The Convergence dude is pretty cool

I like the part in the Jenkins where he talks about getting people to buy Grandpa a console, especially in the context of the Srinivasan and Goertzel. Srinivasan sounds like the kind of guy who will keep bothering Grandpa about using consoles that will just get stored in the garage unopened, and Grandpa will lie to him about it because he always liked the boy. Goertzel, now, spends all his money on overclocking his supercomputer or something and will have forgotten to call Grandpa for the last few years by the time he's informed that the old man is on his deathbed, but that's all right because they were never really able to connect in the first place, they're just about different things.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that Jenkins seems to be friendliest to the individual viewpoint, or maybe I'm just saying that because I agree with him. Srinivasan and Goertzel are each frantically trying to pile stuff together, and I guess each of them has a reason, but neither is really what's going on. Ang cuts to the heart of the matter, which is that we really have no idea what the hell is going on. Like, none whatsoever. Of course, if we invert my argument Srinivasan and Goertzel are both trying to make themselves useful and actually get something done, while Jenkins and Ang are staying out of the water and arguing about politics, although neither has voted since 1988.

So yeah, that's how you mix metaphors. I do like the Convergence essay the best, because it seems the most useful, and it gets to the point quickly (Srinivisan takes as long as possible to say everything) and doesn't get ahead of itself (you can almost see Goertzel leaning too far forward, correcting himself, almost falling over backwards, and basically stumbling around). You can only progress through the convergence when it converges upon you--for example, I don't see Srinivisan's efforts making much of a difference in the end, and I don't know if Goertzel (or I) will actually live to see a global supermind. Technology does curve upwards exponentially, but we're so close to the asymptote that we think we've already touched it, and it doesn't really work that way. I'd better stop being vague and misusing terminology though (is that what an asymptote is?), I guess I'm done.