Kip

You can find Kurzweil's website at:
<a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net" target="_blank">www.kurzweilai.net</a>

I have to admit that I am really intrigued by Ray Kurzweil and his radically optimistic ideas about the future. He has a very distinguished past as an inventor and business. However, his books are extremely "soft" and pretty for science, he say that the meaning of life is "to evolve" and he now publishes on ID Creationist Discovery Press. All of these have raised big warning flags and yet I cannot help but wonder if he is right.

Some of Kurzweil's ideas:

** Within a few decades medical nanobots will be in our blood stream and this, as opposed to goggles and tangible electronics, will provide virtual reality simulation.

** Strong artificial intelligence will be invented within the next twenty to forty years, because scientists are reverse-engineering the human brain.

** Caloric Restriction can extend life span approximately 30% and drastically decrease incidence of heart disease and cancer. This allows people to live until the Singular (in the 2040 and 2050s) during which potentially immortal, bionic lifeforms dominate instead of biological lifeforms.

What do you guys think of Kurzweil and these ideas? I keep waiting for someone to expose him for an ID crackpot, but no one has ever done so. What do you think?

[ October 06, 2002: Message edited by: Kip ]

[ October 06, 2002: Message edited by: Kip ]</p>

Jesse

Kip:
he now publishes on ID Creationist Discovery Press.

What does he publish with them? Do you have any links or refs? A google search didn't turn anything up.

Kip

He has published one book so far:

Are We Spiritual Machines

You can find that on Amazon.

Jesse

Kip:
He has published one book so far:

Are We Spiritual Machines

You can find that on Amazon.

This book looks to be a debate between Kurzweil and A.I. critics, including a few IDists. Since Kurzweil is arguing against IDists here, it doesn't seem likely that he's a closet IDist himself.

Getting back to your main topic, I don't think Kurzweil is a crackpot. In fact the idea of some sort of "technological singularity" is pretty common among people who take the idea of A.I. and/or nanotechnology seriously, it wasn't originated by Kurzweil. I believe the term was originated by science fiction writer <a href="http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/" target="_blank">Vernor Vinge</a>, in an essay which can be found <a href="http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html" target="_blank">here</a>. A page of singularity links can be found <a href="http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Singularity/" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://www.jimkelly.net/pages/singular.htm" target="_blank">this</a> is a more recent page with links to significant articles, and of course Kurzweil's page has a lot on the subject as well.

Corwin

As a nano/ai watcher, my opinion of Kurzweil is that he's a basically rational person with some crackpot ideas that may turn out to be right.

Like a lot of nanofreaks, I don't consider the Singularity to be a requirement, inevitable, or even desireable.

galiel

I think it is important to distinguish between the trends Kurzweil has documented, and the predictions he makes.

His trends, basically pointing out the logarhythmic nature of technological progress, as opposed to our linear perception of same, merely reiterate and update trends that R. Buckminster Fuller first identified 50 years ago. The fact that they continue to hold true is further evident that they are valid.

In virtually every area of human technological endeavor, we are have passed or are near to passing the "kink" in the "hockey stick" (as seen if you look at a logarhythmic process, such as the number of Internet hosts, or Moore's Law, in a linear chart).

As part of a project to create a believable, fictional world 65 years in the future, I have spent the past 5 years studying developments in everything from materials science to genomics to AI to networking to dentistry to transportation. I can tell you that the world is becoming much, much stranger than virtually anyone understands, and that it is happening much, much faster than our normal means of distributing knowledge can accomodate.

I don't know if this necessarily leads to a Singularity, and I do know that attempts to predict general trends are much more successful than attempts to predict specific, particular breakthroughs. Thus, like the flying cars we were all supposed to be using by now, I expect most of Kurzweil's specific predictions to be wildly off the mark. However, I think his description of the general trends, including the trends in increasing processing capacity of artificial computing devices, is quite useful.

Marduk

You forgot to mention his company makes great music synthesizers!

Kip

Jesse, I have already read the Vinge article and Kurzweil's books (all 4). Although Kurzweil does argue against Dembski in his book, the fact that he published on Discovery alone is at least suspicious. Why even waste his breath? (I doubt he is desperate for publisher, is he sympathetic to their cause, did they offer the most money?). He has also made curious (to say the least) statements about evolution such as "the purpose of life is to evolve" and suggested that evolution was teleological. He has published email exchanges with other thinkers who also question these sorts of remarks.

I also tend to agree with Kurzweil, although I am not without my reservations, and the people here have yet to "refute" his claims...

[ October 08, 2002: Message edited by: Kip ]</p>

Jesse

Kip:
Although Kurzweil does argue against Dembski in his book, the fact that he published on Discovery alone is at least suspicious. Why even waste his breath? (I doubt he is desperate for publisher, is he sympathetic to their cause, did they offer the most money?).

I'm not sure, but other respectable non-IDist people contributed to the book, like the philosopher John Searle. Maybe it was the money, maybe he wasn't aware of what the Discovery Institute is, maybe he's hoping to "convert" some IDists, who knows.

Kip:
He has also made curious (to say the least) statements about evolution such as "the purpose of life is to evolve" and suggested that evolution was teleological. He has published email exchanges with other thinkers who also question these sorts of remarks.

Well, it is possible to be a Darwinist and still believe in some sort of "higher purpose" behind the evolutionary process--think of Ken Miller, or Simon Conway Morris. I suppose it's also possible he rejects Darwinism, although it's pretty rare to find an anti-Darwinist who endorses a purely mechanistic explanation for how the mind works.

Rusting Car Bumper

Kurzweil and the transhumanism crowd are no different than futurists of the 50s who said that in the year 2000 (i.e. by now) I would be driving a flying car to work.

DC