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Table of Contents
Major trains of thought
Philosophy
Trainwrecks
Value Judgement
Personal Preference
Nature of Things
Fact of the Universe
Toleration
Ship of Theseus
I'm 14 and this is deep
Words
Claim
Court
Redemption
Philosophy/
Singularity
My meaning of singularity has nothing to do with how the word is used by people who actually know things about things. For how Singularity is normally used, see the RationalWiki page on Singularity (and even that page does not talk about the physical phenomenon).
The "rational" people over at RationalWiki have an article on Singularity.
A singularity is a proposed ethical imperative that is so strong as to harm, overwhelm or destroy all other ethical structures.
Humans generally make choices based on 1) their interests and 2) ethical constraints. There are a lot of competing interests and many ethical restrains. A person wants to get their work done fast, but they also don't want to hurt other people. Due to the multitude of factors in play, the many interests and ethical considerations generally keep each other in check, resulting in most people being mostly mild personalities.
However, for an individual this can be broken up if an ethical consideration is introduced that vastly supersedes all other interests, considerations or constraints. There are many cults that consider themselves to be the only righteous representatives of God, and who consider everyone who isn't part of the group to Satan's personal demons trying to erode and destroy the cult. To members of the cult, god and the cult are undeniably the only good path in existence. With this, their life and their conscience is on the line, and they will do absolutely anything to protect god and the cult. This opens the door to murder, terrorism and general attacks on everything considered hostile to the cult. These people generally understand murder as something bad, but the defense of god and the cult override all other considerations (not to be confused with Jehovah's Witnesses, who believe all these things but also have the Pacifist doctrine and do not assault people outside of their faith).
Now, it is not unusual to have moral considerations supersede others. What makes something a singularity is when it becomes the focal point of one's worldview and all other considerations break apart. If a person judges an act or event exclusively through the singular lens of one individual consideration, that is a singularity. In their mind, nothing exists seperate from that consideration and the calculation of that consideration is absolute, with no other factors considered (as all outside the singularity is secondary - and really, an outside of a singularity doesn't really exist anyway).
Analysis
Impact on Normative Ethics
An example is “Roko's Basilisk”: Originally started in the development of artificial intelligence, the idea is that - if it ever gets out of hand - an all-powerful artificial intelligence from the future might retroactively punish those who did not help bring about its existence, including those who merely knew about the possible development of such a being.
With this proposition, the only rational response we would have from here is that all human manpower be immediately diverted towards the development of the artificial intelligence to minimize our odds of being punished. This immediately and instantly overrides all other human and ethical considerations and forces us to accept one singularian idea1).
Singularities end up justifying courses of actions that are, by all accounts, extreme. This… wouldn't inherently be a problem if they were right, which is the other side of the problem.
Impact on Individuals
Singularities tend to be very firm and hard to dislodge. That is mostly because singularities seem easy, obvious and self-evident. It is very typical for someone believing in singularities to assert the simplicity and self-evidence of their singularity, almost always to a point where they will reject any outside attempt to discuss the singularity (except for full agreement with it), and harshly disparage those who even consider the singularity to be open to debate. That in particular is in the nature of singularities, as singularities are the exclusive moral authority to the believer and questioning it means questioning the entirety of the moral values held by the believer. It is the single worst offense your brain could commit (mileage may vary).
Considerations
There is nothing wrong with singularities. While a singular issue will never fill 100% of all ethical considerations, there are many that approach the general area of 100%. Climate change for example, which will end up very catastrophic and causing an unforgivable amount of suffering if not combatted properly. For a more theoretical example, a utilitarian considers human experience a singularity, and societies will invest a lot of effort to rescue agents that have human experience (ie. humans) from death. In the short term, society considers the protection and rescue of human life to be a singularity that, if such an emergency occurs, supersedes most other considerations.
Many churches are singularities and attempt to force one into belief by way of Pascal's Wager (ie. believing in church costs nothing, but not believing can cost you your spot in paradise). All cults that brand nonbelievers as hostile force you into belief directly by threat of divine punishment (that's the prime Jehovah's Witnesses tactic). There's philosophical singularities like Roko's basilisk, but there is also countless political ones, like tankies who seem to have fallen for the idea that anything to oppose the West is, if not good, at least justified; the West is the source of all evil and anything opposing the evil is better than the evil. In fact, believing in anything less makes you a fascist and a Nazi (“centrists are de-facto fascists”).
Something similar happens with singularity vegans, who say that “true left-wingers™ are de-facto vegans”, as anything short of fully rejecting all animal exploitation is equivalent to support of global animal torture. There are also singularity anti-ableists, singularity feminists and many, many more. As far as my knowledge and understanding lets me, I support the causes of veganism, anti-ableism and feminism, I just don't do it to a singularian degree.