Crypto Enlightenment: A Social Theory of Blockchains

There is something new and fundamental happening in the world which could be the start of the next enlightenment period. The core of this is shifting from centralized to decentralized models in all aspects of our lives, both individual and societally.

Cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin), blockchains, and decentralization) are not just about 1) digitizing and modernizing money, payments, economics, assets, legal contracts, and governance, thereby 2) accelerating the transition to the automation and actualization economy from the labor economy, but 3) more fundamentally, these factors are allowing us to re-explore our reality, and specify it as more internally-determined than externally-determined.

Figure 1: The Crypto Enlightenment: Social Theory of Blockchains

Societal Shared Trust is Algorithmic Trust
The tip of the iceberg is Bitcoin – digital money. Bitcoin runs on software called blockchain technology, which is a distributed ledger, a decentralized computational memory of human interactions. As individuals, we can place our trust in the computational system, and no longer need to trust institutions, third-party intermediaries like banks and governments, to coordinate our patterns of activity. Blockchains are a more trustworthy trust: algorithmic trust, not institutional trust.

Blockchain technology is technical (cryptographic ledgers); economic and political (a flatter more-extensible mode of organization); and psychological, sociological, and philosophical (new ways of conceiving reality). The real invitation and potentiality of blockchain technology is to radically rethink reality – what is it to decentralize everything we do and reconstitute life through a frame of abundance and immanence, attending to what is possible and desirable mindfully, not merely a reaction to a reality which seems determined by scarcity.

A New Philosophy of Economic Theory
A philosophy of economic theory is necessary since nearly all existing economic theories have taken scarcity as a central precept. These antiquated models configured by scarcity are weak philosophically because they are conceptually limited, and are also weak empirically since there is emerging and existing evidence of situations in the world where scarcity is not a parameter, and not the governing parameter. A ready example of this is digital goods, such as software or digital images, where there is essentially zero cost to producing another unit by copying the goods electronically.

Crypto Enlightenment is a Rethinking of Authority
There have been some paradigm-shifting moments in human history. The Enlightenment (1650-1800) concerned knowledge, and also importantly, authority. While there has been much rethinking and progression regarding knowledge, there has been less regarding authority since the modern notion of the individual as an agent in society arose during the Enlightenment. Now with the advent of blockchain technology and decentralized models, there can be a new consideration of authority. There is a possibility of constructing alternatives to centralized institutional power which has become a juggernaut of extraction instead of support; a less-trustworthy diminisher of rights and social goods instead of an extender and promulgator. Decentralized models empower the individual in radical new ways and call for the rethinking of authority for both the individual and society. Per the Internet revolution, we as individuals now taking self-responsibility for many activities such as deciding what and how we consume news media, entertainment, financial services, (stock-trading, credit services, portfolio management), and health services. Next is economic and governance systems.

To rethink the place and definition of authority, a philosophy of immanence is helpful and necessary. Immanence is the idea of self-determination from within; everything comes from within in a system, world, or person; structure and content are emergent and not pre-specified. Immanence contrasts with transcendence where everything comes from outside a system, world, or person; pre-determining the system externally per fixed specifications. One way of seeing reality is as immanence and transcendence; there is one side that is focused on recouping a pre-specified baseline ideal, and the other of open-ended immanence. Human emotion is an example from the natural world of baseline-immanence, where negative emotions (fear, anger) physiologically narrow possible pathways of action to fight, flight, or flee, where as positive emotions (love, compassion) trigger general, non-directional cognitive activation, a widened range of unspecified novel, creative, and unscripted courses of thought and action.

