The Singularity Is Near

[jokerthief]

I'm reading this book by Ray Kurzweil and damn it's good.

Ray Kurzweil is an inventor and futurist who's most famous prediction was concerning the size and importance of the internet in the eary eighties when only a few thousand servers existed.

I'm not completly through the book yet but so far it's about the implications that the exponential growth of knowledge will have on our lives and about how many scientists underestimate how quickly we will advance. Kurzweil's biggest example of the over pessimisim that scientists have concerns the mapping of the human genome. 15 years ago scientists thought that it would take century to do what was done in the last 15 years. Kurzweil attributes this to the intuitive tendency to forcast future advacements on a linear model instead of an exponential one which is the way our knowledge ought to be graphed.

Kurzweil talks in depth about the revolution that is happening in "GNR" or Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics and how it is going to revolutionize the world. It's going to revolutionize our world to the point where poverty, death, and stupidity will be near extiction around the 2020's.

This book is full of optimisim and I really hope that Kurzweil once again turns out to be correct in his predictions.

[BluffTHIS!]

Zee Justin already touted that guy and one of his books in this (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=scimathphil&Number=407818 9&Searchpage=1&Main=4072319&Words=Kurzweil&topic=& Search=true#Post4078189) thread. I gave my opinion of it there.

[jokerthief]

In that thread you say "These type of books are often not much more than mental masturbation for those who like science fiction and wonderful predictions. There's a monster publishing industry in health fad guides and futuristic prediction stuff like this."

I challenge you to find one Ray Kurzweil prediction that hasn't come true. He isn't a "Tony Robbins" but considered by many to be the Thomas Edison of the 20th century. Ray Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. He isn't dependent on book sales for his livelyhood. He is a great scientist on his own merit. Sorry man, but you can't attack his ideas without addressing his expertise, profound accuracy in previous predictions, and simply his ideas. How do you differ from him on an actual idea of his? That is something I bet you can't answer.

[Stu Pidasso]

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poverty, death, and stupidity will be near extiction around the 2020's

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Poverty and death maybe....but stupidity? Consider the bull sh.. flag thrown.

Stu

[jokerthief]

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poverty, death, and stupidity will be near extiction around the 2020's

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Poverty and death maybe....but stupidity? Consider the bull sh.. flag thrown.

Stu

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The point is that with the integration of knowledge in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics, will result in a fundamental change in human intelligence. For example the average human has a short term memory of seven units plus or minus two. So an average human can remember a seven digit phone number but would not be able to remember a ten digit number. Soon through the re-engineering of our genes and the integration of nanotech and robotics humans will be able to remember hundreds or thousands of digits via their working or short term memory. If we could gain this level of memory in our working memory, the implications would be that more and more complex concepts would be able to understood by more and more of the population, leading to an explosion in knowledge.

[Pauwl]

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Soon through the re-engineering of our genes and the integration of nanotech and robotics humans will be able to remember hundreds or thousands of digits via their working or short term memory.

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What exactly does this guy have planned for the human race in the next twenty years? I've never heard of the author before, but this does sound like some Sci-fi dream.

[hashi92]

terminator here we come
wheres arnold

[BluffTHIS!]

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Sorry man, but you can't attack his ideas without addressing his expertise, profound accuracy in previous predictions

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There is all the difference in the world between predicting scientific things in one's own lifetime and crediting those, with extending that credibility to extremely detailed predictions regarding the state of science hundreds of years from now.

And you should have excerpted more of my post in that thread I linked, so here's the whole thing:

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I want to make clear that I have moderately flamed the OP in the past so that people here know my general attitude. But he did ask for views of people who think he's crazy. These type of books are often not much more than mental masturbation for those who like science fiction and wonderful predictions. There's a monster publishing industry in health fad guides and futuristic prediction stuff like this. Same with all those "motivational" books by guys like that Robbins. And even though I am a christian, I also lump all the christian "health and wealth and prosperity" writings in the same category. And as far as that guy being right on some predictions, well Jeanne Dixon's horoscope is going to be right a certain percentage of the time simply because she puts so many vague predictions out there.

There are plenty of legitimate health books to read, and if you want to get a glimpse of the future of science then regularly reading Discover, Scientific American and even Popular Science will provide that. But believing someone who says people in the future will live for thousands of years is just allowing someone to blow smoke up your ass. It is a lot more profitable to try to learn what might come about in scientific inovation in your lifetime and not some far off time when you will have been long buried.

But if you do like this kind of stuff, then you are a prime candidate for Scientology. Pay thousands to learn about Xenu and removing the thetans inhabiting your body. It's all science fiction. Discussing these types of books seriously is akin to having a book club discussion of Harlequin romances.

Daydream on.

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[jokerthief]

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There is all the difference in the world between predicting scientific things in one's own lifetime and crediting those, with extending that credibility to extremely detailed predictions regarding the state of science hundreds of years from now.



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Who's doing this? Not Kurzweil.

[PokerAce]

Interesting online book if you can stomach the more graphic parts of it:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/

[BluffTHIS!]

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There is all the difference in the world between predicting scientific things in one's own lifetime and crediting those, with extending that credibility to extremely detailed predictions regarding the state of science hundreds of years from now.



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Who's doing this? Not Kurzweil.

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Go to the previous thread and then follow the link to ZJ's gushing review of Live Long Enough To Live Forever and its predictions of human lifespans in the future. And then decide whether Kurzweil is a better sci-fi writer than Arthur C. Clarke, or just a futurist full-of-it self-promoter.

