Talk:The Singularity Is Near

"non-fiction" book is highly misleading

The book fits Wikipedia's own definition of fiction: "Fiction is the form of any work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary and theoretical—that is, invented by the author." Regardless of how the book was published, the page should call it science-fiction or just fiction as that accurately portrays the contents of this book. Linket (talk) 03:41, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

non-Fiction is a narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are believed by the author to be factual. These assertions and descriptions may or may not be accurate, and can give either a true or a false account of the subject in question; however, it is generally assumed that authors of such accounts believe them to be truthful at the time of their composition or, at least, pose them to their audience as historically or empirically true. Reporting the beliefs of others in a non-fiction format is not necessarily an endorsement of the ultimate veracity of those beliefs, it is simply saying it is true that people believe them (for such topics as mythology, religion). Taken from the wikipedia page on non-fiction.

Possible references

• Beam, Alex. That Singularity Sensation, The Boston Globe. 2005-02-24.
• Doerr, Anthony. Which Way Will Technology Take us?, The Boston Globe. 2005-10-02.
• Lamb, Gregory. Progress at light speed, The Christian Science Monitor. 2005-10-13
• Modis, Theodore. "The Singularity Myth". Technological Forecasting & Social Change. 73.2 (2006).
• Gray, John. On the Road to Immortality. The New York Review of Books. 2011-11-24
• Vance, Ashlee. Merely Human? That's So Yesterday. The New York Times. 2010-06-12
• Linden, David. The Singularity is Far: A Neuroscientist's View. Boing Boing,
• Popper, Ben. Rapture of the nerds: will the Singularity turn us into gods or end the human race?. The Verge. 2012-10-22.
• Davies, Paul. When compturs take over. Nature. Vol 437|440|23 March 2006.
• Maslin, Janet. Will the Future Be a Trillian Times Better? The New York Times. 2005-10-03.
• Magee, Christopher and Devezas, Tessaleno. How many singularities are near and how will they disrupt human history?
• Abou Farman, The Mode of Prediction: Review of The Singularity is Near, Anthropology Now, Vol 2 No 3 Dec 2010

Maybe some worth using? Silas Ropac (talk) 16:04, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

New content section - need feedback please

The content section of the article has completely changed in the last 2 weeks. Please read the old and new and compare, make sure it is heading in the right direction. I have made a lot of changes with no input, I want some validation I'm not making things worse.

• old
• new

The goals for the new version were:

1. Much less detail: old covered only chapters 1 and 2 and was already way too long
2. Remove OR and out-of-balance material (postulates and DNA error section)
3. Much more coverage: now covers material from all chapters
4. Avoid chapter-by-chapter by chapter structure, frowned upon and clunky
5. Have citations, old had none. Maybe too many now, but we can cut down easily

Let me know how things read now. What can be added or changed or improved? Or please just have it and make changes. I stubbed in a Background and Reception section which are next goals, after content is settled. Silas Ropac (talk) 04:12, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Feedback

Thanks for your work here: 2 tips on my first reading (note these may have been a problem before your edits, so I'm not blaming you):

1. Avoid use of you/us/we. Write in third-person (people, one, humans, they). See WP:TONE for more details.

   Example: Kurzweil attempts to give a glimpse of what awaits us --> Kurzweil attempts to describe technological changes he believes human civilization will undergo...

   Example: The four epochs we have been through so far --> Kurzweil describes four epochs humans/civilization/theuniverse has been through before...

2. Avoid describing Kurzweil's views with Wikipedia's voice. WP:NPOV (worth a close read) requires that we describe debates rather than engaging in them. When a statement is theory, speculation, or otherwise not a consensus view, the article should make clear that Wikipedia doesn't necessarily agree nor disagree with the statement.

   Example: The singularity will result from the application of his law of accelerating returns --> The singularity follows from Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns, in which...

   Example: The four epochs we have been through so far--> Kurzweil describes four epochs humans/civilization/theuniverse has been through before...

