The Singularity Quotes

the Singularity who hides behind the mask of the deity's personality. Worship of deities really means appreciating them for the skill with which they play their roles in the cosmic drama. You can also worship the One directly, but the One is undifferentiated, unqualified and absolute, while the world a jyotishi lives in is relative, qualified and differentiated. ~ Hart Defouw

Childbearing is the most consistent of human events. Male and female alike, we have all been gestated inside a woman's body. As a phenomenon, childbearing is seemingly eternal and universal, yet like no other it highlights the gender divide, the singularity of individual experience and sociocultural diversities. ~ Joan Raphael-Leff

Almost no one tolerates the exclusivity and supremacy of Christ these days, even some who profess to be Christians. The message of the cross is not politically correct - it's the singularity of the gospel, on top of everything else, that bothers people. Can you imagine for a moment what might happen if a celebrity or political leader just said, "I'm a Christian and if you're not, you're going to hell"? Yikes! And then imagine if he said, "All the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and all the people who believe they can earn salvation, whether liberal Protestants or Roman Catholics, and all the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses - you're all going to eternal hell. But I care about you so much, I want to give you the gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is far more important than wars in the Middle East, terrorism, or any domestic policy." You can't be faithful and popular, so take your pick. ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.

The children are taught more of the meanest state in Europe than of the country they are born and bred in, despite the singularity of its characteristics, the interest of its history, the rapidity of its advance, and the stupendous promise of its future. ~ Henry Lawson

My main interest is the problem of the singularity. If we can't understand what happened at the singularity we came out of, then we don't seem to have any understanding of the laws of particle physics. I'd be very happy just to understand the last singularity and leave the other ones to future generations. ~ Neil Turok

Life and Jah are one in the same. Jah is the gift of existence. I am in some way eternal, I will never be duplicated. The singularity of every man and woman is Jah's gift. What we struggle to make of it is our sole gift to Jah. The process of what that struggle becomes, in time, the Truth. ~ Bob Marley

In [Bloom's] having managed to sustain his curiosity about the people and the world around him after thirty-eight years of familiarity and routine that ought to have dulled and dampened it; and above all in the abiding capacity for empathy, for moral imagination, that is the fruit of an observant curiosity like Bloom's, I found, as if codified, a personal definition of heroism.
Ulysses struck me, most of all, as a book of life; every sentence, even those that laid bare the doubt, despair, shame, or vanity of its characters, seemed to have been calibrated to assert, in keeping with the project of the work as a whole, the singularity and worth of even the most humdrum and throwaway of human days. Michael Chabon ~ Michael Chabon

Some people believe that everyone will experience judgment day. But it's my understanding that the Judgment Day or Rapture that I'm going to experience, as a nonbeliever, is not going to be the good part. That's the essential difference between the Singularity and what we're usually told about the fate of our eternal souls. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

Man is something that shall be overcome.Man is a rope,tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss.What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

What is the Conscious leap?
Conscious leap is a term that refers to a process of change.
It specifies a particular point in the process where a change cannot be undone or reversed.
The leap is the singularity point ,the point of no return.
It will be a fundamental change in everybody's way of living.
Not everybody will remain alive during this turbulent phase.
Thought of the Day ~ Katerina Kostaki

He is astonished at the fact of his being, and this astonishment leads to reflection: as he leans over the river of his consciousness, he asks himself if the face that appears there, disfigured by the water, is his own. The singularity of his being, which is pure sensation in children, becomes a problem and a question ~ Octavio Paz

All the same," I said, "when you read the prints in the snow and the evidence of the branches, you did not yet know Brunellus. In a certain sense those prints spoke of all horses, or at least all horses of that breed. Mustn't we say, then, that the book of nature speaks to us only of essences, as many distinguished theologians teach?"
"Not entirely, dear Adso," my master replied. "True, that kind of print expressed to me, if you like, the idea of 'horse,' the verbum mentis, and would have expressed the same to me wherever I might have found it. But the print in that place and at that hour of the day told me that at least one of all possible horses had passed that way. So I found myself halfway between the perception of the concept 'horse' and the knowledge of an individu?al horse. And in any case, what I knew of the universal horse had been given me by those traces, which were singular. I could say I was caught at that moment between the singularity of the traces and my ignorance, which assumed the quite diaphanous form of a univer?sal idea. If you see something from a distance, and you do not understand what it is, you will be content with defining it as a body of some dimension. When you come closer, you will then define it as an animal, even if you do not yet know whether it is a horse or an ass. And finally, when it is still closer, you will be able to say it is a horse even if you do not yet know whether it is Brunellus or Niger. And only when you are at the proper ~ Umberto Eco

