begin partial quote from: law of accelerating returns
The Law of Accelerating Returns has in many ways altered public perception of Moore's law. [citation needed] It is a common (but mistaken) belief that Moore's law makes predictions regarding all forms of technology,[citation needed] when really it only concerns semiconductor circuits. Many futurists still use the term "Moore's law" to describe ideas like those put forth by Moravec, Kurzweil and others.
According to Kurzweil, since the beginning of evolution, more complex life forms have been evolving exponentially faster, with shorter and shorter intervals between the emergence of radically new life forms, such as human beings, who have the capacity to engineer (i.e. intentionally design with efficiency) a new trait which replaces relatively blind evolutionary mechanisms of selection for efficiency. By extension, the rate of technical progress amongst humans has also been exponentially increasing, as we discover more effective ways to do things, we also discover more effective ways to learn, i.e. language, numbers, written language, philosophy, scientific method, instruments of observation, tallying devices, mechanical calculators, computers, each of these major advances in our ability to account for information occur increasingly close together. Already within the past sixty years, life in the industrialized world has changed almost beyond recognition except for living memories from the first half of the 20th century. This pattern will culminate in unimaginable technological progress in the 21st century, leading to a singularity. Kurzweil elaborates on his views in his books The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near.
Limits of accelerating change
In the natural sciences, it is typical that processes characterized by exponential acceleration in their initial stages go into the saturation phase. This clearly makes it possible to realize that if an increase with acceleration is observed over a certain period of time, this does not mean an endless continuation of this process. On the contrary, in many cases this means an early exit to the plateau of speed. The processes occurring in natural science allow us to suggest that the observed picture of accelerating scientific and technological progress, after some time (in physical processes, as a rule, is short) will be replaced by a slowdown and a complete stop. Despite the possible termination / attenuation of the acceleration of the progress of science and technology in the foreseeable future, progress itself, and as a result, social transformations, will not stop or even slow down - it will continue with the achieved (possibly huge) speed, which has become constant.[14]
Accelerating change may not be restricted to the Anthropocene Epoch,[15] but a general and predictable developmental feature of the universe.[16] The physical processes that generate an acceleration such as Moore's law are positive feedback loops giving rise to exponential or superexponential technological change.[17] These dynamics lead to increasingly efficient and dense configurations of Space, Time, Energy, and Matter (STEM efficiency and density, or STEM "compression").[18] At the physical limit, this developmental process of accelerating change leads to black hole density organizations, a conclusion also reached by studies of the ultimate physical limits of computation in the universe.[19][20]
Applying this vision to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence leads to the idea that advanced intelligent life reconfigures itself into a black hole. Such advanced life forms would be interested in inner space, rather than outer space and interstellar expansion.[21] They would thus in some way transcend reality, not be observable and it would be a solution to Fermi's paradox called the "transcension hypothesis".[22][16][18] Another solution is that the black holes we observe could actually be interpreted as intelligent super-civilizations feeding on stars, or "stellivores".[23][24] This dynamics of evolution and development is an invitation to study the universe itself as evolving, developing.[25] If the universe is a kind of superorganism, it may possibly tend to reproduce, naturally[26] or artificially, with intelligent life playing a role.[27][28][29][30][31]