Much of human psychological activity might be said to be concerned with the attempt to attaining a baseline ideal that has been pre-specified and externally imposed, and as an ideal impossible to ever attain. Some of the contexts where these ideals impossibly govern behavior and psychology are ethics, justice, equality, liberty, subjectivation, and the pursuit of the good life. Attaining the baseline is an idea rooted in fixity, where the form (morphology) one begins with pre-determines possible outcomes. Baseline is a stance oriented to negating and critiquing, to narrowing, circumscribing, and closing-off; a ‘no’ energy. Certainly ideas of ideals may come from outside an individual, and the distinction is not acquiescing and adopting them wholesale, but introspecting as to how they would be useful appropriated individually for me; internally, reworked and reclaimed with autonomy to empower the individual. (Seeing how immanence and transcendence interact, Hegel terms this dialectics, or conversation of appropriation, as an immanent process of transcendence.)

The other side of reality is immanence, a determining from within. This is the open-ended stance of novel construction up and out from baseline into new territory; “yes-and” improvisation energy, collaboration, creativity, novelty, the new, thinking out-of-the box, greenfield, emergent, dynamic, serendipitous, flow, complexity, fractalization, and multi-dimensionality. Moving out open-endedly from baseline is an idea rooted in capability; growth is dictated by capacity (which can grow) and not morphology (which is fixed); capability and attitude determine possibility. Immanence is a stance oriented towards the affirmation of the positive, to “yes-and” energy.

Cryptocitizen Sensibility
The sensibility of the cryptocitizen is being in a stance of immanence with ourselves; trusting our internal selves more. There is more self-responsibility-taking; questioning, deciding, and designing which economic systems, political systems, communities, and labor systems (productive work effort) in which we would like to participate. The distinction is between ‘selecting governance services’ and ‘being governed,’ where increasingly, there is the possibility of a much higher degree of self-determination and self-creation in selecting the communities and structures in which we participate, particularly those related to economics and politics. Per a singularity-class technology like decentralized cryptographic models, these systems for organizing multi-party activity can scale way down to backgrounded trust-invoking microlevels in ways that were not previously possible in hierarchical models.

Abundance Theory of Flourishing
Theories of flourishing address how we might organize ourselves individually and societally towards the endeavor of the good life. Leaving aside the problematic language and valorization of the ‘good’ life, there are been three traditional types of theories of flourishing (Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 1984). Theories of flourishing have been hedonistic (seeking the greatest balance of pleasure over pain), conative (seeking desire fulfillment), and objective list theoretic (seeking to list other aspects that might constitute well-being in addition to pleasure and desire fulfillment).

1. Immanent Flourishing of Abundance: Sustenance + Actualization
A new theory can be proposed in line with modern themes, an Abundance Theory of Flourishing. An abundance theory of flourishing can be developed first through the baseline-immanence framework. The traditional conception of abundance has most-often been one-sided, focusing exclusively on reaching the baseline of post-scarcity, having all needs for material goods satisfied. Instead, an immanence theory also envisions the open-ended upside of potentiality that is now possible with this baseline of material goods satisfaction having been reached. An abundance theory of flourishing includes the two sides of reality, focusing on both survival and actualization. To count as flourishing, there is not just an alleviating of suffering in the form of having sustenance needs met, there would also need to be something in the positive register of immanence, allowing new and emergent potentiality to develop; this would constitute a true immanent flourishing of abundance.

2. Scarcity is a Social Pathology
An abundance theory of flourishing can be developed second through conceiving of scarcity as a social pathology. The conceptualization is that scarcity is not merely a constitutive parameter of existing economic theory, but that more pervasively, the notion of scarcity has been a psychologically harmful construct of thinking that needs to be overcome for a fuller realization of human potential. In an abundance theory of flourishing, scarcity is a social pathology to be resolved. Part of the justification for seeing scarcity as a social pathology is noticing the new and contributive social goods that are unavailable in the scarcity model and created by abundance. Some of these social goods include certainty, availability, reduced contingency, willingness, and cognitive easing and cognitive surplus.

