Re: poly: The singleton hypothesis

Peter M. writes:
>>I realize this claim seems like a consensus among certain groups,
>
> I see a remarkable lack of consensus. I think if you could quantify
>people's predictions for the time between the first nanotech product
>and the time when nanotech has caused economic growth of 2 or 3 orders
>of magnitude, you'd see a rather flat, uniform distribution ranging from
>hours to centuries when it seems like there ought to be something like
>a bell curve. I think the illusion of a group of singularity worshipers
>all thinking the same things comes from imprecise communications.

Do you mean uniform across time, or across the logarithm of time?
If the latter, that seems to describe a consensus in support of Nick's
claim. A century is ~10^6 hours, while a year is ~10^4 hours. So with
a uniform distribution across log time, with bounds x hours and x
centuries, the claim that the time is < x years agrees with 2/3 of the
estimates.

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
Received on Mon Apr 27 20:25:06 1998