Outside Context Problem

The alien invasion is a common theme in science fiction stories and film, in which a technologically-superior extraterrestrial society invades Earth with the intent to replace human life, or to enslave it under a colonial system. The invasion scenario has been used as an allegory for a protest against military hegemony and the societal ills of the time. Wells' The War of the Worlds is often viewed as an indictment of European colonialism and its "gunboat diplomacy" —setting a common theme for future alien invasion stories, that force audiences in modern societies (U.S., UK) to em ...

Including:

• Alien invasion - Variations
• Alien invasion - Notable examples
• Alien invasion - External link

Read more here: » Alien invasion: Encyclopedia - Alien invasion

The most well-known alien invasion scenarios involve the aliens landing on Earth, destroying or abducting people, fighting and defeating Earth's military forces, and then destroying Earth's major cities. Usually the bulk of the story follows the battles between the invaders and Earth's armies, as in The War of the Worlds. However, not all alien invasion stories follow this plot. In some accounts, the alien invaders will covertly subvert human society using disguises, shapechanging, or human allies. In other depictions, the aliens scor ...

See also:

Alien invasion, Alien invasion - Variations, Alien invasion - Notable examples, Alien invasion - External link

Read more here: » Alien invasion: Encyclopedia II - Alien invasion - Variations

Though often thought to have originated in the last two decades of the 20th century, the idea of a technological singularity actually dates back to the 1950s: "One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue." —Stanislaw Ulam, May 1958, referring to a conversation with John von Neumann This quote is sometimes taken out of context and attributed to ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - History and definitions, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - Neo-Luddite views, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - History and definitions

It is often speculated that advanced AI is likely to have goals inconsistent with those of humanity and may threaten humanity's existence. AI researcher Hugo de Garis suggests superintelligent AI may simply eliminate the intellectually inferior human race, and humans would be powerless to stop it. This is a major issue concerning both Singularity advocates and critics, and was the subject of an article by B ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - Early conceptions, Technological singularity - The Vingean Singularity, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity

The classical "Big Five" mass extinctions identified by Raup and Sepkoski (1982) are widely agreed upon as some of the most significant: End Ordovician, Late Devonian, End Permian, End Triassic, and End Cretaceous. These and a selection of other extinction events are highlighted below: 488 million years ago — a series of mass extinctions at the Cambrian-Ordovician transition (the Cambrian-Ordovician extinction events) eliminated many brachiopods and conodonts and severely reduced the number of trilobite species. See also:

Extinction event, Extinction event - Extinction events, Extinction event - Causes for Mass Extinction, Extinction event - Postulated extinction cycles

Read more here: » Extinction event: Encyclopedia II - Extinction event - Extinction events

The classical "Big Five" mass extinctions identified by Raup and Sepkoski (1982) are widely agreed upon as some of the most significant: End Ordovician, Late Devonian, End Permian, End Triassic, and End Cretaceous. These and a selection of other extinction events are highlighted below: 488 million years ago — a series of mass extinctions at the Cambrian-Ordovician transition (the Cambrian-Ordovician extinction events) eliminated many brachiopods and conodonts an ...

See also:

Extinction event, Extinction event - Extinction events, Extinction event - Causes for Mass Extinction, Extinction event - Postulated extinction cycles

Read more here: » Extinction event: Encyclopedia II - Extinction event - Extinction events

Most proposed methods for creating smarter-than-human or transhuman minds fall into one of two categories: making improvements to existing human brains, known as intelligence augmentation or IA, and creating entirely new minds from scratch with artificial intelligence (AI). The means speculated to produce intelligence augmentation are numerous, and include bio- and genetic engineering, nootropic drugs, AI assistants, direct brain-computer interfaces, and mind transfer. Radical life extension techniques, cryonics, ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - History and definitions, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - Neo-Luddite views, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence

Ray Kurzweil justifies his belief in an imminent singularity by an analysis of history from which he concludes that technological progress follows a pattern of exponential growth. He calls this conclusion The Law of Accelerating Returns. He generalizes Moore's law, which describes exponential growth in integrated semiconductor complexity, to include technologies from far before the integrated circuit. Whenever a technology approaches some kind of a barrier, he writes, new technologies will cross that barrier. He predicts such p ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - History and definitions, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - Neo-Luddite views, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns

Fictional depictions of the Singularity usually fall into one of four categories: AIs and technologically augmented humans (often still inferior to the AIs): Charles Stross, Jacek Dukaj, The Culture of Iain M. Banks, the Deus Ex computer games, the Halo video game series. AIs and baseline humans (sometimes referred to as a local Singularity): Cylons of Battlestar Galactica (new version), Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Matrix, Terminator and "TimeSplitters: Futur ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - History and definitions, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - Neo-Luddite views, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture

