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

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

#61

Post by andreyf » Fri, Mar 28, 2008, 9:31 AM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #57

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?

What if consciousness is not an algorithm?

Then it can be simulated using one. If chemical reactions can, it's just a matter of processing power.

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

#62

Post by jauco » Fri, Mar 28, 2008, 12:53 PM UTC

andreyf wrote: post #60

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.

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.

Have you seen the less advanced version of those teleporters in the movie 'The Prestige'? Where you shocked about that?

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

#63

Post by Prrometheus » Fri, Mar 28, 2008, 1:33 PM UTC

david927 wrote: post #59

Prrometheus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The situation that you mentioned with the cod fits the "tragedy of the commons" scenario. Where property rights are hard to define, resources are over-extracted because there is no owner with the incentive to conserve.

I challenge you to name one resource with normal property rights that fits the "diagonal line/cliff" scenario. I know of none, although it appears to be the common wisdom of the internet at the moment.

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

#64

Post by vixen99 » Fri, Mar 28, 2008, 1:41 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #5

david927 wrote: post #2

God bless him; those pills are exactly what will kill him. The singularity is coming, but Moore's law won't have much to do with it. I remember seeing a few-days-old kitten and for the first time in its little life, it saw a dog. It hissed. We already have the equivalent computing power of a kitten's brain. What we don't have is the software that can recognize a dog without having ever seen one before.

How can you say the pills are dangerous without knowing what they are?

Problem is we're way off being able to prescribe these things knowing with certainty that they'll work to our advantage. I'm saying that as a one-time biochemist and long-time pill pusher myself. Take selenium and prostate cancer. The picture is cloudy. A researcher in the field whose earlier work offered support for Se supplementation now wonders if it's such a good idea. Whatever Kurtzweil's taking, I hope it works for him.

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

#65

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Mar 28, 2008, 1:49 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #39

Prrometheus wrote: post #9

>Kurzweil predicts that by the early 2030s, most of our fallible internal organs will have been replaced by tiny robots. We'll have "eliminated the heart, lungs, red and white blood cells, platelets, pancreas, thyroid and all the hormone-producing organs, kidneys, bladder, liver, lower esophagus, stomach, small intestines, large intestines, and bowel. What we have left at this point is the skeleton, skin, sex organs,…

I think it is already happening, there are artificial hearts, for example?

Yes, I think Kurzweil's response would be that these things will be replaced in people with a condition that would be fatal if the original organs were left intact. Over time, people would be come more and more "cybernetic" as their natural parts failed and technology came up with "improved" replacements.

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

#66

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Mar 28, 2008, 2:14 PM UTC

pchristensen wrote: post #21

AnotherUser wrote: post #11

To address the points raised in these comments: 1. We do NOT have "the equivalent computing power of a kitten's brain." That's like saying that because we have apples we have the equivalent taste of an orange. The only real way to translate current silicon processor-based computing into a biological brain-based form is to ask how http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19767/ ">many neurons can we model on current ha…

RE #4: He (the clone) may not be you , but it will surely think of himself as himself , and after the fork and you go one living different lives, who's to say he's wrong?

I think of this similarly to cloning.

Anyone egocentric and arrogant enough to think "what the world really needs is another, identical copy of me" should be prohibited from doing so on principle.

For the case of AI/robotic duplicates, make that "what the world really needs is another, identical, immortal copy of me."

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

#67

Post by mechanical_fish » Fri, Mar 28, 2008, 2:14 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #24

mechanical_fish wrote: post #18

I've got a better plan for my future: I'm going to grow old and die . (Unless, of course, fate intervenes and I don't grow old. But I intend to keep planning to grow old right up until the last minute!) It's a classic plan, and well tested. Lots of prior art. Lots of examples to learn from, and a lot of infrastructure and literature. You folks can find fault with my plan if you want. But here's the thing: You're goin…

OK, fish, I'll bite. I read your reference, but he never came out and said what he ACTUALLY DID during those 6 months. Is there a "rest of the story" or is it inferred? Nice link. Really got me thinking. Maybe the subject of a future thread...

