Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

After the release of a major documentary such as Transcendent Man, our very public and well publicized defeat at Jeopardy by IBM’s Watson, and a growing mainstream coverage of the technological singularity, I started wondering about the potential stages of humanity’s collective emotional and other reaction towards the concept of the singularity. Arthur Schopenhauer claims that “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” So does this relate well to the singularity? Let’s see. Firstly, is the singularity often ridiculed? It seems to me that so far it has been predominantly ignored, though that observation is increasingly inaccurate as we get more and more coverage in the media. Secondly, has it been violently opposed? Well, we did have the Unabomber, even though Richard Clarke’s Breakpoint-type of [...]