In general, using an WP:INUNIVERSE style, in my understanding, is not suitable for theoretical/scientific/historical/speculative content, as it blurs the line between fact and opinion. There are many examples of both issues. I'd be happy to provide more examples and/or check any progress you make on addressing them. Thanks again for your improvements! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 03:24, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at it. I know I've been doing both of these things, so probably is me! I figured in the back of my mind they were probably wrong, but also wasn't sure how to avoid them and keep the prose compact and readable. Mechanically substituting "we" with "human civilization" everywhere would obviously not be good! So I guess the trick is to vary things up. Using "we" is just so convenient, it will take practice to avoid. As for "in universe" I've done that on purpose to avoid a stilted style of attributing in every sentence "Kurzweil says A. Kurzweil says B. Kurzweil says C". Again I guess the trick is to attribute, but in a varied and interesting ways? I will have to look at some GA or FA articles and see if I can pick up some hints. I could mechanically fix this problem now but I feel it would leave the prose worse for the wear. Silas Ropac (talk) 05:32, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Update: Okay I have taken a pass through on both issues: eliminate "we" and "our" in the content section (except for quotes from the book where he uses it) and attributed to Kurzweil ideas which are his from the book. Please take a look! Silas Ropac (talk) 15:08, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Update2: Also I added a new lead, and took out the empty background section for now. Silas Ropac (talk) 16:03, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Great work. I continued with some minor copyedits and I think both issues are satisfactorily resolved now. This style is less engaging and a little dry, but sometimes that's the nature of an encyclopedia writing. Prose can be lucid, but it can't really engage (speak to) the reader in the same way as an essay would. In any case, I think we struck the right balance here between speculation and description.

You're awesome for improving this article, surely one of my favorite books. Now it will give readers a much more thorough and encyclopedic introduction to the subject. Thanks for doing that!! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 16:28, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Yeah I thought it deserved a decent article. It was fun to work on. It gave me a much better sense of his ideas and logic. Yeah I'm new to wikipedia so learning how to write encyclopedia style will take some practice. I just hope I can "turn it off" if I want to write something with more pizazz. So how can I get it re-assed? For GA and FA there is all this formal machinery. For stub/start/c/b I don't yet understand how it's supposed to work.I read "anybody" can do it, but I mean you want someone somewhat neutral I would think, and some experienced enough, and maybe someone familiar with the subject matter (although maybe not). It'd be nice if there was a queue or a process, but is "just grabbing someone" the preferred approach?

I'm hoping to work on his older books need The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Age of Spiritual Machines next. Although now I see they are quite similar, the ideas are repeated between each book, refined but repeated. Still I think they are deserve some minimum level of article. After all I see many individual simpson's episodes have GA articles, so poor Mr. Kurzweil at least deserves C articles for his hefty tomes.18:42, 19 February 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Silas Ropac (talk • contribs)

Sure. The way to have an article re-rated is to ping the wikiprojects listed at the top of this talk page. Each wikiproject has its own talk page, so you would just kindly leave a note requesting someone to rerate the article as its been through a major rewrite. In this case it's Wikipedia:WikiProject_Transhumanism and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books. Then someone should come along in a few days and take a look. If that doesn't work, ping me again. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 22:33, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I have reviewed the article and rated it B-class as it meets the B-Class criteria. The next step is edit to meet the Good-Class criteria, specifically Criteria 3 (as well as a few minor items). To meet that criteria, I think there should be a Background section describing where this book came from (what make the author qualified to write on the subject? there are some hints in the lead but per WP:LEAD this should be expanded in the body of the article), a little more in the Analysis section regarding style/genre (is this a popular science or academic book?) and an expanded Reception section with additional sources used (was it well-received by the academic community or popular media?). maclean (talk) 06:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Great and thanks for ideas for GA. I know you don't have to give feedback to re-asses, but it's very helpful.I read the article on Pattern Recognition you worked on, very impressive. I have read the book, but still got a lot from the article, it felt very comprehensive. You've worked on a lot of great book articles. Silas Ropac (talk) 12:44, 20 February 2013 (UTC)