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Comment count is 35
James Woods - 2013-02-20

Speculative, sure, but exactly what about what he's saying is irrational, illogical or batshit insane?


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2013-02-20

I think it's how he blinks using every part of his face above his upper lip.


WHO WANTS DESSERT - 2013-02-20

Ignoring the fact that Moore's Law is bogus and even if it weren't artificial intelligence has stagnated even as processing power increases, it's just a bunch of dumb wish-fulfillment fantasies for nerds. A few decades from now when we have a shortage of the metals necessary for computers and the petroleum that our entire energy economy is based on we're gonna laugh so hard at all the unqualified sci-fi geeks wasted time and attention on The Rapture: Atheist Edition instead of doing something productive.


James Woods - 2013-02-20

Hmmm


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2013-02-20

While I'm dubious of the whole "singularity" thing, I'm equally dubious that we'll be in a Mad Max style world and that we'll stop advancing next year or whatever some would believe.


Meerkat - 2013-02-20

He certainly emits words.


gmol - 2013-02-20

How is (the common version of) Moore's law bogus? We double transistor counts on chips between every 1-2 years ....


baleen - 2013-02-20

"A few decades from now when we have a shortage of the metals necessary for computers and the petroleum that our entire energy economy" HAHAHA YOU DON'T KNOW THINGS.


Old_Zircon - 2013-02-20

The first 1:30 or so is fine.


kingarthur - 2013-02-21

Who wants dessert is right. Five for five differs t kinds of bullshit from Kurzweil.


James Woods - 2013-02-22

Stumbled upon this. http://www.poe-news.com/forums/sp.php?pi=1001663980


Syd Midnight - 2013-02-23

He is a remarkable man, in that it is remarkable how he gets thousands of atheist nerds unironically looking forward to that rapturous day within their lifetimes when Computer Jesus will come online and download their neural matrices into CyberHeaven so they can live in virtual animes forever.

It's kinda like what Insane Clown Posse did with their Dark Carnival mythos, only less self-aware.


Hooker - 2013-02-20

What part of the brain deals with keeping the audience's attention?


chumbucket - 2013-02-20

The problem with many AI assumptions is they sometime throw the idea that "if you make enough connections, you'll get to pure intelligence". So I think what he's surmising here is if we can "plug our brains into a network" we'll have more extensive abilities as thinking lumps of flesh. That sounds easy...too easy. Good luck working out bandwidth, workload management and preventing the slow boil of brain matter in the crock pots of our skulls.

Thanks Ray for this episode of "Throwin' IT Out There".


paranex - 2013-02-20

My guess is, Kurzweil and Google will eventually implement what Kurzweil is talking about here. I mean, an internet gateway in your brain seems feasible enough, given the tech we have now.

The problem with his hypothesis is, we've had twenty years of internet for the masses in America, yet anyone who thinks it's ushered in a new Golden Age is either lying or stupid. As it is now, most Americans are just a minute away from the information Kurzweil is talking about delivering in seconds, and yet we're still a society where half the people don't believe in evolution, twenty percent think the president is a Muslim and the majority of Americans haven't read a book in the last year. The evidence suggests these problems are getting worse, not better. The internet is supposed to magically make us more rational? LOL WTF?


James Woods - 2013-02-20

The older folks think that, but the kids are going to be very fucking smart, and the kids don't show up on depressing Fox polls. Wait for it.


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2013-02-20

SOME kids are very fucking smart. A WHOLE LOT of them are just as rock-stupid as their parents, if not more so, and on a whole variety of other topics.


James Woods - 2013-02-20

I like to think there are enough very fucking smart kids to make a positive difference.


paranex - 2013-02-20

I think this article I just Googled explains what I mean in a more in-depth way, though I wouldn't know since I only skimmed it:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google- making-us-stupid/306868/


oswaldtheluckyrabbit - 2013-02-20

I teach for a living and can confirm that SteamPoweredKleenex is correct


Wander - 2013-02-20

"My guess is, Kurzweil and Google will eventually implement what Kurzweil is talking about here. I mean, an internet gateway in your brain seems feasible enough, given the tech we have now. "

Everyone here is just taking this at face value?


paranex - 2013-02-21

Why not? We have robotic limbs that can be patched directly into the nervous system. Hell, they have prosthetic hands that apparently simulate tactile sensation. And there have been attempts at developing video game controllers that operate by thought. How is a Google search bar any more complex than that?


glendower - 2013-02-21

Five stars for Paranex. This idea that the internet is leading to some unprecedented level of intelligence is nothing but a regurgitation of older grand narratives of progress that don't stand up to empirical reality.


Old_Zircon - 2013-02-21

Also we still have only the most vague, theoretical ideas about how the brain actually works. Controlling an artificial limb or a cursor on a screen is great, but comparing that with what he's talking about is like comparing converting a bike to a moped in your basement with inventing and personally constructing every piece of aerospace technology developed by every space program in the 20th century because mopeds and space shuttles both use fuel to move from one place to another.


Old_Zircon - 2013-02-21

The tricky thing about Kurzweil these days is that his observations about what has happened already are really astute and his observations about what is happening now are usually pretty sharp, but his projections about where all o fthat is leading are literally crazy. Sure he's made some good ones in the past but honestly, try to read The Singularity Is Near (I challenge you to actually finish it, it's not a good book and most of it is him saying the same thing over and over using different analogies to illustrate it - it could have been 100 pages and conveyed the same amount of real content) and tell me it's not the ravings of a very smart nutcase.


Old_Zircon - 2013-02-21

Plus if we're all wrong and this does happen, it's going to be fucking awful.


Syd Midnight - 2013-02-24

If you totally spoiled a caged laboratory chimpanzee and let it have whatever it wanted except freedom, it would just lay around all day eating candy and jacking off and playing with toys until it got fat and had a heart attack.

My observations of what has happened and what is happening now suggest that this has a little more significance than Kurzweil's utopian daydreams, in regards to a supremely privileged and wired-from-birth generation of humans.


Oscar Wildcat - 2013-02-20

Well on the way,
Head in a cloud,
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hears him,
or the sound he appears to make,
and he never seems to notice,

But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning 'round.


memedumpster - 2013-02-20

Noises in the mind does not intelligence make. Unending jargon certainly doesn't.


Raggamuffin - 2013-02-20

Riposte:

Pt.1: http://archive.picturesforsadchildren.com/92/

Pt.2: http://archive.picturesforsadchildren.com/93/

Pt.3: http://archive.picturesforsadchildren.com/94/


Or simply page through the comic.


boner - 2013-02-20

If I'm not mistaken, this is the guy who ingests mass quantities of pills every day as part of denial that he will die some day


Old_Zircon - 2013-02-20

Yes, and his life goal is to use computer technology to bring back his father (who died when he was young) back from the dead as a sentient AI.

He's very smart, fairly crazy and kind of tragic, and he has created a cult.


Old_Zircon - 2013-02-20

He also invented a kick ass sampler a couple decades ago.


kingarthur - 2013-02-21

His sampler is pretty awesome, I'll give him that.


Old_Zircon - 2013-02-21

Well, it was in the 80s and 90s anyhow, last on I had my hands on was a k2500 and it was great but that was back when you were lucky if you could add echo to audio in real time on a PC.

Also Casio made a similar one that was at least as good and cost less, but nobody cared because they were Casio.


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