Abundance creates a psychology of certainty and availability, a reliable ongoing feeling of certainty that material survival needs will be met, as opposed to the continuous uncertainty and attending-to required by scarcity. Much current human cognitive and physical effort (as individuals and groups; families, corporations, institutions, and nation-states) is devoted to anti-scarcity measures: hoarding, manipulation, and control for the purpose of ascertaining the future availability of resources. It is like doing for emotional and cognitive attending what just-in-time inventories did for manufacturing; it is an invoking of certainty and reliance about the real-time availability for need fulfillment. Through abundance, there could be the considerable social good of relief and certainty, where a whole class of cognitively-exertional activities drop off the reality of what has to be considered for basic living. This would be unprecedented in human history, a trustable source of having basic needs met such that we do not even have to think about this.

Cryptosustainability: Collaborating in the Self-sustaining Micropolis
The cryptocitizen sensibility of the individual extends to embodying new ways for the individual to be in society. Reviving the notion of the Greek statesman, there is a sense of civic duty to serve the republic. This can be recast as the self-directed cryptocitizen’s sense of civic collaboration, where part of meaning and purpose may be derived from participating in community sustainability. The new polis could be the micropolis as groups of individuals form self-sustaining cryptocommunities.

Peergrid Cryptosustaining Micropolises
The cryptocitizen’s civic collaboration is through providing peergrid resources. Here in communities of 20-50, I have a solar panel on my roof, my neighbor has a City Blooms hydroponic greens unit, the next person has a Tesla power wall, the next person is an ISP and hosts a Bitcoind node; etc. Each of us provides a piece of peergrid infrastructure supporting the overall sustainability of us as a community. The kids paper route of the future is maintaining the hydroponic greens unit. Individuals are civic infrastructure providers. Peergrids then are local community mesh networks of all needed resources including physical (energy, ICT, food, infrastructure) and emotional (empathy, belonging, contribution, meaning). Peergrid cryptosustaining micropolises can then federate, so the smartcity becomes a federation of local autonomous self-sustained communities. Blockchains are the trustable unobtrusive system for managing all of this in the background, allowing communities to move beyond free rider problems and other concerns that have prohibited easeful cooperative collaborations. Blockchains facilitate the ownership of community infrastructure (financing, transferring, operating, drawing assessments) in a community-based manner.

Crypto-Enlightenment Governance
Thus through the volitional responsibility-taking of the cryptocitizen as an individual self-determining economic and political systems of choice, and as an individual in society, collaboratively participating in self-sustaining micropolises, governance can be recast as a process of support (immanence) as opposed to extraction (baseline erosion). The actualization economy can thereby focus on (1) sustainable material survival and (2) the social goods of liberation: self-respect, self-esteem, and self-realization. Cryptosustainability communities are finally a means of prescriptively destabilizing non-value-added elites, implementing the original esprit of Rousseau, Rawls, and Locke.

Blockchains: a Grey Goo-Resistant Singularity-class Technology
The crypto-enlightenment includes seeing the potential impact of blockchains beyond the flexible recasting of human economic and political processes; blockchains are singularity-class technologies. A singularity-class technology is a technology for the large-scale trustful automated orchestration of vast and detailed processes. The power of singularity-class technologies, this level of technological orchestration of processes, possibly without our human participation, has given way to the fear of runaway technologies. The fear of runaway technology is in the same form, and persists across all singularity-class technologies, that AIs, robots, nanobots, 3D printers, matter compilers, space terraformers, synthetically-replicating bioengineered life, etc. will take over the world.

Blockchains are a potential solution to the fear of runway technology in any of these areas. The fear of runaway technology can be allayed in noticing that the very nature and design principles of singularity-class technologies, certainly blockchains, and by extension, perhaps any singularity-class technology, are that the large-scale orchestration cannot proceed otherwise than through a system of checks and balances. The key blockchain functionality principles are being a very-large scale automated system of checks and balances where all ‘transactions’ must be validated, confirm via a reputation or other mechanism, employing algorithmic trust and smartnetwork consensus mechanisms.

Singularity-class Technology Safety: Consensus Signing and Design Signing
This structure can carry into the implementation of singularity-class projects like friendly AI, autonomous lab robots (on-chain DAC IP discovery tracking), blockchain nano-compilers (Grey Goo worry: unchecked nanotech proliferation). Two key safety design principles in singularity-class technologies are 1) the required confirmation of any transaction or activity by smartnetwork consensus mechanisms which prevents non-bona fide behavior, and 2) signing; all transactions cannot help but be signed. Just as physical-world engineers sign the bridges they build (literally, as a claiming and responsibility mechanism), synbio, AI, space, etc. engineers cannot help but ‘sign’ their own building blocks like DNA designs. With traces as an inherent feature of technology, signing is unavoidable, so singularity-class technologies like propositional nanotech constructions would be either 1) signed by bona fide engineers, and 2) not be able to avoid having a traceable signature by befouled players (intentionally malicious or otherwise).

Spacechains: Blockchains in Space
A further as yet unconsidered application area for singularity-class technologies like blcockhains is spacechains: blockchains in space. The idea is that blockchains are not just an Earth-class technology, but also an extra-terrestrial-class technology for space projects. Blockchains can be used to coordinate very-large Earth-class terrestrial projects like billion-member DNA databanks and EMRs, and space-class problems too. Some of the many potential space applications of blockchains include space settlement, terraforming, asteroid mining, fuel generation, bombardment monitoring, and basic science observation. There could be colored-coin ledgers for energy, settlement, transport, and supplies. Further, spacechains are a fragility alleviation mechanism for terrestrial applications. It is surprising that we do not yet have backup for many terrestrial operations. Spacechains could help with this, providing data center back-up, geomagnetic solar protection, existential risk reduction, and Bitcoins in space (where there is an articulated project, (BitSats (like CubeSats)).

Curious what "Bitcoin and Blockchain are? Educational Resources: 
What can Blockchain do for you?
The real value of bitcoin and crypto currency technology - The Blockchain explained

How to be a Philosopher

One of the great values of philosophy is that it can be a helpful tool for thinking through any question of deeper puzzlement. Philosophy is needed now more than ever in a world that seems to be changing quickly, and the field could enjoy a renaissance in wider popular application. The practice of philosophy need not be confined to experts but is accessible to all. Here is a short-list of how anyone can be a philosopher:

Level 1 

• Study the ancient texts 
• Claim a new read on the old texts 
• Claim that no one understands what [old philosopher #1] really said/meant and explain it yourself

Level 2 

• Find basic concepts in philosophy that no one has really thought through yet such as performativity ("...really performativitie...") Examples: Heidegger’s being and metaphysics, Deleuze’s difference 
• Invent strange neologisms (really neo-spellisms) by spelling existing words in new ways that no one can understand, and use them brazenly without definition: “…this is to say not just Possibility Space, but really Possibilitie Space…” or "the conceptologie here..." Examples: Heidegger's existens and phenomenologie, Deleuze's differance and differenciation, Derrida's linguage
• Invent new compound word combinations: "...the singularity of the self-other and the plurality of the group-crowd..." Examples: Foucault’s power-knowledge, Heidegger’s standing-reserve 

Level 3

• Submit a paper to a philosophy conference with a title like: "Rethinking [ancient philospher]'s [important concept] in [modern philospher #1] and [modern philosopher #2]"
• Offer a critique of the history of Western philosophy and propose a new/real metaphysics (examples: Heidegger, Deleuze)

Singularity Summit 2012: Image Recognition, Analogy, Big Health Data, and Bias Reduction

The seventh Singularity Summit was held in San Francisco, California on October 13-14, 2012. As in other years, there were about 600 attendees, although this year’s conference program included both general-interest science and singularity-related topics. Singularity in this sense denotes a technological singularity - a potential future moment when smarter-than-human intelligence may arise. The conference was organized by the Singularity Institute, who focuses on researching safe artificial intelligence architectures. The key themes of the conference are summarized below. Overall the conference material could be characterized as incrementalism within the space of traditional singularity-related work and faster-moving advances coming in other fields such as image recognition, big health data, synthetic biology, crowdsourcing, and biosensors.

