[slimshady2357]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

Post the zeroeth wherein I hedge a whole bunch before post the first

I like this topic a lot. Seriously, I think about it probably 99% of the time. I have wanted to start a thrad and type about it at great length for a while, but I keep not doing so for several reasons:

- It is super indulgent and navel-gazey, and it's hard for me to take myself seriously for very long when I get like this, at least in public. Call it social conditioning or faux modesty, but it is what it is.

- There is no shortage of insight porn on the internet, and I didn't feel like I needed to add to the noise, especially when people with far more effective rhetorical style have said the same or similar things already. George Carlin I am not.

- I fear (probably rationally) that it will be riddled with assumptions and unchecked bias on my part, and I don't want to offend anybody or embarrass myself. What if it turns out I'm not as awesome and enlightened as I think I am?!

- Whenever I try, I start with some sort of thesis to maintain or conclusion to drive toward, but once I start unloading it branches exponentially and I find myself trying to compose Ensign Steve's Grand Unified Theory of Everything. That's when I get overwhelmed and quit.

I got this far and I was all like "Awesome a thread about the singularity, the beginning of existence (possibly), about what could have caused it, what it all might mean.... and ES starting us off with her thoughts, sounds... awesome!"

And then I read this:

Okay, so, hedges have been hedged. Standby for insight. This is in Philosophy and not Computers and Technology, for reasons that I hope will be obvious, but it has a whole lot to do with computers, so go ahead and start getting excited about that.

And I didn't even blink.

Then I read posts the first, second and third and was just as excited! Something totally different yet equally as interesting. I've never heard of it called the singularity before... I've got some reading to do