We are remembered for the totality of our accomplishments, but we are defined by the singularity of our greatest failure. It does not matter what you have been right about, and it does not matter how often that rightness is
validated by others. We are what we cannot do. ~ Chuck Klosterman

I believe modern SF needs to at least be aware of the singularity, if only so that it can dismiss it intelligently (or work around it). But I suspect the singularity is like faster-than-light travel for the IT generation. We may hope for it, and the rules don't forbid it, but we don't know how to do it yet (and it may not be possible). ~ Charles Stross

We need to deal with three things that are important: first, we need a very deep reconsideration of how we are dealing with the economy. Second, there must be a very deep reconsideration of our way of life. We cannot simply adopt American-style consumer culture. To Islamize that is to de-Islamize Islam.Thirdly, it is important for us to understand the economy and the environment are common challenges for everyone. This is where the singularity of Islamic principles needs to join the universal values that we share with others. ~ Tariq Ramadan

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view? ~ Vernor Vinge

By definition, the Singularity means that machines would be smarter than us, and, in their wisdom, they can innovate new technologies. The innovations would come so quickly, and increasingly quickly, that the innovation would make Moore's Law seem as antiquated as Hammurabi's Code. ~ Marvin Ammori

Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace. ~ Vernor Vinge

Although the Singularity has many faces, its most important implication is this: our technology will match and then vastly exceed the refinement and suppleness of what we regard as the best of human traits. ~ Ray Kurzweil

In the froth, space doesn't have a definite structure. It has various probabilities for different shapes and curvatures. It might have a 50 percent chance of being in one shape, a 10 percent chance of being in another, and a 40 percent chance of being in a third form. Because any structure is possible inside the singularity, we say the singularity is constructed from probabilistic foam, or quantum foam. Quantum gravity governs the probabilities for the various foam structures. ~ Clifford A. Pickover

The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being. ~ Vernor Vinge

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be...
  This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking. ~ Isaac Asimov

If you throw even a cursory glance into the past, at the life which lies behind you, not even recalling its most vivid moments, you are struck every time by the singularity of the events in which you took part, the unique individuality of the characters whom you met. This singularity is like the dominant note of every moment of existence; in each moment of life, the life principle itself is unique. The artist therefore tries to grasp that principle and make it incarnate, new each time; and each time he hopes, though in vain, to achieve an exhaustive image of the Truth of human existence. The quality of beauty is in the truth of life. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

Sentences that begin with 'You' are probably not true. For instance, when I write: "You are a pet human named Morlock being disciplined by your master, a Beowulf cluster of FreeBSD 22.0 servers in the year 2052. Last week you tried to escape by digging a hole under the perimeter, which means this week you may be put to sleep for being a renegade human."

That's not true, at least not yet. ~ Richard Dooling

(W)hat is remarkable about the Greeks
even pre-philosophically
is that despite the salience of religious rituals in their lives, when it came to the question of what it is that makes an individual human life worth living they didn't look to the immortals but rather approached the question in mortal terms. Their approaching the question of human mattering in human terms is the singularity that creates the conditions for philosophy in ancient Greece, most especially as these conditions were realized in the city-state of Athens. ~ Rebecca Goldstein

Of course, it's always difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in relation to, e.g., the singularity project. Many scientists I know are dismissive of transhumanist claims, BUT the last 100 years has surely taught us never to underestimate the pace and scope of scientific progress. However, even if much of this turns out to be science-fiction, it also reveals a way of thinking about human life that I find deeply troubling. ~ George Pattison

Is it not the singularity of life that terrifies us? Is not the decisive difference between comedy and tragedy that tragedy denies us another chance? Shakespeare over and over demonstrates life's singularity - the irrevocability of our decisions, hasty and even mad though they be. How solemn and huge and deeply pathetic our life does loom in its once-and doneness, how inexorably linear, even though our rotating, revolving planet offers us the cycles of the day and of the year to suggest that existence is intrinsically cyclical, a playful spin, and that there will always be, tomorrow morning or the next, another chance. ~ John Updike