Key Themes:

• Singularity Thought Leadership
• Big Data Artificial Intelligence: Image Recognition
• Era of Big Health Data
• Improving Cognition: Bias Reduction and Analogies
• Singularity Predictions

Singularity Thought Leadership
Singularity thought leader Vernor Vinge, who coined the term technological singularity, provided an interesting perspective. Already since at least 2000, he has been referring to the idea of computing-enabled matter and the wireless Internet-of-things as Digital Gaia. He noted that 5% of objects worldwide are already embedded with microprocessors, and it could be scary as reality ‘wakes up’ further, especially as we are unable to control other phenomena we have created such as financial markets. He was pessimistic regarding privacy, suggesting that Brin’s traditional counterproposal to surveillance, sousveillance, is not necessarily better. More positively, he discussed the framing of computers as a neo-neocortex for the brain, extreme UIs to provide convenient and unobtrusive cognitive support, other intelligence amplification techniques, and how we have been unconsciously prepping many of our environments for robotic operations. There has also been the rise of an important resource in crowdsourcing as the network (the Internet plus potentially 7 billion Turing-test passing agents) filters optimal resources to specific cognitive tasks (like protein folding analysis).

Big Data Artificial Intelligence: Image Recognition
Peter Norvig continued in his usual vein of discussing what has been important in resolving contemporary problems in artificial intelligence. In machine translation (interestingly a Searlean Chinese room), the key was using large online data corpuses and straightforward machine learning algorithms (The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data). In more recent work, his lab at Google has been able to recognize pictures of cats. In this digital vision processing advance (announced in June 2012 (article, paper)), the key was creating neural networks for machine learning that used hierarchical representation and problem solving, and again large online data corpuses (10 million images scanned by 16,000 computers) and straightforward learning algorithms.

Era of Big Health Data 
Three speakers presented innovations in the era of big health data, a sector which is generating data faster than any other and starting to use more sophisticated artificial intelligence techniques. Carl Zimmer pointed out that new viruses are continuing to develop and spread, and that this is expected to persist. Encouragingly, new viruses are genetically sequenced increasingly rapidly, but it still takes time breed up vaccines. A faster means of vaccine production could possibly come from newer techniques in synthetic biology and nanotechnology such as those from Angela Belcher’s lab.  Linda Avey discussed Curious, Inc, a personal data discovery platform in beta launch that looks for correlations across big health data streams (more information). John Wilbanks discussed the pyrrhic notion of privacy provided by traditional models as we move to a cloud-based big health data era (for example, only a few data points are needed to identify an individual and medical records may have ~500,000). Some health regulatory innovations include an updated version of HIPAA privacy policies, a portable consent for granting the use of personalized genomic data, and a network where patients may connect directly with researchers.

Improving Cognition: Bias Reduction and Analogies (QS’ing Your Thinking) 
A perennial theme in the singularity community is improving thinking and cognition, for example through bias reduction. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman spoke remotely on his work regarding fast and slow thinking. We have two thinking modes, fast (blink intuitions) and slow (more deliberative logical) thinking, both of which are indispensable and potentially problematic. Across all thinking is a strong inherent loss aversion, and this helps to generate a bias towards optimism. Steven Pinker also spoke about the theme of bias, indirectly. In recent work, he found that there has been a persistent decline in violence over the multi-century history of time, possibly mostly due to increases in affluence and literacy/knowledge. This may seem counter to popular media accounts which, guided by short-term interests, help to create an area of societal cognitive bias. Other research regarding cognitive enhancement and the processes of intelligence was Melanie Mitchell’s claim that analogies are a key attribute of intelligence. The practice of using analogies in new and appropriate ways could be a means of identifying intelligence, perhaps superior to other mechanisms such as general-purpose problem solving, question-answering, or Turing test-passing as the traditional proxies for intelligence.

