The Singularity is not coming

I think a good model for "the singularity" is a long straight highway. Stand in the middle and look down its length, and it appears to converge to a singularity in the distance. But when you actually drive there, you see it's just more highway.

Basically I believe it's an issue of cultural time perspective. We can't imagine the tools that will be in use in 2112. But, they won't seem so strange to the people of 2111.

This is a reasonably plausible argument for progress within fields and paradigm shifts; but consider between fields, and the rate of new field creation. To use the given examples, Newtonian physics, quantum physics and Information Theory began in 1687, 1930 and 1948. That seems quite accelerating (of course you'd need more complete stats to demonstrate this properly).

BTW: I disagree that intelligence and imagination are separate. I think intelligence necessarily includes imagination, so AI would include artificial "imagination" too.

I'd like progress to continue rather than to stagnate; and since progress has historically continued, that seems the way to bet. Those pundits predicting stagnation have historically been wrong. However, I find it curious that Kurzweil does not address the availability of innovations/discoveries (and the difficulty in finding them), in contrast to the compelling case he makes for historical progress. Are potential discoveries infinite? Is their density uniform, or do they become less likely as you go along because they are limited in supply (the assumption of the article)?

How would one sensibly model the supply of potential discoveries, since it is intrinsically unknown? Perhaps a mathematical model of computation might help, of computable functions and Kolomogorov/Solomonoff program length to compute them. Using this model, the search space of functions increases exponentially with program length - but at what rate would the number of "interesting" computable functions increase? And with what density (with respect to the search space, i.e. how hard they are to find)?

I didn't notice your point about impact. Impact is hard to measure purely objectively, but I agree Newtonian physics, being more fundamental, has had more impact. But it's also had 325 years to do so, whereas Information Theory has had only 64 (to stay with these examples). Given an exponentially expanding search space, there's always more to see (but this is an assumption, not a conclusion; I think the nature of the search space is the essential question at issue here).

How much impact did Newton have on the world by 1751? How much impact will Shannon have had by 2337?

If the Singularity is defined as intelligence explosion following the creation of strong AI, and if intelligence explosion is impossible, then the Singularity is not coming, even in the far future. Progress will just carry on linearly.

Intelligence and Imagination could not be more separate.

I'm defining intelligence as sheer IQ, analogous to a computers' ability to process information. Imagination is so essentially human in nature that there is no way to describe current AI as "imaginative". For example, the person with the highest IQ in the world is not more creative than the best musician. Some of the smartest minds in the world cannot "think outside of the box" effectively, because their minds are not wired that way. Intelligence is not imagination.

Can anyone please explain how an intelligence-self-improving computer will shift from being incredibly smart to wildly imaginative?

That's the one hole in singularity that I can't figure out.