Cosmopolitanism promotes a sense of new _we-ness as regarding every individual human being as a citizen of the cosmos. However, the _we-cosmic-citizens_ are not to promote the _we-ness-in-sameness_, but rather the we-ness-in-alterity_.Unlike the solidarity-in-sameness, cosmopolitan _solidarity-in-alterity_ celebrates the singularity and difference of each individual human being while not denying the historical necessity of the strategic construction of _we_ to challenge the very sociopolitically imposed category ~ Namsoon Kang

Nature or Nature's God" is not a statement, but a name, internally divided by tolerated uncertainty. It has the singularity of a proper name, whilst parenthesizing a suspended decision (Pyrrhonian epoche, of which much more in a future post). It designates rigidly, but obscurely, because it points into epistemological darkness - naming a Reality that not only 'has', but epitomizes identity, whilst nevertheless, for 'the sake of argument', eluding categorical identification. Patient in the face (or facelessness) of who or what it is, 'we' emerge from a pact, with one basic term: a preliminary decision is not to be demanded. It thus synthesizes a select language community, fused by the unknown. ~ Nick Land

If human beings are losing every time, it doesn't matter whether they're losing to a conscious machine or an completely non conscious machine, they still lost. The singularity is about the quality of decision-making, which is not consciousness at all. ~ Stuart J. Russell

Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity
technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light. ~ Ray Kurzweil

The singularity has nothing to do with consciousness. ~ Stuart J. Russell

There are no hard problems, only problems that are hard to a certain level of intelligence. Move the smallest bit upwards [in intelligence] and some problems move from "impossible" to "obvious." Move a substantial degree upwards, and all of them will become obvious. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

It" is the idea of him or her that resides in us--inspired by the "Something" in them, as Pope has it, "That gives us back the Image of our Mind." Although the perception of It must be excited by some extraordinary perturbation in the looks and personality of the adored, the aura that It broadcasts arises not merely from the singularity of an original, as Walter Benjamin supposed, but also from the fabulous success of its reproducibility in the imaginations of many others, charmed exponentially by the number of its copies. The one-of-kind item must become a type, a replicable role-icon of itself--from "a Charles Hart" or "a Nell Gwyn" to "a Mary Pickford" or "a Douglas Fairbanks"--in order to unleash the Pygmalion effect in the hearts and minds of the fans, making the idea of him or her theirs--as much or more than anything else they might call their own. ~ Joseph Roach

Physicists explain creation by telling us that the universe began with the Big Bang, an intense energy singularity that continued expanding. But who created the singularity? ~ Ashwin Sanghi

Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any. ~ Marilynne Robinson

I took to numbers, their definiteness, their unyielding natures: even when you chop a number down to a half or a tenth or a millionth or a billionth part of its former self it still exists, it's still whole and pristine and incorruptible. When everything else is gone, when the universe has collapsed back in on itself and time itself has stopped, there'll still be numbers, frozen in the singularity, waiting for existence to push itself into being again, so they can put order on the great expansion, and tell it when it's reached its terminal mass, its ineluctable point of return to its beginning. ~ Donal Ryan

These days, tales of what Facebook did with its users during the singularity are commonly used to scare naughty children in Wales. ~ Cory Doctorow

That is not all, however: this relationship between writing and death is also manifested in the effacement of the writing subject's individual characteristics. Using all the contrivances that he steps up between himself and what he writes, the writing subject cancels out the signs of his particular individuality. As a result, the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more that the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing. ~ Michel Foucault

Regardless of whether you believe in the Singularity, you will most likely experience the benefits of it. But we don't really know. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

The Singularity involves an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution. ~ Ray Kurzweil

Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the founders of The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, believes that singularity will lead to an "intelligence explosion" as super-intelligent machines design even more intelligent machines, with each generation repeating this process. ~ Peter Singer

Don't waste a minute fretting over the infinite destructive possibilities of The Singularity. Think of all the fun we're going to have along the way! It will all be one glorious adventure, start to finish! ~ Richard Long

The largest, and most provocative, sense in which a technological singularity might be an existential opportunity can only be grasped by stepping outside the human perspective altogether and adopting a more cosmological point of view. It is surely the height of anthropocentric thinking to suppose that the story of matter in this corner of the universe climaxes with human society and the myriad living brains embedded in it, marvelous as they are. Perhaps matter still has a long way to go on the scale of complexity. Perhaps there are forms of consciousness yet to arise that are, in some sense, superior to our own. Should we recoil from this prospect, or rejoice in it? Can we even make sense of such an idea? Whether or not the singularity is near, these are questions worth asking, not least because in attempting to answer them we shed new light on ourselves and our place in the order of things.

