Thursday 30 August 2007

"Cliology" and the Singularity

While reading "In the Country of the Blind" by Michael Flynn, I got to thinking about whether the hypothetical "science of future history" known as Cliology would ever be undone by the rapid pace of change in society. For instance, if the input variables to your equations change before you can solve them, then the answer does you no good, does it? Similarly a prediction based on stale data would be no good, and data gets stale much more quickly now than it used to. That trend will increase until the predictions are stale before you can make them, no matter how quickly you make them. That's the Singularity, where the pace of progress breaks its own sort of speed barrier, makes a sonic boom and comes out the other side.

An interesting side note would be that Cliology could predict the time of its own death if the pace of change can be measured accurately.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Another possibility is that Cliology just gets harder.
PPS - And requires quantum computers.

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