This is, typically, yet another diatribe that generalizes various "the Singularity" concepts and denigrates them in a single fell swoop.
I adhere to many of the arguments put forth by Ray Kurzweil, who many dismiss as a crank. However, unlike any (at least, most) other self-declared prophets Kurzweil has a solid history of predictions going back at least 21 years. While of course not all of the things he has said have come to pass, or they come to pass at slightly different time periods, more than not they have been spot on.
Of course, some nutcases really do subscribe to The Singularity as a faith. These people don't pay attention to the various sub-disciplines of biology, computer science, and materials science that are among the core fields generally related to The Singularity.
Folks like myself who think that something like TS is ahead of us base our reasoning on the rapid advances that humanity is making in the core fields, not on some religious belief. I'm an atheist and don't believe shit without proof.
Its easy to tear down, but much harder to make a valid argument. Nick Szabo's stating that something will never happen because it hasn't happened yet. I suggest he start listening to what's going on in science.
Confirmation bias. You're not looking hard enough at the stuff he says that didn't come true.
Even so, "past performance is no indicator of future success. You could have said the same thing about the goldilocks economy in 2001 but the notion that the economy could continue exponentially forever was pretty dumb. All I have to say about believing in exponential things, is, please, please consider the bacterial growth curve.
(that's a log graph) See, if you were an intelligent e coli during growth phase, you might notice that everything was exponential and hunky dory, and there was no end in sight.
Luckily as humans we can fight the logistic death phase after the singularity 'period'. Fight it with more and more superior AIs; perhaps something like what Adams envisioned.
But we'll most likely lose to ourselves. It's a M.A.D. world.
I think prophecies (or predictions) are a long standing cultural hack. I remain extremely unimpressed by Kurzweil's predictions. Just because most people are uninterested in making predictions doesn't make them especially hard. Just about everything he's claimed as 'correct' was being researched in some form at the time he made the predictions, and was certainly in science fiction long before that.
So considering that, mostly he put dates on a random set of things coming to pass. Then he uses extremely generous criteria to define when something he predicted has occurred and essentially throws out the actual timeframe when doing so. And that was the only bit he really predicted in the first place.
Somehow it works on people though. Just go ahead and anoint him your High Priest, save yourself the confusion.
I adhere to many of the arguments put forth by Ray Kurzweil, who many dismiss as a crank. However, unlike any (at least, most) other self-declared prophets Kurzweil has a solid history of predictions going back at least 21 years. While of course not all of the things he has said have come to pass, or they come to pass at slightly different time periods, more than not they have been spot on.
Of course, some nutcases really do subscribe to The Singularity as a faith. These people don't pay attention to the various sub-disciplines of biology, computer science, and materials science that are among the core fields generally related to The Singularity.
Folks like myself who think that something like TS is ahead of us base our reasoning on the rapid advances that humanity is making in the core fields, not on some religious belief. I'm an atheist and don't believe shit without proof.
Its easy to tear down, but much harder to make a valid argument. Nick Szabo's stating that something will never happen because it hasn't happened yet. I suggest he start listening to what's going on in science.