Murray Shanahan ~ Murray Shanahan

The Singularity is at once an escape and a birth fantasy. I said to him: A Zeus dream that avoids the organic body altogether. Brand-new creatures burst forth from men's heads. Presto! The mother and her evil vagina disappears. ~ Siri Hustvedt

A Singularitarian is someone who understands the Singularity and has reflected on its meaning for his or her own life. ~ Ray Kurzweil

I believe in singularity in relationships because you've got to have trust on both sides. ~ Thomas Haden Church

In some universes, all possible pasts funnel towards a single fixed ending, Ω.

It you are of millenarian bent, you might call Ω Armageddon, If you are of grammatical bent, you might call it punctuation on a cosmological scale.

If you are a philosopher in such a universe, you might call Ω inevitable. ~ Yoon Ha Lee

For me, music is in no way ornamental or decorative, it's constitutive of who I am. ~ Cornel West

You realize, there is no free-will in anything we create with Artificial Intelligence ... ~ Clyde DeSouza

To inspire a singularity of focus, a challenge must be important to you and it must be something you feel you should do now in this moment. If it's trivial or not time-bound, you won't engage. So in selecting your next challenge in life, choose one that is meaningful and will demand your complete concentration. ~ Brendon Burchard

Fevvers felt that shivering sensation which always visited her when mages, wizards, impresarios came to take away her singularity as though it were their own invention, as though they believed she depended on their imaginations n order to be a woman. She felt herself turning, willy-nilly, from a woman into an idea. ~ Angela Carter

[Core concepts: Human beings all have souls. Souls are software objects. Software is not immortal.] ~ Charles Stross

God abhors a naked singularity. ~ Stephen Hawking

She knows how to keep him interested in a thousand ways. And her peculiarity, her singularity may not always be easy for him to bear. But surely she has never bored him. Elle sait se faire désirer, but without pretenses. It is her way, and he is under her spell like a lover, and happy when he can touch her lightly to remind her of something! ~ Brigitte Hamann

In a future time when most human thought has been accelerated by artificial intelligence and external memory can be shared on a universal matrix... GITS 2 ~ Masaki Yamada

Who affects useless singularities has surely a little mind. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

Seriously, that woman is so much crazy crammed into a small space that she's practically a crazy singularity. ~ Mira Grant

Life begets intelligence, intelligence begets smart matter and a singularity. ~ Charles Stross

Anyone who knows a strange fact shares in its singularity. ~ Jean Genet

Hannah strived for physical catharsis, but she was trapped in an unfamiliar mind without its biological counterparts; gasping without lungs, crying without tears, forgiving without a heart. ~ Jake Vander Ark

Avoid all affectation and singularity. What is according to nature is best, and what is contrary to it is always distasteful. Nothing is graceful that is not our own. ~ Jeremy Collier

My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension. ~ Benjamin Franklin

He's gone, I thought as everything inside of me collapsed into singularity. ~ John Green

Priest and wise man and prophet alike felt that their professional well-being was threatened by Jeremiah's singularity. Panicked, they plotted his disgrace. Their "law" and "counsel" and "words" were in danger of being exposed as pious frauds by Jeremiah's honest and passionate life. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

To become aware of our history is to become aware of our singularity. ~ Octavio Paz

Man's singularity is his divinity. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

You can't hack your destiny, brute force ... you need a back door, a side channel into Life. ~ Clyde DeSouza

When one is in love one thinks only of one. ~ Will Advise

Imagine - a thousand Eleanors ruling under a thousand suns. ~ David Marusek

a singularity is not even mathematically describable. ~ Pierre St. Clair

Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement; I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not. ~ Lord Chesterfield

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular. ~ Charles Caleb Colton