Chris Hallquist has hosted a guest post on his blog by Luke Muehlhauser, whom some of you might remember as the brilliant and balanced author of Common Sense Atheism and Worldview Naturalism, and who is now executive director of MIRI. As Hallquist describes the post, “Luke does not intend to persuade skeptics that they should believe everything he does about the technological singularity. Rather, he aims to lay out the issues clearly so that skeptics can apply the tools of skepticism to a variety of claims associated with ‘the singularity’ and come to their own conclusions.”

The description is apt. Luke’s article is a bookmarkable cornucopia of references and links and brief discussion of each, for anyone who wants to know what all this “singularity” business is about–or who know at least what it used to be about, but want to know what it has evolved into. Basically, if you were to read only one thing on the subject, it should be this. Luke’s article is “What Should Skeptics Believe about the Singularity?” Go give it a look. It’s fascinating, not only on it’s intended subject, but as a model example of how to approach speculative claims like this generally.

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