Singularity Predictions 
Another persistent theme in the singularity community is sharpening analysis, predictions, and context around the moment when there might be greater-than-human intelligence. Singularity movement leader Ray Kurzweil made his usual optimistic remarks accompanied by slides with exponentiating curves of technology cost/functionality improvements, but did not confirm or update his long-standing prediction of a technological singularity circa 2045 [1]. Stuart Armstrong pointed out how predictions are usually 15-25 years out, and that this is true every year. In an analysis of the Singularity Institute’s database of 257 singularity predictions from 1950 forward, there is no convergence of time in estimates ranging from 2020-2080. Vernor Vinge encourages the consideration of a wide range of scenarios and methods including ‘What if the Singularity Doesn’t Happen.’ The singularity prediction problem might be improved by widening the possibility space, for example perhaps it less useful to focus on intelligence as the exclusive element for the moment of innovation, speciation, or progress beyond human-level; other dimensions such as emotional intelligence, empathy, creativity, or a composite thereof could be considered.

Reference
1. Kurzweil, R. The Singularity is Near; Penguin Group: New York, NY, USA, 2006; pp. 299-367.

Obtaining models for singularity futures thinking

The challenge is called out by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge as being related to the technological singularity, namely that any one future technology change could be so fundamental across all aspects of life that it is hard to write plausible science fiction, and more generally impacts how we think about the modern and future world. Any next node that has sufficient transformative power (e.g.; like the internet) could change things so fundamentally, globally, multi-dimensionally, and quickly that its impact would be essentially beyond cognition. Moreover, while there are some potential candidates visible for the ‘next internet’ such as smartphones, 3D printing, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics, the real next node is likely to be an unforeseen discontinuity.

Comprehensive survey of thinking models
There is a paucity of models for thinking comprehensively and critically about the future in rigorous, sophisticated, justifiable, and transferable ways. A project that should be undertaken if not done so already is an examination of different models for structuring thinking from different disciplines. There is value in this at two levels: first generally in identifying, characterizing, and synthesizing different models for structuring thinking, and second in applying these models cross-disciplinarily to existing areas, and to new areas such as thinking about the future.

Eliciting explicit models for structuring thinking
The models that are used to structure thinking in different fields need to be made explicit. Practitioners immersed in fields may not be easily disposed to articulate these models. For example, it may be novel to inquire ‘What is the model for inquiry in this field?’ or even to have the concepts and vocabulary for explicating them.

Fields with models for structuring thinking
Some of the obvious fields to investigate for eliciting established models for structuring thinking are philosophy, complexity (complex adaptive systems, chaos theory, symmetry, etc.), computing (artificial intelligence, machine learning, knowledge representation, data management, etc.), systems-level disciplines (ecology, biology, cosmology, etc.), and social sciences (sociology, anthropology, economics, etc.).

The challenge of fishing structure and content from academic fields
Some of the immediate obvious barriers in accessing models for structuring thinking from academic disciplines are nomenclature and insularity. Semantic and conceptual nomenclature may prevent easy access to fields, but are largely a veneer that may be penetrated with a variety of translation techniques and concept mapping. Much more problematic is the potential lack of available suitable content in these fields. By default, many areas of academia are not externally-focused applied disciplines but rather inwardly-focused insular disciplines engaged in cataloging and interpreting the thoughts of their own ancestral brethren. The accompanying applied dimension to every field that would explicitly render the core ideas accessible, and proven and useful through deployment seems to be absent from many fields. Rather than being perceived as less pure of an exploit, the application of the central ideas and structures would seem to be a key raison d'être for these fields of knowledge.

