Exponential Growth of Consciousness - Wilber and the Singularity

Just caught this portion of an interview between Acne Paper and Ken Wilber as seen on his blog. This question, and Ken’s answer, are directly related to something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Basically if we look at Kurzweil’s theory of “the law of accelerating returns,” where he is describing exponential change of technological systems we see that it corresponds to the lower right quadrant in Wilber’s model (or perhaps both the upper and lower right). If as Wilber claims quadrants “tetra-emerge,” meaning that you can not separate a trend in one quadrant from a trend in another, what is the corresponding trend in the the left-hand quadrants, in the interiors of individuals and cultures here on earth? The obvious answer is that they share in this exponential growth curve. Consciousness is growing exponentially.

Acne: Do you think the periods between new stages [of development] will come at ever shorter intervals?

Wilber: So it’s 300,000 years, 30,000 years, 3,000 years, 300 years and 30 years. So the next one will take 3 years… And you know, there are some pretty sober, responsible theorists who believe that. I do not believe it the way it is normally stated. I mean, some people even believe, like Jay Kurtzwell [Ray Kurzweil], that there is going to be a singularity - because the rate of technological innovation it is going to approach infinity - and then when there is a singularity, and the laws of physics could change and we could go up in light and that kind of thing. I don’t think so. Even if it is an accelerated rate, it could well be that what happens then when you get down to, you know, from 300 years to 30 years to 3 years, is that you really are leaping to the next tier. Then it kind of starts all over again. In other words it could take then another 300 years for the next stage, and then 30 years, and 3 years and so on, and then a new tier could emerge. So even though there might be this accelerated rate I don’t think we are going up in light or anything.

Now, while his answer does directly relate to my original question, I found it to be rather lacking. For one, Ken misrepresents Kurzweil’s position. Perhaps he’s just trying to be cute, or didn’t remember what Kurzweil had said, but nowhere in The Singularity is Near does Kurzweil claim that the laws of physics are going to change or that we’re going up in light. He only claims that as intelligence approaches and then goes beyond the singularity (which he puts at 2045–when the nonbiological intelligence created in that year will be 1 billion times all of human intelligence today) that we will saturate the universe with that intelligence.

The other problem with Ken’s response is that he sort of ignores the fact that Kurzweil has already formulated a theory that addresses stage changes (and possibly tier shifts as well). While Kurzweil doesn’t call them stages—he calls them epochs—he has recognized that between each stage shift there is what he calls an S-curve. In other words, during each stage or epoch, the exponential growth reaches a certain point and then begins to level out again (as in an S-curve), but then begins another exponential growth pattern. In other words, the stage or epoch reaches its limits and begins to steady out as a new paradigm or stage takes its place. But, and this is really important, if you look at this series of exponential growth curves and S-curves, one would see that the over-all trend is still exponential!

But Ken’s argument could be that there is another layer of S-curve shifts in this over all exponential trend, which he is calling a tier shift. The only problem with that theory, is a) there are no previous tier shifts in history to base this conclusion and corresponding evidence on and b) according to Kurzweil’s evidence, this exponential growth trend of increasing intelligence dates back to the big bang itself, so that the trend is happening irregardless of human evolution. Surely, if on a universal scale, we don’t see this trend of double S-curve one cannot assume that human beings as they enter “2nd tier” are going to suddenly turn this pattern around. Instead, I offer this alternative theory.

My theory, and I think Kurzweil hints at this, is that even as this exponential growth of consciousness and technology happens, we will not become overwhelmed by this increase of change over time, nor will we go up in light (although we will become more light). Our systems and frames of reference will be such that we adapt to the change, and continue to have a relatively stable sense of time. Our intelligence increases just enough to understand and cope with the ever increasing complexity, and our consciousness and “universe-view” changes just enough to make sense of all that’s happening. Even though this exponential trend is still happening, it might be that we begin to experience time at finer levels. Perhaps we begin experiencing things at the nano- or pico-second level. Each moment of subjective experience becomes increasingly smaller due to our radically different means of perception, and so our sense of time between paradigmatic shifts stay relatively the same.

There doesn’t seem to be much (if any) evidence to support this notion, so keep in mind this is purely speculative, but is potentially more accurate than Wilber’s notion, given that he doesn’t appear to actually understands Kurzweil’s position, or at least hasn’t shown that he does.

Any other Integral-Singulatarian-Geeks have a potentially illuminating view on this issue?