[jokerthief]

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There is all the difference in the world between predicting scientific things in one's own lifetime and crediting those, with extending that credibility to extremely detailed predictions regarding the state of science hundreds of years from now.



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Who's doing this? Not Kurzweil.

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Go to the previous thread and then follow the link to ZJ's gushing review of Live Long Enough To Live Forever and its predictions of human lifespans in the future. And then decide whether Kurzweil is a better sci-fi writer than Arthur C. Clarke, or just a futurist full-of-it self-promoter.

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Kurzweil is saying that this is going be happening within the next 20 years and his case is compelling. I find it funny how dismissive you are considering how little you know about what Kurzweil is actually saying. You're just a contrarian in the same vein as those who thought man would never build a machine that can fly or that earth is the center of the solar system because the church says so.

[BluffTHIS!]

So you are willing to believe that within 20 years humans will be able to live for hundreds or thousands of years? Lemme tell ya bout a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge, and it can be yours cheap.

[jokerthief]

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So you are willing to believe that within 20 years humans will be able to live for hundreds or thousands of years? Lemme tell ya bout a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge, and it can be yours cheap.

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The point Kurzweil is making is that our knowledge and technology advances at an exponential rate. If that is true then at some point you will reach the part of the graph where change becomes explosive, Kurzweil calls this the singularity (thus the name of the book). Simple mathematical analysis shows that we will be approaching this point within the next 15 to 20 years. Because of this we know that either something has to happen to stop our technology from growing or that the world as we know it will be revolutionized.

Medicine is quickly getting to the point of understanding our physiology. Instead of the trial and error find what works methodology when it comes to designing drugs we are getting to the point where we can decode and understand diseases and why and how drugs can defeat them. We are getting advanced enough in our understanding of genetics that we can foresee how our some of our genes are inefficient and we are coming up with ways of re-engineering them. Nanotechnology is going to revolutionize EVERYTHING including medicine.

The point is that if technology is continually advancing at an exponential rate then minor advances can compound on each other. So let's say that through the integration of genetics, medicine, and nanotechnology life spans are increased to 120 years. At that point many people who would have died without the advances will live to see the next advance and live to 135 years. Again technology makes another breakthrough and life spans are prolonged by another twenty or thirty years. So on and so on. And the time intervals between breakthroughs will become shorter and shorter. This is what is happening and it is going to happen unless something major derails humankind's ability to advance.

[TimM]

I just started this one. Very absorbing. He suggests we could have computers with the processing power of the human brain for around $1000 by about 2020. I guess that puts an upper limit on how long we can expect to make money from online poker. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

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Kurzweil talks in depth about the revolution that is happening in "GNR" or Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics and how it is going to revolutionize the world.

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I'd like to get into one of these fields, I think...

[soon2bepro]

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death, and stupidity will be near extiction around the 2020's.


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So I only have to stay alive another 14 years to be immortal and forever happy? Pass the drugs yo!

(yes, there are two correct interpretations to this post /images/graemlins/wink.gif)

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Kurzweil attributes this to the intuitive tendency to forcast future advacements on a linear model instead of an exponential one which is the way our knowledge ought to be graphed.

It's amazing how often we make this same mistake. In 1956, the movie "Forbidden Planet" came out. At the beginning of the film, a voice-over states "Man first landed on the moon in the latterhalf of the 21st Century."

At the time, most scientists scoffed at that statement, saying it was ridiculous to think we could accomplish that in so short a period of time as 150 years.

We got there 13 years later.

[circusboy]

If the rest of the world would only embrace capitolism, democracy, personal freedom, and a free market, poverty and stupidity could well be extinguised by the 2020's... But as long as people are held down under someone else's boot, technology wont get us there.

[soon2bepro]

LOL @ circusboy. How is capitalism supposed to extiguish poverty? LMAO!

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

How is capitalism supposed to extiguish poverty?

By being the most effective way to develop and distribute resources.

But poverty will ultimately never be completely eliminated in a truly free society. Just minimized.

[TimM]

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LOL @ circusboy. How is capitalism supposed to extiguish poverty? LMAO!

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I've long believed that only technology can raise the average standard of living of an entire population, by reducing the cost of energy and basic needs. Everything else just raises that of some at the expense of others.

[kurto]

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It's going to revolutionize our world to the point where poverty, death, and stupidity will be near extiction around the 2020's.

This book is full of optimisim and I really hope that Kurzweil once again turns out to be correct in his predictions.


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Sounds nice but unrealistic.

Is research even being done in eradicating stupidity?

When we end death, will we also end procreation? If not, I suspect we're it trouble real quick?

How does he see us eradicating poverty?

I don't doubt knowledge will grow quickly... its where that will lead that I'm more cynical about.

[jokerthief]

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Kurzweil attributes this to the intuitive tendency to forcast future advacements on a linear model instead of an exponential one which is the way our knowledge ought to be graphed.

It's amazing how often we make this same mistake. In 1956, the movie "Forbidden Planet" came out. At the beginning of the film, a voice-over states "Man first landed on the moon in the latterhalf of the 21st Century."

At the time, most scientists scoffed at that statement, saying it was ridiculous to think we could accomplish that in so short a period of time as 150 years.

We got there 13 years later.

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That is amazing and why this book is so intriguing. It's also kinda scary because it means that what we consider to be human will be vastly different in only a few decades. We probably won't be completely biological creatures. That would also fundamentaly redefine what life is.