So discontinuous a discontinuity

A key aspect of thinking systemically about the future is being able to see how rapidly advancing technologies across many fields interrelate. Whatever next Internet-like discontinuity or singularity occurs will influence whatever comes thereafter. It is likely that some high percentage of what are now thought to be expected future advances will recede or be reshaped at minimum, for example:

• If all chronic disease and aging becomes controllable and there is effective immortality, does uploading matter as much?
• If artificial general intelligence is achieved, how does that change the exigency and requirements of molecular nanotechnology?
• If affordable space launch and space-based solar power is achieved, what happens to ethanol, electrical and other terrestrial alternative vehicle and transportation infrastructure solutions?
• If immersive virtual reality and post-material scarcity are achieved, does molecular nanotechnology matter and what happens to global political systems?
• If whole human genome testing is available, do single SNP tests go away? If there are home health monitors and nanodiagnostics, do primary care physicians go away?

Integration of life and technology

Life and technology are thought of as discrete but they are starting to converge (a detailed explanation is here) and could continue to become increasingly integrated, unified as is sought with the physical laws. Life sciences have evolved from being an art to a science to now an engineering problem. Life is complex but finite and it is quite possible that all biological processes, human and otherwise, will be understood and managed, including disease and death. All matter, including life, could be designed to spec in the future; the aims of synthetic biology, building genetically-precise organisms from the bottom up, programmable matter and molecular nanotechnology are early examples. In the future, form factor and embodiment could be temporary and determined by purpose.



The above graphic represents the evolution of human and machine intelligence. Given the faster pace of technology advancement, a crossover point, sometimes called the technological singularity is inevitable. Futurist Ray Kurzweil expects this point of machine intelligence surpassing [current] human intelligence in 2029. The two curves could merge (the Human’ line above), with humans reengineering themselves into technology that can learn and evolve as fast as information technology. In actuality, there may be many forms of biological life integrating with technology and more ‘human’ diversity than has ever existed.

Future of intelligence
It is not clear that there is anything special or inherently undesignable or unreplicable about intelligence. Intelligence may be nothing more than the manipulation of patterns of information, and presumably could be substrate agnostic and executor agnostic.

Economic fallacies II

Fallacy #3: The singularity is a great investment opportunity
A technological revolution like that brought about by the PC or the Internet is a great investment opportunity. Current possibilities for this kind of compound growth in technology-driven financial returns include alternative energy, genomics, personalized medicine, anti-aging therapies, 3d data manipulation tools and narrowly-applied artificial intelligence.

A technological singularity is not necessarily a great investment opportunity. A technological singularity implies change so radical and diffuse that prior models for understanding and exploiting or profiting from the world will no longer work. There is a substantial risk that financial markets as they are known today could disappear. Growth, alpha and superior financial returns may be irrelevant in a post-traditional financial markets era. Planning for the possibility of a technological singularity suggests a much broader definition of what the assets of the future may be and allocating to these areas, a substantial shift away from the traditional asset preservation and financial returns that outpace inflation in the long-run mindset of today.


Fallacy #4: Economic systems become irrelevant in a post-scarcity economy
This is the notion that economies and markets go away in a post-scarcity economy for material goods. At present, an increasing number of goods and services are becoming available for free or offered via modern business models such as the freemium. In the future, substantially all material needs may be easily met at low cost or for free in a molecular-nanotech society, but scarcity as an economic dynamic is likely to persist and economics systems in general are also likely to continue.

Scarcity would be perceived in whatever material resources were not yet plentifully available and in any finite resources such as time, ideas, attention, emotion, reputation, quality, etc. Economic system dynamics could change substantially, for example, property tax would not make sense in a world where nanotech could rapidly build or absorb structures. Unless economics and markets as the most effective means of resource distribution are superceded, they are likely to endure.


