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Comment by Mediterraneo10 | Hacker News Reader

Visions of the Singularity in the near term failed to account for two things: 1) obtaining regulatory approval for innovations in various spheres (medicine, aviation) takes forever, 2) innovations that rely on the consumer market are slowed by people wanting to use their present purchases for some amount of time before shelling out again for the next generation of tech.

An exponentially faster development of technology is limited by how fast the workings of government agencies and consumers' minds operate.

I rolled my eyes when I read Kurzweil's predictions of medical advances in his early-millennium books. Even if we invent nanobots or whatever so quickly, the FDA and its counterparts are not going to allow applying those technologies the very moment they are invented.

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The singularity isn’t happening because the concept of exponential technological growth is, as a general matter, wrong. In any given area, technology improves rapidly, then plateaus. (From 1903-1969, we went from the Wright Flyer to a moon landing. In a similar period after that, our technological capability in that area has barely advanced.) It’s not like there is incredible technology that’s just sitting around waiting for regulatory approval.

> Even if we invent nanobots or whatever so quickly, the FDA and its counterparts are not going to allow applying those technologies the very moment they are invented.

I've often wondered if countries (such as maybe China or India) where medical devices/pharmaceuticals/etc are more lightly regulated may some day end up pulling ahead of countries like the US with stricter regulations.

Of course, stricter regulations exist for a reason – to reduce incidence of death or injury from insufficiently tested treatments. But, there is always a risk-reward tradeoff–being willing to tolerate a greater incidence of death/injury due to new treatments may increase the progress of medical science–and some societies may collectively decide to locate that tradeoff at a different position than what the US (or even other Western countries) does.

> to reduce the incidence of death/injury

... Or you know large scale existential crisis. Nanotechnology is freaky man. Could be the easiest way for reality to be rewritten without anyone noticing..

I don't see this. I would expect the Singularity to be mostly powered by hardware, software, robotics, and manufacturing, all of which are lightly regulated.

obtaining regulatory approval for innovations in various spheres (medicine, aviation) takes forever

If regulatory approval is the real bottleneck then there would be a rapidly-growing backlog of technologies that have been invented but not approved. Do we see that?

people wanting to use their present purchases for some amount of time before shelling out again for the next generation of tech

People are keeping iPhones for 4-5 years instead of 2 years but Apple still has enough R&D budget to release a new model every year.

There's a more basic problem - the Singularity assumes automated self-improvement is possible.

The reality is that most codebases are brittle and bug-ridden. Poor reliability is one the defining characteristics of software systems.

The most reliable systems require formal methods, which require a nailed-down spec. There is no nailed-down spec for an open-ended self-improving system, and it's debatable if a spec is even possible.

So the only practical systems will be heuristic and inherently unreliable in at least some domains, with a tendency to fail spectacularly - much like humans.

This is a basic limitation of technology. You can have mechanical perfection in a limited domain (although with software you often you get a poor imitation of that) or you can trade off flexibility for reliability.

You can't have both.

"the field of science progresses one funeral at a time"

> the FDA and its counterparts are not going to allow applying those technologies the very moment they are invented.

And probably for very good reasons.

People act like they are immortal, but the sad truth is that we all gonna die and no amount of FDI regulation will save us from it.

All our current medical technologies a way to late to the party, if anything else we should've have them 50 years ago.

Anything that depends on current high tech or advanced manufacturing (a good portion of imaging technologies, many implants) would definitely not been around 30, let alone 50 years ago.

Well, unless future generations will resurrect me then I would prefer the progress to stall completely. Otherwise it's kind of unfair.

Those are good points.

In addition many things require experiments or building large scale factories/businesses and those take time.

Vinge’s definition of the singularity is the creation of human-level AI. After we have superhuman AI governments will be irrelevant. What ever the AI wants it gets.

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