The Gentle Seduction (1989) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)

#81

Post by FrustratedMonky » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

aspenmayer wrote: post #76

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #23

Found this similar to ending of Parthenon. Show on netflix. The ending does something similar. Worth watching, the last 2-3 episodes really ramp up to 11. Also. "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov. I really thought there was going to be a 'let there be light' moment at the end.

> Found this similar to ending of Parthenon. The title is Pantheon , and the show is itself based upon a series of short stories in a shared universe by Ken Liu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon_(TV_series) https://kenliu.name/blog/book/the-hidden-girl-and-other-stor...

Thank You. I didn't know there was a book. From the blurb it looks like the series incorporated a lot of the short stories. Liked it enough I'll also read the book and compare.

Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)

#82

Post by ahazred8ta » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #70

Isamu wrote: post #45

That’s interesting, they use the Singularity to refer to technological explosion in general rather than specifically AI becoming super intelligent. This seems to predate the AI usage. >"Singularity is a time in the future. It'll occur when the rate of change of technology is very great--so great that the effort to keep up with the change will overwhelm us. People will face a whole new set of problems that we can't ev…

The first recorded use seems to be by Stan Ulam in 1958, who was paraphrasing John von Neumann: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19940022856/downloads/19... “One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could…

In the early 20th century, philosopher Pierre Teilhard De Chardin proposed that we are mentally evolving toward something transhuman and divine, but he didn't spell out a rapid transition. So the concept was sort of there, but von Neumann put it in a technological context.

Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)

#83

Post by korse » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 10:15 PM UTC

What is really interesting is how many times this story has been posted previously without getting any traction?

Why is this time different? The poster, current geopolitical/technical climate or...

Re: The Gentle Seduction (1989)

#84

Post by tekne » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 3:31 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #57

tekne wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting: on balance life increases entropy. Yet it also produces pockets of ultra-low entropy; states which would be staggeringly, astronomically unlikely to be witnessed in nature. So perhaps what life does is increase entropy-entropy -- the diversity of entropy, versus a consistent entropic smear -- even as it increases entropy...

> So perhaps what life does is increase entropy-entropy -- the diversity of entropy, versus a consistent entropic smear -- even as it increases entropy... Life is a rounding error in the energy and entropy balance of the solar system. And even on earth we barely amount to much.

Nice username -- very fitting.

Yes, and yet if we instead look for low-entropy peaks, I'd be shocked if anything in the solar system is even nearly as low-entropy as a single bacterium, let alone a brain.

Then there's potential...