Fallacy #5: Social capital markets need not deliver competitive returns
The conventional notion is that it is acceptable for social capital market investments to deliver lower returns than traditional financial instruments. Social capital market investment products include SRI equity funds, corporate governance initiatives, social capital venturing (private equity), fair trade coffee and organic products. On average, consumers are willing to spend 5% more for attribute products (products with affinity attributes such as fair trade, local, organic, etc.) and investors have been willing to sacrifice 5% or more in financial return for socially responsible investments.

However, after some implementation time lag, social capital could have equal or higher returns. Sustainable socially responsible businesses should be more profitable not less. Both direct tangible economic benefits can accrue as well as the indirect benefits of marketing and market-knowledge that the business is more principled and sustainable. Corporate governance and other green or social initiatives should benefit the bottom line, not penalize it. The notion that return and social good are mutually exclusive is a fallacy.

The article with all nine fallacies is available here

Postmodern Physics and Manifold Destiny

At present, humans remain baffled regarding the key aspects of physics that could if understood trigger a step function of manipulability of physical reality. In the Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin notes a dearth of progress in physics over the last 30 years mainly due to an undiversified groupthink myopic focus on string theory which has yet to show any results or falsifiable constructs.

The physics progress juggernaut has triggered a surprising meta level of questioning including the invariability of the speed of light, quantum mechanics, general and special relativity and what is science. Smolin calls for a Leibnizian interpretation of time/space that is a dynamical network of shifting relationships rather than an assumed fixed background upon which most of physics reasoning has been done to date. If we were not relying on gravity and the speed of light, would it be easier to understand dark matter and dark energy?

We have no idea...

• Why there are so many elementary particles with different sizes and masses

• What and how the 96% of the universe that is dark matter and dark energy is and behaves

• How to describe in words and math where large and small scales intersect like black holes and the big bang

• How quantum mechanics really works
  

• What really happens at very small scales such as the Planck length

Luckily, there are some experiments on the way, most importantly the GLAST NASA satellite due to launch in August 2007 which will probe the Planck scale; also gamma ray projects at the Auger Observatory in Argentina and at other facilities and the building of quantum computers. The big hope of the Large Hadron Collider, the detection of the Higgs boson, would help confirm some long-held theories but probably not shift thinking as much as the Planck scale research could.

What - No Singularity?
Interestingly, some scientists' models including Smolin's are suggesting that time goes backwards from the big bang and in black holes, essentially meaning that there is no Singularity. No Singularity?! Technological Singularity paradigmers might have to rethink their metaphor.

How Long is a Long Time?

Time is of course subjective, it flows fast when you are having a good time and slow when you are waiting for something or having a not so good time. But what is a really long time? We are starting to put some long time frame events in a definitive timetable.

One long-term way of thinking is in terms of Russian astronomer Kardashev's Type I, II & II societies. Type I societies have fully harnessed all forms of their planetary energy including volcanoes, earthquakes, weather, hydrothermal vents, etc. We are currently a Type 0.7 society. Michio Kaku, talking about his new book, Parallel Worlds, thinks we are about 100 years from becoming a Type I society, as compared with Freeman Dyson suggesting a few years ago that we are 200 years away. No doubt the 2004 tsunami may help hasten the speed to a Type I society.

Other long-dated events on the horizon include:
-5 billion years to the engulfment of Earth by the sun
-10 billion years to the Andromeda galaxy collision w/ the Milky Way
-x billion/trillion+(?) years to the heat death of the universe when the accelerated expansion of the universe has driven all of the heat out

These events imply that human intelligence must take action to survive, first to get off Earth, then to get out of the galaxy and finally to get out of this universe. Or we could learn to control these events or manage around them such as by learning to live without heat/make heat unconventionally w/ dark matter/energy, better understand and manipulate physics, etc.

It seems likely that science will lead us to achieve these survival outcomes as a byproduct of other goals and imperatives occurring first.

One or more singularities may also supersede the timetable.