Boris Shulitski - The ideological foundations of technological singularity

The inherent and effective mechanism for securing the “correct” social mutations, leading to an increase in the production and technological efficiency of societies in the hypothetical worldview, is power intra- and intersocial conflicts. The indestructibility of power social conflicts throughout all real centuries-old history of mankind clearly confirms their significant role in the mechanism of the surrounding world evolution. Industrialization, informatization, cybernetization, internetization, globalization, artificial intelligence, the forthcoming expected and frightening technological singularity, etc… – all of the abovementioned and actually occurring processes fit perfectly into the framework of the dialectical mechanism of the evolution of the homo sapiens structural level, are predictable, integral and inevitable elements in a hypothetical view of the world. There are reasons to argue about the correspondence between the suggested hypothetical picture of the world and the real one.

Accordingly, further, at the fourth stage , based on a hypothetical view of the world, a working research program is formed; the directions of priority research in the special sciences are defined in terms of searching for specifically prognosticated new phenomena, processes and practical innovative technologies. As a result, the content of the fourth, experimental stage is the organization and carrying out of specific applied works in the field of special sciences in the areas of priority research, following from the general scientific hypothetical worldview. The results obtained in the field of special sciences in the form of fundamentally new phenomena, processes and innovative technologies will be indisputable evidence confirming the performance of the original axiomatic in the hypothetical view of the world, and at the same time serve as the definite criterion of the correspondence of the selected code to the real structure of the surrounding world.

The ideological aspect of the suggested concept is of particular interest. Ideological views are a fragment of the general scientific view of the world; they are more subject to variability than the general scientific worldview on the knowledge of the special sciences. The worldview, in contrast to the general scientific concept of the world, is, as a rule, general knowledge of the world in conjunction with the system of value system, with a certain subjective assessment of the concrete events and phenomena.

In the energoinformational concept, the three basic components of the suggested ideological representations about the role and place of a person in the surrounding world are three scientific disciplines – dialectical philosophy, psychoanalysis and cybernetics . These are the three components of the code, the three components of the key to explanation of the mechanism of human evolution, which successfully approached the solution of the puzzle about the role and place of homo sapiens in the structure of actual reality in the framework of the new world view. Using three initial components, one can show the universal dialectical mechanism of evolution of the of homo sapiens structural level, similar to the mechanism of evolution of other structurallevels of actual reality in accordance with the principle of self-similarity of mechanisms of evolution at all levels of the surrounding world organization.

It should be noted that at present, there are many special scientific theories and disciplines worthy of respect and attention, however, the three mentioned above can be considered as one of the possible variants of experimental matching of the code for deciphering the laws of evolutionary processes at the human structural level, nothing more. Psychoanalysis gives the key to explanation of the energy mechanism functioning at the person’s structural level in terms of the first law of dialectics (internal contradiction as the psychoenergetic source of human functioning), and cybernetics allows explaining the trend, the direction of person’s the structural level evolution in terms of the second law of dialectics (forming of the negation). The second law of dialectics predicts the possibility of the appearance of a new structural level of actual reality in the near future, following the level of homo sapiens , that is, the level of dynamic models of the New type (new generation of information technology ( IT) systems).

At the same time, the process of changes, as evidenced by the third law of dialectics, will have a spasmodic, explosive, singular character with serious, perhaps even catastrophic consequences for human ideological concepts. The dialectic mechanism for the evolution of the homo sapiens structural level suggested within the framework of the energoinformational concept has all the reasons to become the basis for the development of new sociocultural theories that can adapt the human psyche to future world view cataclysms. In particular, to become a philosophical base for a number of new rapidly developing theories, such as theories of future technological singularity, trans- posthumanism and, the IT industry in general.

Consequently, the energoinformational concept suggested a constructive approach to building a general scientific picture of the world, using a hypothetical view of the world as a basis, grounded on axioms, hypotheses and constructive basic working concepts – the information and energy substances . Stated, and it is necessary to emphasize once again, as one of the possible options for auxiliary model constructs, nothing more.

Further, it is supposed to assess the adequacy of the hypothetical worldview based on the specific results of scientific research in the framework of the work program of experimental research aimed at finding specifically prognosticated new phenomena, processes and innovative technologies in the field of special sciences. And here there is required an activeinvolvement of professionals from different areas of scientific knowledge. Philosophy now looks like an outside contemplator, a “Cinderella” at the celebration of life, and it should become an effective matrix of scientific research, including that in the field of natural sciences and the rapidly developing IT industry. And this requires the unification of different, sometimes contradictory, conceptual approaches in an attempt to build an adequate general scientific worldview.

The exponential acceleration of the historical process leads to the fact that philosophical thought does not have time to comprehend the newly opening horizons of historical events, leads to the anachronism of philosophical thinking. The existing variety of theories of the world historical process (religious, secular, formational, civilizational, etc.) turns out to be helpless and childishly naive in understanding of the real processes of the surrounding world, for example, phenomena of artificial “intelligence” in the near future or the upcoming technological singularity.

A radical restructuring of ideological concepts and, in particular, the abandoning of the anthropological thesis is required. As the criterion of truth there should be recognized the real, observed in practice, processes and phenomena of the surrounding world, and not speculative piles of abstract philosophical thought, peculiar to the well-known concepts of the historical process. An unbiased and correct attitude, including that to the “carbonarist” approaches, is a necessary and indispensable condition of the effective search for a solution to interdisciplinary ideological problems.

The end of the second and the beginning of the third millennium is distinguished very significantly against the background of human history with the rapid development of science and technology. Human capabilities in the field of knowledge and transformation of the world unusually increased. Even greater speed of science and technology evolution is expected in the third millennium. In this aspect, the role of the worldviews of researchers and the general scientific view of the world as the guiding matrix of scientific research increases many times over.