Ray Kurzweil's Dubious New Theory of Mind

Let's get this straight: Ray Kurzweil is just a few ticks off crazy. Outside of Moore's law graphs (which he didn't discover), his predictions quickly veer off course into crazy land, especially in the case of diets and theories on intelligence (which others have routinely criticized him for - see everywhere).

But here's the problem I have with Ray Kurzweil and other people like him - you can't just ignore them, you can't just write them off. He's like the Joker. A guy that makes proclamations on the edge of what's reasonable, and when he's right, he's really right - and the results of what he thinks are about to happen will really screw us all. I think this of all slightly off kilter people, Peter Thiel, Aubrey de Grey, Sean Parker, Elon Musk (the least off kilter of the bunch - most rational - but man, does this guy take insane risks - I'm long TSLA :), Ray Kurzweil, Peter Diamandis (he is amongst one of the worst on the proclamations) - these are people who should be listened to, not because anything that they actually say makes any sense - because they often don't.

No, they should be listened to because of the very nature of their personalities. The way their personalities are set up makes them act like early black swan detection devices. This allows them to call the black swans out well before they're apparent to the rest of us. More often than not, they're wrong though.

They're like the canaries in the coal mine. Vigilant, plenty of false alarms, and usually ignored most of the time.

But sometimes these people, they are just so fucking right - that you better hope you are on the right side of the wave they just called out.

Too many people have been screwed thinking that the crazy fool talking about crazy things should be ignored. The counterfactual is also true:

> All prophets are false prophets.

So watch these guys out of the corner of your eye, don't take them too seriously most of the time, but if things come up, again and again and again - take notice, think carefully and make your own decisions.

They are just early warning detection systems - it's up to you to make the final decision as to whether or not it's time to fire the nuke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov).

"The challenge of figuring out how the mind works is too complicated for even the smartest of entrepreneurs to solve on their own."

I would agree with that statement. The main problem is still simply understanding exactly how the brain works. PRTM I think is just one model that describes a type of functionality, as noted in the article there seem to be many more, and certainly we don't know enough about how the brain itself works. Once we have good well tested models for the functionality there I don't forsee any major problems in holding us back from replicating a brain ie. AI or singularity or whatever.

I wouldn't put Elon Musk in that list. I think you're mixing up two distinct types of people there. There's a difference between a person having an unconventional idea, e.g. for a business, and an unconventional theory, which they claim has a sound scientific basis. These unconventional theories are often stated with an unjustifiable certainty by people like Kurzweil and I think that's what irritates people.

You kinda lost me a little at Kurzweil's diets (which are okay, regardless of whether or not they confer "immortality"), but you irrevocably lost me at Elon Musk. You might have strong opinions, but you have no idea what you're talking about.

Perhaps. That is always a distinct possibility. I cannot preclude the possibility that I have no idea what I'm talking about and as per the Dunning-Kruger effect, I might not be aware of how little I know.

However, it should be known - I'm long TSLA and have been since the IPO - so don't think I don't know anything. I also know Musk's background inside and out (due diligence and all).

But why do you know who Elon Musk is? Because he succeeded. Let's say he didn't. Now do you think what you do now?

What if the GFC had continued into a depression - who'd buy a an unproven, $5K reserve priced Model S (a veblen good) during a recession, with falling gas prices? He'd be out of capital within the year without cap-ex funds from Panasonic, Toyota, Daimler and the public markets to lever up and be set to produce 20K cars next year (~$1 billion in revenue).

What if the 4th Falcon launch failed and Musk ran out of cash (COTS pays only after hitting each milestone)?

What then huh? You must always look at the probabilistic alternatives, because confirmation bias and the survival bias will fuck your thinking up.

By the way - I do have strong opinions. But I hold them weakly.

I am liable to change them at any moment based upon empirical evidence.