He mentioned that you can find it by finding the online archive of This American Life and playing an early episode... perhaps even Episode 1.

Don't let me make you feel guilty for being too lazy to do this... because I haven't bothered to do it myself yet. :)

I doubt that it matters too much what he did. What one chooses to do is intensely personal. I think that "getting you thinking" really is the whole point.

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

#68

Post by byrneseyeview » Fri, Mar 28, 2008, 2:55 PM UTC

xlnt wrote: post #54

byrneseyeview wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would be fine for them to argue that it's implausible, just as it would almost make sense to say "I don't see how smallpox could be cured. So I intend to rot to death." But the argument I was responding to was, basically, "I accept that it could be possible to cure smallpox, but the idea of not dying that way is repulsive to me."

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

#69

Post by mechanical_fish » Fri, Mar 28, 2008, 3:23 PM UTC

byrneseyeview wrote: post #42

mechanical_fish wrote: post #18

I've got a better plan for my future: I'm going to grow old and die . (Unless, of course, fate intervenes and I don't grow old. But I intend to keep planning to grow old right up until the last minute!) It's a classic plan, and well tested. Lots of prior art. Lots of examples to learn from, and a lot of infrastructure and literature. You folks can find fault with my plan if you want. But here's the thing: You're goin…

Really? So if you lived in a post-Singularity world, in which clinical immortality was an unquestioned human right, you would periodically get your face wrinkled, inject yourself with bone-brittling nanobots, induce dementia, and then wither away? If you tried to inflict that fate on anyone else, it would be a terrible crime. If you wanted that for yourself, it would be evidence of mental illness. If you consider it…

So if you lived in a world... in which clinical immortality was an unquestioned human right...

ROTFL.

I live in a world where my wife and I had to fight our old insurance company for basic preventive health care. (She tried to have a mammogram in the same year that I had a simple 20-minute physical. Turns out that violated the fine print in our policy, and we had to pay out of pocket.) I'm glad to say that our uninsured, thirtysomething friend just managed to save enough money for his cancer surgery, but others of our friends aren't so lucky. And I live in Massachusetts, where the state has forced insurance companies to sell relatively affordable policies to individual contractors like me. If I lived in a different state, I'd probably be paying over $1000 a month for the privilege of having my claims denied.

So, sure, I'd love for clinical immortality to be possible, and love it even more if it were an "unquestioned human right". But here in the USA I don't even have the "unquestioned right" to effective, existing medical technologies, and that's a more pressing concern.

Meanwhile, would I want to age in a post-Singularity world? Who the hell knows? I don't think you can be immortal and still be recognizably human -- the entire design of humans is predicated on mortality, just as it's predicated on gravity and an oxygen atmosphere and the presence of edible plants and animals. And who knows what the post-human aliens will think?

To the extent that post-singular beings remain human, I think they'll exhibit many of the same self-destructive tendencies that humans do now. I used to be a cancer researcher, and the sight of people lighting cigarettes still makes me angry inside. It feels like they're setting fire to my hard work. But what can you do? To discount the future is part of human nature.

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

#70

Post by edu » Fri, Mar 28, 2008, 3:39 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #40

giardini wrote: post #15

I loved Kurzweil's book. Unfortunately in all the talk about Moore's Law and exponential growth, Murphy's Law was forgotten (perhaps in a self-referencing manifestation of the same law). Example: My HMO has figured out that, if a patient has a serious chronic ailment (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc.) then it is cheaper for them should the patient die: I. Treat patient: cost of treatment $100 cost of futur…

What is a HMO? In any case, if an insurance company would default to "Let patient die", it would probably lose a lot of customers - shareholders would not be pleased.

From the New Oxford American Dictionary:

health maintenance organization (abbr.: HMO)

a health insurance organization to which subscribers pay a predetermined fee in return for a range of medical services from physicians and healthcare workers registered with the organization.