Some speculate superhuman intelligences may have goals inconsistent with human survival and prosperity. AI researcher Hugo de Garis suggests AIs may simply eliminate the human race, and humans would be powerless to stop it. Other oft-cited dangers include molecular nanotechnology and genetic engineering. These threats are major issues for both Singularity advocates and critics, and were the subject of an article by Bill Joy appearing in Wired Magazine, ominously titled Why the future doesn't need us. Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom summarizes the p ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - History and definitions, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - Neo-Luddite views, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI, official site) is a nonprofit research think tank and public interest institute for the study and advancement of beneficial artificial intelligence and ethical cognitive enhancement. Since cognitive ability influences how well difficult problems can be solved, they aim to further the safe and significant enhancement of cognition to make contemporary humanitarian challenges generally more solvable. They have the additional goal of fostering a broader discussion and understanding of ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - Early conceptions, Technological singularity - The Vingean Singularity, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI, official site) is a nonprofit research think tank and public interest institute for the study and advancement of beneficial artificial intelligence and ethical cognitive enhancement. Since cognitive ability influences how well difficult problems can be solved, they aim to further the safe and significant enhancement of cognition to make contemporary humanitarian challenges generally more solvable. They have the additional goal of fostering a broader discussion and understanding of ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - History and definitions, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - Neo-Luddite views, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

It has been suggested by several sources that biodiversity and/or extinction events may be influenced by cyclic processes. The best-known of these claims is the 26 to 30 million year viral cycle in extinctions proposed by Raup and Sepkoski (1986). More recently, Rohde and Muller (2005) have suggested that biodiversity fluctuates primarily on 62 ± 3 million cycle. It is difficult to evaluate the validity of these claims except through reduction to statisitical arguments regarding how plausible or implausible it is for the observed dat ...

See also:

Extinction event, Extinction event - Extinction events, Extinction event - Causes for Mass Extinction, Extinction event - Postulated extinction cycles

Read more here: » Extinction event: Encyclopedia II - Extinction event - Postulated extinction cycles

It has been suggested by several sources that biodiversity and/or extinction events may be influenced by cyclic processes. The best-known of these claims is the 26 to 30 million year cycle in extinctions proposed by Raup and Sepkoski (1986). More recently, Rohde and Muller (2005) have suggested that biodiversity fluctuates primarily on 62 ± 3 million cycle. It is difficult to evaluate the validity of these claims except through reduction to statisitical arguments regarding how plausible or implausible it is for the observed data to e ...

See also:

Extinction event, Extinction event - Extinction events, Extinction event - Causes for Mass Extinction, Extinction event - Postulated extinction cycles

Read more here: » Extinction event: Encyclopedia II - Extinction event - Postulated extinction cycles

With the exception of the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, which is widely attributed to an impact event, and modern day extinctions associated with the proliferation of human civilization, it is not well known what has caused other mass extinctions. Some of the hypotheses are discussed below. Impact events - The impact of a sufficiently large asteroid or comet could create Megatsunamis, global forest fires, and simulate nuclear winter from the dust it puts in the atmosphere. Taken together, it is not surprising that these a ...

See also:

Extinction event, Extinction event - Extinction events, Extinction event - Causes for Mass Extinction, Extinction event - Postulated extinction cycles

Read more here: » Extinction event: Encyclopedia II - Extinction event - Causes for Mass Extinction

Fictional depictions of the Singularity usually fall into one of four categories: AIs and technologically augmented humans: Charles Stross, Jacek Dukaj, The Culture of Iain M. Banks, the Deus Ex computer games, the Halo video game series. AIs and baseline humans (sometimes referred to as a local Singularity): Cylons of Battlestar Galactica (new version), Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Matrix, Terminator and "TimeSplitters: Future Perfect" (video game) B ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - Early conceptions, Technological singularity - The Vingean Singularity, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture

Though often thought to have originated in the last two decades of the 20th century, the idea of a technological singularity actually dates back to the 1950s: "One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue." —Stanislaw Ulam, May 1958, referring to a conversation with John von Neumann This quote is sometimes taken out of context and attributed to von N ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - Early conceptions, Technological singularity - The Vingean Singularity, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - Early conceptions

The classic treatment was The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Other treatments have posited biological invasions (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), or cultural invasion (The Uplift Wars by David Brin). The 1988 cult film They Live uses its own alien infiltration backstory as a satire on what some perceived as Reagan's America and the 1980s as an era of conspicuous consumption, in which the hidden aliens and human members of the elite oppress po ...

See also:

Alien invasion, Alien invasion - Variations, Alien invasion - Notable examples, Alien invasion - External link

Read more here: » Alien invasion: Encyclopedia II - Alien invasion - Notable examples

The concept of a technological singularity as it is known today is due in part to mathematician and novelist Vernor Vinge. Vinge began speaking on the Singularity in the 1980s, and collected his thoughts into the first article on the topic in 1993, with the essay "Technological Singularity". Since then, it has been the subject of many futurist and science fiction stories and writings. Vinge's essay contains the oft-quoted statement that "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create super ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - Early conceptions, Technological singularity - The Vingean Singularity, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - The Vingean Singularity

Some view the Singularity as a logical consequence of the evolution of society. Most famously, Ray Kurzweil justifies his belief in an eminent singularity by an analysis of history from which he concludes that technological progress follows a pattern of exponential growth. He calls this conclusion The Law of Accelerating Returns. Kurzweil's Law generalizes Moore's law, which describes an exponential growth pattern in the complexity of integrated semiconductor circuits, to include technologies from far before the integrated circ ...

See also:

Technological singularity, Technological singularity - Early conceptions, Technological singularity - The Vingean Singularity, Technological singularity - Creating superhuman intelligence, Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Technological singularity - The desirability and safety of the Singularity, Technological singularity - The Singularity in fiction and modern culture, Technological singularity - Organizations and other prominent voices

Read more here: » Technological singularity: Encyclopedia II - Technological singularity - Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns