Novelty Theory and 2012

[RAMA]

Can't help but notice this coming up as one of the main FOUR reasons the world will end in DEC 2012. I only had a passing familiarity with Terrance McKenna before, but I hadn't realized his central "importance" was with the Timewave 0 and Novelty Theory work.

Two issues come to mind when reading up on it...firstly...it IS interesting though not scientific..despite mathematical "proofs". Novelty predicts that timewave 0 will be the time of greatest possible change since the big bang...it does not mean the world would come to a end even if it were true. While I could dismiss this out of hand, it seems like it could coincide with the Singularity Theory...which has a lot more scientific weight behind it, but basically predicts a similar technological result with infinite change occurring at one time. I do find this fascinating, if only it were true. Because..

My second issue...the graphs provided are not scientific...it matches events to the graph after the fact...the result of opinion and includes subjective events, and not reliable for forecasting...what is most likely to me...is that such matching is simply the result of a normal technological/societal/cultural change progressing over the Earth...the rate that it is changing (the speed up results in the timewave) is very real but better expressed in the singularity calculations. Add to this he made errors in the calculations, and in fact CHANGED the date of TW 0 to coincide with the Mayan calender...and it makes it highly suspect.

I bring this up not just because 2012 is one of the most talked and printed (40,000 plus books) about events in years but because the exploration of Novelty really can make you reflect on life, the universe and everything (at least mainly on Earth) and speculate on what is to come.

http://www.viewzone.com/timewavex.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_theory

RAMA

 

[JarodRussell]

This is all just a bunch of bull. I don't know why mankind loves to dream of the apocalypse, but this has happened all the time. First it was Y2K, then it was 2012, and when 2012 is over, it will be 2038 or whenever that Apophis asteroid is supposed to wipe us all out.

A lot of money can be made with it, which is why everyone is jumping on that 2012 wagon.

I mean, the Star Trek SOTL calendar ends on December 2012 as well. That MUST be a sign!


The whole concept of Novelty makes no sense if you really think about it. Why would the universe care if JFK is shot or that the Twin Towers fell. Or the peak of the Dot Com bubble? What the hell? It makes no sense. They take that waveform and then try to find "important" events that happened. And by important they mean unimportant stuff that happens on Earth. They interpret the technology boost in the late 20th century as a sign for "the fast paced era near the end of time". It's all just made up, wishful thinking and superstition. It's egocentric above all. What's with that alien village in the Andromeda galaxy where they have yet to discover the wheel? Are they going to get hit by 2012 as well?

 

[RAMA]

This is all just a bunch of bull. I don't know why mankind loves to dream of the apocalypse, but this has happened all the time. First it was Y2K, then it was 2012, and when 2012 is over, it will be 2038 or whenever that Apophis asteroid is supposed to wipe us all out.

A lot of money can be made with it, which is why everyone is jumping on that 2012 wagon.

I mean, the Star Trek SOTL calendar ends on December 2012 as well. That MUST be a sign!


The whole concept of Novelty makes no sense if you really think about it. Why would the universe care if JFK is shot or that the Twin Towers fell. Or the peak of the Dot Com bubble? What the hell? It makes no sense. They take that waveform and then try to find "important" events that happened. And by important they mean unimportant stuff that happens on Earth. It's all just made up, wishful thinking and superstition. It's egocentric.

Basically agree, and yes the universe has no interest in us and of course it can only be man that is so special that the universe revolves around him, the ancient solopsist view is alive and well...but in a cultural/technological sense Novelty is interesting because it does parallel reality...I find humanity pretty amazing in it's tremendous rate of knowledge and growth since WWII. If it takes Novelty for some people to realize it, so be it.

RAMA

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Humans have long been obsessed with eschatological ideas, perhaps an expression of a subconscious death wish that inhabits us all. It could even be something simpler than that: as a society grows bored with itself, people increasingly turn to things they think will stimulate them, and what's more stimulating than the total upheaval of the universe around you?

Novelty Theory is one of those things that sounds like it has some merit when you first hear about it, but once you delve into it it's obvious there isn't much to it. It's building a model of human history based on cherry-picked data to fit a predetermined future scenario, and then you use it as a predictive model. If you build a predictive model designed to give you precisely the predictions you want, it's not at all a useful system.

