Singleton Hypothesis

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Description

PAUL RATNER:

"Nick Bostrom's "singleton hypothesis" says that intelligent life on Earth will eventually form a "singleton".

The "singleton" could be a single government or an artificial intelligence that runs everything. Whether the singleton will be positive or negative depends on numerous factors and is not certain.


Does history have a goal? Is it possible that all the human societies that existed are ultimately a prelude to establishing a system where one entity will govern everything the world over? The Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom proposes the "singleton hypothesis," maintaining that intelligent life on Earth will at some point organize itself into a so-called "singleton" – one organization that will take the form of either a world government, a super-intelligent machine (an AI) or, regrettably, a dictatorship that would control all affairs.

Other forms of a singleton may exist, and, ultimately, Bostrom believes one of them will come into existence" (https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/singleton-hypothesis-future-humanity?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1)

Discussion

Michel Bauwens:

My own quick take: it is clear to me that a system of nation states fighting for dwindling resources is not the long term way forward, and that we need to move to a world-ecological system in which living being and planetary well-being will be major factors with some sort of 'voice'; it is also clear that biological and human history has evolved through 'jumps' in which survival mandated higher forms of unity and cooperation. What seems very unlikely however, is that this would take the form of a single unified organism. That seems highly reductionistic to me. When multicellular beings were formed, it didn't create just one being, but a multitude of them; similarly , I except a diverslity of global governance entitities to emerge, not a single one.