Kurzweil in February '09 Rolling Stone...
Shannon Vyff 10 Feb 2009
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When Man & Machine Merge
KurzweilAI.net Feb. 10, 2009
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Rolling Stone contributor David
Kushner's interview with "the
world's scariest techno prophet,"
Ray Kurzweil, "When Man & Machine
Merge," appears in the February 19
issue, now on newsstands. The
article offers compelling insights
into Kurzweil's relationship with
his father, Dr. Fredric Kurzweil, an
acclaimed composer from Vienna, who...
http://www.kurzweila...e...115&m=10371
Mind 10 Feb 2009
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Shannon Vyff 10 Feb 2009
Shannon Vyff 10 Feb 2009
Cyberbrain 10 Feb 2009
This may not come true.Supercomputers will have the same raw power as human brains (although not yet the equivalently flexible software).
This is already true today, but it's not that mainstream yet.Computers will disappear as distinct physical objects, meaning many will have nontraditional shapes and/or will be embedded in clothing and everyday objects.
This part had me confused. Does he mean matrix style VR? Otherwise we already have pretty realistic VR devices.Full-immersion audio-visual virtual reality will exist.
forever freedom 10 Feb 2009
Predictions Kurzweil made for 2010:
This may not come true.Supercomputers will have the same raw power as human brains (although not yet the equivalently flexible software).
Won't be in 2010, but in 2012. http://www.tgdaily.c...view/41307/113/
That's 20x10^15 cps. The human brain is expected to make between 10^14 and 10^16 cps...
It's still amazing, though, that, even with a few years of delay, our supercomputers are finally reaching the supposed raw power of the brain.
DJS 11 Feb 2009
At one point the article mentions that Kurzweil believes he'll bring his father back from the dead by using a combination of (a) his father's DNA and (b) Kurzweil's memories of his father. Am I the only one who thinks this is grounds for finding him certifiable?
The man is an embarrassment.
niner 11 Feb 2009
There's a fine line between genius and madness...Hater here.
At one point the article mentions that Kurzweil believes he'll bring his father back from the dead by using a combination of (a) his father's DNA and (b) Kurzweil's memories of his father. Am I the only one who thinks this is grounds for finding him certifiable?
The man is an embarrassment.
Shannon Vyff 11 Feb 2009
advancedatheist 11 Feb 2009
lucid 11 Feb 2009
There's a fine line between genius and madness...Hater here.
At one point the article mentions that Kurzweil believes he'll bring his father back from the dead by using a combination of (a) his father's DNA and (b) Kurzweil's memories of his father. Am I the only one who thinks this is grounds for finding him certifiable?
The man is an embarrassment.
Perhaps it might be possible to make a clone of his father with as disposition similar to the one he recalls his father having, and maybe it would be possible to have the father remember things about himself which Ray remembered about his father. But with all of the holes in his memory, what a F*ed up existence his new old man would have. To say that he can 'bring his father back from the dead' is either far fetched or sick. Kurzweil is a net plus though.
Edited by lucid, 11 February 2009 - 04:24 PM.
advancedatheist 11 Feb 2009
At one point the article mentions that Kurzweil believes he'll bring his father back from the dead by using a combination of (a) his father's DNA and (b) Kurzweil's memories of his father.
At best you'd just get back an extremely truncated version of your father. You have no real idea about his life before you became old enough to form coherent memories about him, apart from what he might have told you (assuming he didn't lie or confabulate). Most dads don't tell their sons about their formative sexual adventures before they met and married their sons' moms, for example, so Kurzweil's attempted reconstitution of his father would lack that important information.
Am I the only one who thinks this is grounds for finding him certifiable?
Kurzweil will probably sound as clueless a "futurist" as F.M. Esfandiary in a few years; but at least he has tried to inspire people to instantiate bold visions in a time when most foreseeable futures (even the more-of-the-same ones) seem pretty unappealing.
Edited by advancedatheist, 11 February 2009 - 04:51 PM.
advancedatheist 11 Feb 2009
http://www.lifepact.....htm#travelling
advancedatheist 11 Feb 2009
If we don't have at least one system capable of full immersion audio-visual virtual reality by the end of the year, I am sure a lot of haters will be dumping on him (even though the trends are still there).
I don't understand the appeal of that kind of "future." What happened to the 21st Century where people got off their butts and accomplished new and difficult things in the physical world, like colonizing the moon?