What is worth examining is the acceleration of our technological advances and the sociological implications that go along with it. But the end of the world has always been "just around the corner" for about as long as we've been sentient creatures.

The 2012 stuff is just horseshit and always has been, and I don't understand why it continues to get any attention.

 

[JarodRussell]

Though I think we have a wrong impression of it. The discoveries made centuries before WWII were just as amazing, mindblowing, and fast paced. The thing is that wars drive development, because (unfortunately) going to war is such a big goal. The Cold War put a man on the moon, and now that the US and Russia aren't rivals anymore, see what happens to spaceflight. Development has already stagnated in my opinion. Airplanes are airplanes, computers are computers, cars are cars. That they get faster, smaller, more efficient isn't so big news anymore.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Though I think we have a wrong impression of it. The discoveries made centuries before WWII were just as amazing, mindblowing, and fast paced. The thing is that wars drive development, because (unfortunately) going to war is such a big goal. The Cold War put a man on the moon, and now that the US and Russia aren't rivals anymore, see what happens to spaceflight. Development has already stagnated in my opinion. Airplanes are airplanes, computers are computers, cars are cars. That they get faster, smaller, more efficient isn't so big news anymore.

I would argue that the transistor may be the most important invention of the last 100 years, possibly more. We've always been hampered by our inability to analyze massive quantities of data. In the past, the only thing you could do was throw human brains at it. Now, we can crunch enormous data sets in relatively small time frames. Calculations that would take a person hours or days can now be done in seconds or less. The proliferation of cheap computers and network connectivity has made more information accessible to more people than at any other time in history. I think that's a Big Deal and doesn't get the recognition it deserves. It's nice that the Internet has also opened new avenues for business but its implications for the future of human knowledge, learning, and collaboration are much more important, I think.

Computers growing exponentially more powerful is not a trivial detail, it's an essential component of our technological advancement in the postwar period. It affects how we work, how we learn, how we manage data, and how we make war.

What will be the next big discovery to supplant the transistor? I don't know, possibly quantum computing, or practical fusion, or some massive breakthrough in solar cell efficiency. I just wouldn't be quick to discount the progress we've made in the past few decades just because it's been refining existing technologies rather than inventing new ones. Such refinement actually makes a lot of sense--why give up on something that already works well? Why not make it work better? That's more likely to pay off than searching for a revolutionary new technology, which will happen when it happens. Such R&D is always ongoing.

 

[RAMA]

Though I think we have a wrong impression of it. The discoveries made centuries before WWII were just as amazing, mindblowing, and fast paced. The thing is that wars drive development, because (unfortunately) going to war is such a big goal. The Cold War put a man on the moon, and now that the US and Russia aren't rivals anymore, see what happens to spaceflight. Development has already stagnated in my opinion. Airplanes are airplanes, computers are computers, cars are cars. That they get faster, smaller, more efficient isn't so big news anymore.

I would argue that the transistor may be the most important invention of the last 100 years, possibly more. We've always been hampered by our inability to analyze massive quantities of data. In the past, the only thing you could do was throw human brains at it. Now, we can crunch enormous data sets in relatively small time frames. Calculations that would take a person hours or days can now be done in seconds or less. The proliferation of cheap computers and network connectivity has made more information accessible to more people than at any other time in history. I think that's a Big Deal and doesn't get the recognition it deserves. It's nice that the Internet has also opened new avenues for business but its implications for the future of human knowledge, learning, and collaboration are much more important, I think.

Computers growing exponentially more powerful is not a trivial detail, it's an essential component of our technological advancement in the postwar period. It affects how we work, how we learn, how we manage data, and how we make war.

What will be the next big discovery to supplant the transistor? I don't know, possibly quantum computing, or practical fusion, or some massive breakthrough in solar cell efficiency. I just wouldn't be quick to discount the progress we've made in the past few decades just because it's been refining existing technologies rather than inventing new ones. Such refinement actually makes a lot of sense--why give up on something that already works well? Why not make it work better? That's more likely to pay off than searching for a revolutionary new technology, which will happen when it happens. Such R&D is always ongoing.

