Hang around the Transhumanist movement long enough and the term “The Singularity” will surely pop up in conversation. Not to be confused with the astrophysical singularity (for example, the Penrose-Hawking Singularity Theorems), the Singularity within the TH movement is bandied about at conferences, on podcasts and in numerous forums — in some cases becoming synonymous with Transhumanism itself.
Since the TH movement and other science-based philosophies continue to grow and can reasonably be expected to replace more traditional ways of thinking in the days ahead, it would be a helpful exercise in precision of language to explain how Transhumanism intersects and meshes with the notion of The Singularity.
Transhumanism
As with any philosophically weighted term, Transhumanism suffers slightly from the baggage of multiple definitions. A few examples:
“The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.” [World Transhumanist Association, The transhumanist FAQ]
“Transhumanism is the idea that new technologies are likely to change the world so much in the next century or two that our descendants will in many ways no longer be ‘human.'” [Robin Hanson]
“TH is a commitment to overcoming human limits in all their forms including extending
lifespan, augmenting intelligence, perpetually increasing knowledge, achieving complete control over our personalities and identities and gaining the ability to leave the planet. Transhumanists seek to achieve these goals through reason, science and technology.” [Natasha Vita More]
So, despite slight variations of semantics, a common thread is interwoven throughout: TH is a journey to reach the ever-expanding pinnacle of human evolution — culminating in a some form of immortality, even transcending our traditional definitions of what it means to be human. On to The Singularity.
The Singularity
Although the term was first coined by mathematician John von Neumann in 1958, most Transhumanists and non-Transhumanists associate The Singularity with Ray Kurzweil’s seminal 2005 book The Singularity is Near. Kurzweil describes The Singularity as “…a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.”
The “Restless Genius” (as the Wall Street Journal dubbed Kurzweil) painted this future as a merger of human physiology and mostly silicon-based tech that would launch us beyond our “biological roots.” By synthesizing a multi-platform barrage of scientific genres such as computers, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence, Kurzweil envisions a technological singularity by 2045. At that time (or whenever it may or may not happen), Singularitarians claim there will be very little distinction between human and machine or, more to the point, that superior intelligence will simply exist in our universe without reference to the origin of such intelligence.
Kurzweil comments:
“There will be no distinction, post-singularity, between human and machine nor between physical and virtual reality. If you wonder what will remain unequivocally human in such a world, it’s simply this quality: ours is the species that inherently seeks to extend its physical and mental reach beyond current limitations.”
And?
At the end of the day, the best way to compare Transhumanism and The Singularity is to imagine a travel scenario. Assuming the destination is some form of human immortality or unprecedented immortality, Transhumanism can be seen as the map — overlaying the entire journey from the starting point, navigating the best route (the Google Maps of human evolution?). The Singularity is one of many possible vehicles humanity may use to arrive at this distant and luminous city.
Certainly, the goal of transcending human limitations as we know them could take forms far removed from a computer-based system — a chemical/genetic transformation of some kind, for example, or something so weird we lack the words to describe it. But then again, that’s kind of like saying you can traverse a continent driving either a scooter or a Tesla. Both will get you there but why not take the fastest, most direct method?
And the road to wherever one can imagine as the Transhumanist terminus has already been paved it would seem. To quote sci-fi legend Vernor Vinge re: The Singularity: “It will probably occur faster than any technical revolution seen so far … if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.”
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