Instead we seem to face a future based on shovel-oriented jobs, riding bicycles and planting organic survival gardens, like we've turned into Cuba or something.
Mind 11 Feb 2009
Funny mention of the new future battling AGW. I like gardening and cycling, but I would rather these be liesure pursuits than things mandated to fight AGW.
advancedatheist 12 Feb 2009
Mark, I am with you on going to the stars. It seems part of the human psyche to explore and I would love to take part. I am also a realist about the virtual world. It (unfortunately for us sci-fi/explorer types) is more flexible, dynamic, exciting, and potentially even more beautiful than the real world.
That depends on which side of the computer screen you look at it:
Funny mention of the new future battling AGW. I like gardening and cycling, but I would rather these be liesure pursuits than things mandated to fight AGW.
I didn't have anthropogenic global warming in mind when I wrote that, but rather the effects of a secular (definition #2) economic collapse and its brave new vocabulary like "shovel-ready."
Shannon Vyff 12 Feb 2009
advancedatheist 12 Feb 2009
AdvancedAtheist Thanks for the link to Fred and Linda's site, I had fun reading a lot of stuff there I'd not seen before
You are most welcome.
I especially like Thomas Donaldson's story "Travelling" because it shows someone revived centuries from now after an extreme case of identity degradation. Yet he still manages to build a new life based on one recoverable memory from his earlier life, supplemented with what he needs to know in his current environment. He realizes in the course of the story that his situation resembles that of the other long-lived people he meets, so by the end he doesn't consider it a disability. As the Stoic philosopher Epictetus says, "“It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgments concerning them.”
The story addresses two of the big psychological scarecrows people bring up as objections to cryonics: Identity loss, and future alienation.
advancedatheist 12 Feb 2009
Shannon Vyff 12 Feb 2009
The whole beginning of the article I and many here, already knew--but it is a flattering introduction for those unfamiliar with who Kurzweil is (and I've met many through my church, kids school activities, my various friend groups etc.).
Overall the piece was very positive, and will interest many I'm sure. I'm even happy that the fact he is a cryonicist is alluded to (although he does not mention the organization he is signed with as Aubrey de Grey does).
"Kurzweil is less eager to discuss the pos-
sibility of his own reconstitution - should
allhis supplements and exercise fail tokeep
him alive until the Singularity arrives. "Uh,
yeah," he says, "that would be a setback."
In the worst-case scenario, he says, some
great artificial intelligence will harvest
DNA from his cryogenically preserved body"
But, his role is to inspire us to action in what we can push our technology to do--and I think he really taps into a deep need for many.
I also would have to say I agree with some of this criticism of Kurzweil, his take has been more or less mine for 7 or 8 years: http://scienceblogs....singularity.php
advancedatheist 13 Feb 2009
In the worst-case scenario, he says, some
great artificial intelligence will harvest
DNA from his cryogenically preserved body"
The author of the Rolling Stone story might have misrepresented or misunderstood what Kurzweil told him. What about trying to harvest information about neural connections from Kurzweil's cryogenically preserved brain?
The article doesn't state Kurzweil's intentions and arrangements for cryotransport as clearly as I would have liked. Kurzweil's current photos in the article don't reveal a medic alert bracelet or necklace from a cryonics organization, and the author doesn't mention whether Kurzweil showed him one.
MichaelAnissimov 13 Feb 2009
Mark, why are you so culturally conservative, always being all crotchety about what my generation likes? You even have problems with pink or purple dyed hair. WTF? It's more difficult to develop complex virtual worlds than it is to colonize the Moon. In my generation, developing and exploring virtual worlds stirs up far more excitement than space colonization, that's the obvious trend, to think that space colonization is the future (or that it will even be difficult and non-automatic past a certain point) is to live in the 1970s again. Plenty of people that engage in virtual worlds are fit and healthy, they just do it with part of the time. I take it you've barely experienced computer and/or video games, so you just dismiss the notion that online worlds are the future. Having such limited enthusiasm for what is obviously the new wave of the future is not very transhumanist. Also, why did you take down your own blog? Did you even back it up?
At one point the article mentions that Kurzweil believes he'll bring his father back from the dead by using a combination of (a) his father's DNA and (b) Kurzweil's memories of his father.
His real father, or an agglomeration of the memories of his father as a constructed person? If the former, then ugh. 200 supplements, then stealing the Singularity/Singularitarian meme, then this. Constantly wasting our time explaining to interested people/journalists that he's not a typical transhumanist.
