On Singularity
At this point in the history of human civilization, everybody has heard the phrase «technological singularity», or will hear it soon. Since its popularity is increasing at vertiginous pace through cinema, talks conducted by transhumanist luminaries, as well as other media. Hot techie stuff.
It’s needless to say that the claims are bold and somehow driven by deception. Despite the sci-fi glints emanated by this inspiring horizon of evolution, there are too many key ontological issues that are overlooked or systematically oversimplified. I’ll highlight only three of these ontological struggles.
Emergence as an explanation of evolutionary leaps. The notion new orders of reality—or new kinds of materiality—emerging due to an increase in complexity is a matter of faith. Of course, the basic misunderstanding comes from the Material Monism bias, blind to the plural nature of matter. So, at...