Why Chicks Don’t Dig The Singularity
The title of RU Sirius’ post caught my attention, so I’m stealing it. You gotta read (or listen to) the interview with author Joe Quirk about his conversion to Singularitarianism via a “very unassuming white tent” at Burning Man, from a good-looking guy in a woman’s nightie. He also talks about why he thinks women aren’t into the Singularity.
My wife doesn’t care about the Singularity. When I talk about it, it doesn’t resonate for her. It doesn’t sound exciting to be able to put a machine inside your brain or something like that.
My wife is actually in the business of making women young and beautiful. She’s what’s called an aesthetician. She makes people beautiful. So if I could convince her that people can live forever and be young as long as they want, she might be into it. But my explanation ends up being sort of technical and attenuated. There are so many other things you need to know that it tends to become like religion –- the rapture for geeks.
And it’s kind of become a little religion; we have our own Rapture and our own eschatology and all that sort of stuff. But I think the idea of merging with machine intelligence is not appealing to lots of different kinds of people. And so when we talk about it, we talk as if this tiny sector of human experience –- and the kinds of enhancements male geeks want — is all that there is. But when you describe these kinds of things to most people, they’re not necessarily enthused. They’re more often afraid. So I think we need a clearer idea of what is universal in human needs to be able to explain The Singularity.