Memories of someone else plus their genetic material is not enough to bring them back. It's another person, a simulcra. Ray and Martine are now claiming it's close enough to be the real person, but it's not. Like I said, wasting our time making us explain to journalists that most transhumanists don't believe this stuff.
DJS 13 Feb 2009
I use to be conflicted about Kurzweil because his pop literature has served for many as an introduction to the futurist meme. But not anymore. This man is clearly unstable. Mainstream transhumanism needs to distance itself from him as much as possible. We're fringe enough without this sort of nonsense. It's no wonder this movement is having difficulty getting any real traction.
JMorgan 13 Feb 2009
If we want to be honest with ourselves, we'd have to say that Aubrey's ideas are extreme too, but none of us are willing to say that. Why is it that we accept Aubrey's projections without any doubt, but we're ready to toss Kurzweil under the bus?
Ben Simon 13 Feb 2009
Although, I suppose Kurzweil does concede in the article that the 'restored' individual would not exactly be the person who died. That's something.
...I guess he just really loves and misses his Dad. Good luck to him.
Ben Simon 13 Feb 2009
advancedatheist 13 Feb 2009
Mark, why are you so culturally conservative, always being all crotchety about what my generation likes? You even have problems with pink or purple dyed hair.
You forgot to mention tattoos.
WTF? It's more difficult to develop complex virtual worlds than it is to colonize the Moon.
Uh, excuse me? A few guys sitting in front of high end PC's can create virtual worlds. You are too young to remember the massive infrastructure and vast technical workforce it took in the 1960's just to put men on the moon as a proof of concept.
In my generation, developing and exploring virtual worlds stirs up far more excitement than space colonization, that's the obvious trend, to think that space colonization is the future (or that it will even be difficult and non-automatic past a certain point) is to live in the 1970s again.
It comes down to a biologically determined hierarchy of needs. We'll need access to space resources (mainly electricity beamed to earth from solar power satellites to turn water and carbon dioxide back into a petroleum-like substance) sooner than we realize just to keep food on the table, not to mention the electricity online for our PC's. In case you haven't noticed, technological civilization may have already started to decline, mostly from diminishing returns from current energy supplies. (It probably didn't happen coincidentally that oil reached ~ $140 a barrel just weeks before the world's banking crisis accelerated.)
We see evidence of this sense of a tightening Malthusian noose from the hostility Octo-Mom has generated, in a society otherwise sentimental about new mothers and their babies. One, people resent she'll need public assistance from the bankrupt state of California; and two, she has added eight new mouths to feed at a time when people feel like the economy has entered a zero-sum state. If we still lived in a society with a perception of progress and rising living standards, people would shrug off Octo-Mom as a circus side show.
Plenty of people that engage in virtual worlds are fit and healthy, they just do it with part of the time. I take it you've barely experienced computer and/or video games, so you just dismiss the notion that online worlds are the future. Having such limited enthusiasm for what is obviously the new wave of the future is not very transhumanist.
When you reach your 40's, Michael, you might realize how much time you've wasted on fads and gimmicks with no long-term value. You might characterize me as an aging "sapolsky," but I counter that I study and try to incorporate useful novelty, not novelty for its own sake, most of which looks pretty meretricious after a few years. (In 2029, kids who haven't even been born yet will ask, "What's a 'beyoncé'?")
Also, why did you take down your own blog? Did you even back it up?
I have had some problems with trolls. If I kept my blog, imagine what The Anticult could have done with it over at the Cult Education Forum. He already accuses me of advocating the murder of children for cryonics experiments.
Edited by advancedatheist, 13 February 2009 - 06:25 PM.
advancedatheist 13 Feb 2009
Oh, and if anyone can oblige me, why is Kurzweil so optimistic as to think aging will be defeated in fifteen years? Even Aubrey predicts something around thirty?
Because Kurzweil will turn 75 in about 15 years, if he even lives that long.
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advancedatheist 13 Feb 2009
Yet another PR disaster.
I use to be conflicted about Kurzweil because his pop literature has served for many as an introduction to the futurist meme. But not anymore. This man is clearly unstable. Mainstream transhumanism needs to distance itself from him as much as possible.
Kurzweil has become the "mainstream" spokesman for transhumanism, like it or not. He has his own Hogwarts now, and two(!) films about him and his ideas will come out later this year. It looks like a well orchestrated public relations or propaganda campaign.