The Speculist

Commenting to Phil's last post, MikeD asks, "Is the Singularity the readout of the machine's state, or the start of the next calculation?"

If we are living in a simulation, and if the purpose of this simulation is to develop intelligence that will be brought into a that higher reality, when do we graduate? Would it be at the point of our own Singularity, or when we've grown into a Kurzweilian Intelligent Universe?

After our own Singularity we will also start simulating realities. We might be more than one level deep in a Russian nesting doll of realities. There might be a problem with nesting too deep. We know this from computer science:

If you fail to detect the end of the recursive call your program will stuck in an infinite regression - continually falling deeper and deeper into the regressive call until the computer becomes hopelessly CPU bound.

I like to think of recursion as being like those Chinese wooden nesting dolls that are hollow - one nests inside of another, inside of another and so on until the last one is just an inch high and they can't nest any further.

As I said - when you get to this last doll - you must be able to detect it and start backing out. Coming out of a recursive call is like unpacking the dolls. No processing happens on the way back out except to pass the result of the previous call back up to the next one coming out. In the end the final result in full is available when your code emerges from the last call to the recursive function.

I guess we'll start seeing guys on the street wearing placards saying "Last call is near!"