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Kurzweil in February '09 Rolling Stone Magazine


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#1 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 10 February 2009 - 05:32 PM


I hope he mentions being an Alcor member, I hope the coverage is positive and I'm sure this will be generating a new public discussion when it comes out ;) :

*************************
When Man & Machine Merge
KurzweilAI.net Feb. 10, 2009
*************************


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

#2 Mind

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Posted 10 February 2009 - 07:58 PM

2009 is a big year for Kurzweil. Many of his predictions have 2009 as a general date. 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).

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#3 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 10 February 2009 - 08:04 PM

Good point Mind. Apparently two documentaries are to come out this year too! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1117394/ and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049412/

#4 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 10 February 2009 - 08:06 PM

I suspect ImmInst will be getting a "Kurzweil Bump" in '09 ;) When people get the idea of physical immortality and start searching, they tend to find us and start honing their beliefs either pro or con.

#5 Cyberbrain

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Posted 10 February 2009 - 09:25 PM

Predictions Kurzweil made for 2010:

Supercomputers will have the same raw power as human brains (although not yet the equivalently flexible software).

This may not come true.

Computers will disappear as distinct physical objects, meaning many will have nontraditional shapes and/or will be embedded in clothing and everyday objects.

This is already true today, but it's not that mainstream yet.

Full-immersion audio-visual virtual reality will exist.

This part had me confused. Does he mean matrix style VR? Otherwise we already have pretty realistic VR devices.

#6 Cyberbrain

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Posted 10 February 2009 - 09:27 PM

Btw, are there any trailers for those 2 films?

#7 forever freedom

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Posted 10 February 2009 - 10:29 PM

Predictions Kurzweil made for 2010:

Supercomputers will have the same raw power as human brains (although not yet the equivalently flexible software).

This may not come true.



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.

#8 DJS

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Posted 11 February 2009 - 03:29 AM

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.

#9 niner

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Posted 11 February 2009 - 03:44 AM

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.

There's a fine line between genius and madness...

#10 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 11 February 2009 - 03:52 AM

Yeah, I don't agree with Kurzweil a lot of the time, I consider myself a realist ;) but I appreciate everything he has done--he has brought many to the transhumanist & extreme life extension movement, even though some of them take it as a new religion...

#11 advancedatheist

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Posted 11 February 2009 - 04:19 PM

As I recall, the paper version of Rolling Stone has largish pages. But could someone scan this article and post a link to it here?

#12 lucid

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Posted 11 February 2009 - 04:22 PM

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.

There's a fine line between genius and madness...


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.


#13 advancedatheist

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Posted 11 February 2009 - 04:49 PM

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.


#14 advancedatheist

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Posted 11 February 2009 - 08:05 PM

Regarding resuscitation efforts based on fragmentary information, several years ago cryonicist Thomas Donaldson wrote a story about an individual restored from those kinds of conditions:

http://www.lifepact.....htm#travelling

#15 advancedatheist

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Posted 11 February 2009 - 08:20 PM

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.

#16 Mind

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Posted 11 February 2009 - 10:53 PM

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.

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.

#17 advancedatheist

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Posted 12 February 2009 - 12:09 AM

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:

Posted Image

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."

#18 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 12 February 2009 - 02:38 AM

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 ;)

#19 advancedatheist

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Posted 12 February 2009 - 03:09 AM

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.

#20 advancedatheist

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Posted 12 February 2009 - 07:24 PM

For people who can't get to the newsstand:

http://www.box.net/s.../az0d7ic6il.pdf

#21 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 12 February 2009 - 08:26 PM

Great find (or creation ;), thank you ) -- yeah, I suppose he can be "the most radical futurist in the world" :)

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

#22 advancedatheist

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Posted 13 February 2009 - 01:20 AM

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.

#23 MichaelAnissimov

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Posted 13 February 2009 - 05:09 AM

Shannon, the "bump" from this will be insignificant relative to prior coverage.

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.

#24 DJS

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Posted 13 February 2009 - 07:26 AM

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. We're fringe enough without this sort of nonsense. It's no wonder this movement is having difficulty getting any real traction.

#25 JMorgan

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Posted 13 February 2009 - 12:09 PM

I just want to say that Ray Kurzweil is the reason I'm here now. Perhaps something else would have come along that opened my eyes, but I can't say for sure. And while some things he says could be extreme, that doesn't mean we can't look at his predictions with a sort of wide-eyed wonder that inspires us to achieve them.

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?

#26 Ben Simon

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Posted 13 February 2009 - 02:00 PM

In the past, when I have heard people talking about how Kurzweil wants to bring back his father, I have assumed he was referring to Quantum Archaeology. ...That idea is far fetched enough, but has always seemed like it would work if only you could figure out how to actually do it. I'm surprised and baffled to think Kurzweil would be so optimistic about something that, at best, seems like it might create some kind of identical twin, psychologically burdened by a whole bunch of memories that don't belong to it.

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.

#27 Ben Simon

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Posted 13 February 2009 - 02:01 PM

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?

#28 advancedatheist

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Posted 13 February 2009 - 06:09 PM

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. ;o)

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.


#29 advancedatheist

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Posted 13 February 2009 - 06:18 PM

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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#30 advancedatheist

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Posted 13 February 2009 - 06:39 PM

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.




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