It goes further than super-intelligent computers...AI linked to humanity expands storage capacity, memory retention, and so on. From my point of view, an AI singularity involving human intelligence is a good thing (god I know this sounds so "Borg") because AI derived solely from computers can normally only lead into technological predictions of AI "Gods" who are indifferent to man...and will likely lead to Matrix/Terminator scenerios, though minus the belligerence. Without humanity developing that way first, I'm afraid we're likely to stand no chance...mind you I don't mean in a war, but AI evolution from humanity may supplant possible machine evolution alone.

Humans have long been obsessed with eschatological ideas, perhaps an expression of a subconscious death wish that inhabits us all. It could even be something simpler than that: as a society grows bored with itself, people increasingly turn to things they think will stimulate them, and what's more stimulating than the total upheaval of the universe around you?

Novelty Theory is one of those things that sounds like it has some merit when you first hear about it, but once you delve into it it's obvious there isn't much to it. It's building a model of human history based on cherry-picked data to fit a predetermined future scenario, and then you use it as a predictive model. If you build a predictive model designed to give you precisely the predictions you want, it's not at all a useful system.

What is worth examining is the acceleration of our technological advances and the sociological implications that go along with it. But the end of the world has always been "just around the corner" for about as long as we've been sentient creatures.

The 2012 stuff is just horseshit and always has been, and I don't understand why it continues to get any attention.

It gets attention because it's not enough for many people to believe what the experts tell us...they need to think wonderful fantastical, unpredictable things involving THEM happen...it's part of the "belief engine" where faith in those things is more important than reality. It gets attention because there are at least 4 theories of pseudoscience and religion that coincide around the same time (who cares if they are not exact, that's besides the point).

I honestly don't think humanity is at a level where it is bored with itself...I know sometimes in modern society it seems that way, but I don't think across the Earth we have reached that all encompassing level of comfort and passivity.

 

[RAMA]

Though I think we have a wrong impression of it. The discoveries made centuries before WWII were just as amazing, mindblowing, and fast paced. The thing is that wars drive development, because (unfortunately) going to war is such a big goal. The Cold War put a man on the moon, and now that the US and Russia aren't rivals anymore, see what happens to spaceflight. Development has already stagnated in my opinion. Airplanes are airplanes, computers are computers, cars are cars. That they get faster, smaller, more efficient isn't so big news anymore.

I disagree in several ways...there definitely were major, huge changes in history over thousands of years, I don't want to minimize any single or groups of discoveries that were important to us(the plow was probably more important than the a-bomb..such inventions don't get the same attention as war derived ones), but in terms of the rapidity and volume of knowledge/data, the acceleration since WWII(an arbitrary point I admit)has been quantifiably increased. If anything the rate isn't just higher, it's exponential. While I don't necessarily think its dead set, forgone conclusion, the age of the singularity is highly convincing. Some element(s) of it will come to pass. There is a lot of hard data.

The law of accelerating returns:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns

I'm afraid all too often, people have your view, and in general are often proven wrong(Lord Kelvin and Charles Duell come to mind)...what is likely to happen won't be recognized by you and I...we tend to think of a car as a car, and technology separate from human beings and the "natural'. The future is likely to change that...nanotech and other sciences will likely so blur the line that one won't be distinguishable for the other. The reality is, early 21st century man really isn't ready for such a transition.

I hate to say it also...Americans tend to have a more optimistic view than Europeans of such things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near

http://singinst.org/overview/whatisthesingularity/

Vernor Vinge wrote that the arrival of machine superintelligence represents an 'event horizon' beyond which humans cannot model the future..

When such an era arrives is a mystery...as it stands now the prediction is 2040...


RAMA

 

[Gryffindorian]

This is the stuff of pseudo-science I see on Through the Wormhole or other shows on the Science Channel. While such programs are fun to watch, the material presented doesn't always have a scientific basis and is speculative at best.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZFtjRycPDs[/yt]

 

[RAMA]

http://www.singularitysummit.com/program

Singularity summit.

http://www.humansfuture.org/

Potential future of humanity