestors in some vital way that they have become a nearly universal trait to all humans. If there is one feature that is strongly correlated with the utility of an emotional makeup it is balance. A wise person will be vigilant about how his emotions are functioning and, when necessary, seek to adjust the balance of emotions to meet the requirements of a new environment.
As a corollary to the value of a diversity of interests the ideas that some such as Isaac Asimov have promoted of some grand unification of humanity into a single consciousness is one of the greatest mistakes that can be made. I agree with the intuition of Scott Adams in his masterpiece, God's Debris where he basically said that the only unexplored country for such an entity would be self-annihilation. This then yields a theory in which the universe is cyclic, going through successive Big Bangs and Big Crunches for ages and ages and ever and ever. The best way to avoid that trap is to diversify as much as possible. As an extension of that any singleton entity is contrary, in all ways, to the rational desire to live and, by extension, to perpetuate the universe as long as possible.
The last mistake that I want to bring up in this article is the mistake that the singularity will, automatically, be out of our control. This is can only be true if we fail to try to control it. Irrespective of how powerful the forces of the singularity turn out to be they can still be bent to our will. We must exercise due diligence in ensuring the work done by the various research agencies in AI as well as nanotech to see that proper human responsibilities are not being shirked onto some tooth fairy or mere speculation, no matter how elaborately constructed.
The most disturbing of all the singularitan ideas is that of uploading, especially in its rightly termed destructive form but not excluding any of the others either. I am completely against any and all of the current proposals for "brain uploading". I maintain a statement of desire not to be uploaded for any reason as well as a standing threat that should this be disobeyed I will destroy everything I come across, especially any entities responsible for the crime before deleting myself. A number of people accuse me of being paranoid. In these times I feel very well supported in the claim that paranoia is the only prudent response to many of the threats of the coming years. These people are so full of their own ideas that they assert that "becoming an upload" is the one's only chance at immortality.
The people who I have encountered who support destructive brain uploading seem to be suffering some from a bizarre and profound cognitive dissonance about things as simple as counting. They seem incapable of counting past 1. In a discussion with one of these people when I pointed out that while two isolated computer simulations would have a similar subjective experience this doesn't overcome the fact that there are two distinct instances of the mind. where the uploaders only see patterns. They say that the fact that the pattern is identical, the two instances are also equivalent and hence the same. This is so ludicrously wrong that proving the inequivalency of the two instances is as trivial as cutting the power to one of them and demonstrating that the other is unaffected (and hence distinct) is not sufficient to break them from the line of thinking that there is only one mind there. In a similar fashion a computer simulation of a brain is not the same at all as the original brain.
When an uploader attempts to support the notion that the simulation in the machine is the same as the pile of goo that used to be your brain he will usually resort to an argument along the lines of "well an atomically precise simulation of your brain would behave just like you in every way and hence be you". Okay, lets take a hit off of the appropriate psychoactive substance and try to believe this. Molecular circuits attempting to simulate atoms will be slower, require more energy, space, and mater than the original atoms by some linear function. This is not a matter of your mind running on transistors, its your mind running on its wetware in emulation on a completely different machine. So while, technically, you are running on relays you don't, by any means, run at relay speed. You run at whatever speed it takes the machine to do molecular dynamics simulations. You can cut corners in this process to a significant extent but even still you are going to suffer some major performance hits. You might, with great effort, be able to break even with the speed of your raw biology.
But lets say that you take another hit from your stash and try to believe the claims that once you are in the computer it will be easier to make changes to your brain. This is utterly contrary to everything we know about software engineering. The software we have today is brittle and rigid. A piece of software that takes shortcuts by simulating whole molecules is significantly different from a piece of software that pays attention to each atom. The only conceivable way to "migrate" to the new software is to stop your program (death) and send it through some approximate, and lossy, translation tool. At which point a new mind, or at least new from the perspective of people who can count past 1, is created. This mind may behave substantially the same as its predecessor but there will be no other connection between the two. The process is akin to the way our genes perpetuate through the ages, continually making copies of their information but discarding hosts at each generation. Apparently some people look forward to be the equivalent of a strand of DNA.
Whatever narcotic you've been taking to make it to this point, drop some acid for this one. To begin taking advantage of the sacred all mighty 10nm transistor you need to start "reading" the structure of the brain and mapping it to some more abstract computation. If this is done, a great deal of information that was a part of your original brain will be discarded. Hopefully this information won't be critical to your memories and behaviors so you will succeed in becoming a piece of abstract modern art with a highly contrived relationship to the original. This new design will, indeed, run at lunatic speed (Oh my god! They went to plaid!). Regardless of what such a mind would think, I would definitely consider it to be that of a lunatic. The architecture of this mind would still be the same so you would only be marginally more intelligent and not have any significant new capabilities. To be smarter, and gain more capabilities, you will need to discard your mind structure completely and somehow translate yourself, again, into an AI architecture. At this point you would be better off starting a completely fresh AI and then telling it everything you know and then shooting yourself in the head. The end result would be indistinguishable though the latter might make a little more sense.
I have just shown that uploaders are, as we say, psychiatrically challenged. While this is already a damning indictment of them there is another attack that I want to stuff into this article. Above I made the claim that becoming a cyborg is the most radical meaningful transformation one could undergo. The implication is that beyond even the discontinuities of uploading there is something even more fundamentally wrong with the idea. To see this you will have to peel back those old eyelids and take a good hard look in the mirror. Better yet, see if you can pry open your third eye (om) and look directly inside yourself. if you are at all honest in this activity, you will be forced to accept that the thing you see there is a human being. While the human being is currently the pinnacle of evolution and, by many accounts, a wonderful thing, it is not a computer program. Sounds silly, doesn't it? Well, these uploaders think otherwise. They think that the human mind will run just fine on a computer. Some, who believe the lie of manifest destiny, think that running inside a computer is the ultimate end of evolution. I hope they aren't right.
The more honest uploaders admit that for the human mind to function properly it will need to be placed in a human body or a simulation thereof. They then see the ability to specify the VR environment freely to be equivalent to a digital heaven. This is, of course, a lie. In such a configuration the mind will be utterly oblivious to any direct perception of its real environment and will be at great disadvantage when trying to manipulate the vast complexities of the underlying software. If you like being a fish out of water, uploading is a great choice. For the rest, it is stupid. The best you can hope for in such a state is to run around in VR in a manner not at all different from the guards in the classic game Wolfenstein 3D which yell "Mein Laven!" when they die. No matter how many petabytes of computation goes into a simulation it will be no different. It will be a completely meaningless fantasy within which the higher intellect is of no use.
As much as I despise the ideas uploaders hold sacred I will not violate my principal of freedom to interfere with their Lives in Name Only and demand that they return that respect and tolerance. Working towards this end is, in my opinion, the principal mission of the Singularity Action Group.
Singularity Action Group website frames version.