The Speculist

Thanks to the new Kurzweil book, the terms Singularitarian and Singularitarianism are being introduced to many in the general reading public. And maybe that's not such a good thing. Don't get me wrong; I'm all for getting those ideas out there. I'm just not sure the words are right.

My co-bloggers and I have been talking about this for a while, and we've decided that it's time to go public with our objections. We're not sure thos terms will "sell" to the general public.

Unfortunately, I think the two terms in question are deficient in what I'm going to call memetic resonance. The syllables are one problem. One of the great things about most of those who are currently Singularity-aware is that they are academics and other geeks* who have no problem at all with 7- and 10- syllable words. In fact, let's face it -- they prefer those kinds of words. But terminology that works for a devoted core of geeks might not work for the rest of the world.

Putting the syllabic objections aside, these words sound like religious terms. The two terms that come to mind when I think of "--arians" and "--arianism" are Presbyterians/Presbyterianism (which I realize has a slightly different suffix) and Unitarian/Unitarianism. If I push it, I can dredge up "Rotarian," which is not much help, as well as "antidisestablishmentarianism" -- a word even longer than Singularitarianism, which is also related to the subject of religion.

Of course, we aren't just about the problem, here. We have some thoughts on replacements for those terms.

Stephen suggests that any of the following terms might be good substitutes:

Transhumanist
Extropian
Speculist (excellent suggestion!)

Virginia Postrel's term "dynamist" might be added to that list as well. Unfortunately, worthy as each of these terms might be -- and applicable as they might be to most Singularitarians -- they are not Singularity-specific. Plus, there are transhumanists and extropians who don't spend a lot of time thinking about the Singularity. Dynamist is more of a political term. And speculists have a wide range of interests -- the Singularity being just one of them.

So let's take a step back and see what these two terms are telling us and then work it from there.

First off, "Singularitarian." Who or what are Singularitarians? In his seminal essay on the subject, Eliezer Yudkowsky explained it thusly:

Singularitarians are the partisans of the Singularity.

A Singularitarian is someone who believes that technologically creating a greater-than-human intelligence is desirable, and who works to that end.

A Singularitarian is advocate, agent, defender, and friend of the future known as the Singularity.

Okay, so we've got this partisan, this friend of the future, working towards a positive end. Great stuff. Such a role deserves a name that sounds active and strong.

How about...Spiker?

(Taking my inspiration from this book, of course.)

Maybe it sounds a little strange at first, but try it out.

It's not that I don't appreciate your concerns about the environment. In fact, I share them. I just think solutions to these problems lie along a path different from what you're recommending. You see, I'm a Spiker.

Yes, I've read that book. The author is quite progressive in her thinking, but she's hardly what I would call a Spiker.

Michael Anissimov? Oh, yeah. That guy's a Spiker. Big time. Christine Peterson? Spiker. John Smart? Spiker. Ray Kurzweil? Ray Kurzweil? What, are you kidding? Why don't you just ask whether Damien Broderick is a Spiker? Of course Kurzweil's a Spiker. He's like...the Spiker.

See how easily it flows? It's got that kick to it, like "hacker" or "blogger" or "trekker." A Spiker is somebody who does something. A Spiker is somebody who believes something. A Spiker is part of a distinct, easy to recognize group.

As for Singularitarianism, I believe that's what's needed is several terms to include several different approaches to the Singularity. Of course, we can still keep Singularitarian as the formal, correct term for Spiker and Singularitarianism as the formal, correct term for the accompanying belief system. But not everyone who is aware of the Singularity is a Spiker. Not everybody is "for it."

I therefore recommend the following terms and abbreviations, either as placeholders or descriptors for the terms we need to develop or as the terms themselves if they work:

With this system, we have a set of terms that covers every possibility but one -- "never heard of it." (We could add ACI for Accelerating Change Ignorant, I suppose.) This is a technical classification scheme, which will appeal to geeks, and it's a set of easy to pick up and throw around three-letter abbreviations, which I believe encompasses the aforementioned (and much needed) memetic resonance.

I want to give honorable mention, here, to Mike's contribution to the discussion with his term to describe what I call the ACS (accelerating change skeptical) philosophy:

Prognostic Continuitarian

You have to love that. I explained to Mike that, from a memetic resonance standpoint, I doubt we'll get any dance crazes going talking like that. However, it is a much more precise term than the one I have been using up to now -- buzzkill -- which applies to a lot of behavior and situations that have nothing to do with the Singularity.

In my first iteration, the stem for these terms was SA, for Singularity Aware (thus excluding the "never heard of it" category by definition), but I didn't like the abbreviation for Singularity Aware Pessimism -- SAP. For one thing, it's the name of a software company. For another, it's an acronym, where the others are abbreviations. Yet another, the word it spells out means "stupid person." We're only here to classify, not to judge.


* Just so there is no misunderstanding. The term is used descriptively, not perjoratively. Everybody whose name is on the masthead of this blog is a geek...proudly. Geek is good.