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Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

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Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

#51

Post by ericb »

pchristensen wrote: post #36
ericb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the same token, if you cloned me, and he was sitting next to me and I had to choose who would get shot, I'd choose him. He isn't me because I can't access his thoughts. I think identity is tied to physical and temporal location and is in continual flux, so a clone is never me--it never occupies the same points in space and time. The nerve replacement idea is tough, though. Maybe our idea of identity is wrong, arti…

Of course, he'd definitely pick you to get shot!

True, but what I'm getting at is if we were the "same" we wouldn't care.

Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

#53

Post by dejb »

dbreunig wrote: post #25

Anyone seen one of his talks or ppts? Anyone else get those creepy cult feelings? Anyone?

I don't think it is possible to suggest that you could live forever in a world that will be completely different without appearing a bit religious/cult-ish. That really is pretty much exactly the same message as many religions. But I don't this this alters the merits (positively or negatively) of his argument.

Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

#54

Post by xlnt »

byrneseyeview wrote: post #49
xlnt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's no more a mental illness than being a luddite

It's possible to wish that things were different, or to want to have a closer connection to the results of one's labor by avoiding automation and seceding from impersonal organizations. But I don't think Luddites advocate smallpox or other debilitating, disfiguring, fatal diseases. Aging is a disfiguring, debilitating, fatal disease, and so as far as the scope of this discussion is concerned, the difference between i…

i agree about what aging is, but people aren't trying to advocate diseases like that, they are usually just skeptical or ignorant about technology and what is possible, and bad at changing their minds to keep up with progress.

Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

#55

Post by pchristensen »

ericb wrote: post #51
pchristensen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, he'd definitely pick you to get shot!

True, but what I'm getting at is if we were the "same" we wouldn't care.

Ah, the old "different forms of equality" problem. You're thinking === (same object in memory) while I'm thinking == (identical copies).

Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

#56

Post by ericb »

pchristensen wrote: post #55
ericb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but what I'm getting at is if we were the "same" we wouldn't care.

Ah, the old "different forms of equality" problem. You're thinking === (same object in memory) while I'm thinking == (identical copies).

Well said.

Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

#57

Post by gruseom »

bumbledraven wrote: post #3

It would be very hard to argue that the singularity won't arrive eventually, provided humans survive long enough. It's just the date that's tough to predict. Sure, computing power has been growing exponentially, but as they say, "past performance is no guarantee of future results", and there are so many other variables aside from raw processing speed.

It would be very hard to argue that the singularity won't arrive eventually

Really? What if consciousness is not an algorithm?

Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

#58

Post by ericb »

aswanson wrote: post #35
dbreunig wrote: post #25

Anyone seen one of his talks or ppts? Anyone else get those creepy cult feelings? Anyone?

Yes. I've laid out my objections to his timetables here before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=142175 I like what his books do in terms of sparking the imagination, but take his claims with the same level of skepticism as I do an infomercial. Another thing is the repitition; if you've read Age of Intelligent Machines you've read Age of Spiritual Machines as well as Singularity is Near . Some of the predictions o…

Speech rec with Naturally speaking, as of a year ago when my buddy broke his arm and tryed it, was getting there, but still not usable for him.

Speech is not as nice as typing for entering data. Typing seems [citation needed] faster and like less work. Also, in an office, the voices absorb mental bandwidth from everyone in earshot. So I think in this case Kurzweil may or may not be wrong about the quality of the technology in a year, but he's definitely wrong about speech being a preferred method for interfacing with a computer.

Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

#59

Post by david927 »

Prrometheus wrote: post #10
jcl wrote: post #6

I can't help noticing that while we are making these exponential advances in technology, we are also using exponential amounts of our limited supplies of cheap resources -- things like oil, coal, copper, gold, and helium. I sure hope Kurzweil gets his singularity before any of these limiting factors kick in, or it could put a nasty kink in his graph.

One of the most striking features of the 20th century is that the economy has gotten lighter per unit of wealth. New goods are made of fewer raw materials and more ideas. Greenspan has a famous piece on this, which unfortunately I was not able to google up. I am with Julian Simon on the issue, I doubt that raw material scarcity will be a significant brake on human advancement.

That's a good point but it's only one aspect. Another striking feature of the late 20th century is our ability to use advanced technology to extract resources optimally. So instead of getting a slow decline in supply and a corresponding higher prices slowing demand (the ubiquitous bell curve), you get a diagonal line followed by a vertical -- in other words, a cliff.

That sounds alarmist but it's just because you don't notice until you're on the wrong side of the graph. Cod was one of the most plentiful fish around and because it was good and cheap it became the base of the "fish and chips" British staple. Cod is now an endagered species. 90% of all large fish have disappeared from the world's oceans in the past half century. And that's just fish. We have new technology to extract oil efficiently sometimes called "super straws". So instead of sputtering to a stop, we'll get there at full speed. It's easy to say, "Oh we'll just slow down or find alternatives." That's like going 150mph and saying if the curve is too tight, we'll just slow down. Sure we will. James Dean style.

Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

#60

Post by andreyf »

ericb wrote: post #51
pchristensen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, he'd definitely pick you to get shot!

True, but what I'm getting at is if we were the "same" we wouldn't care.

I wouldn't care, and I'd bet that neither would you.

Think of it this way - were you ever shocked by the teleporters in Star Trek? After all, this is precisely what they did: make a copy of someone, then dissolve the old copy.

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