Kurzweil Kookery

And while I’m pointing at the clay feet of people who pretend otherwise, I can’t help saying that when I read PZ Myer’s views on Ray Kurweil’s posturings, I punched the air and said "yes!" I’ve never really understood how Kurzweil’s pontifications receive anything other than a Bronx cheer. As a commentator stated, Kurzweil puts me in mind of Madame Blavatsky. Are both Blavatsky and Kurzweil deluded, cynical or merely mistaken? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that Kurzweil will be proven as erroneous as Blavatsky by history.

 

Oh, and perhaps I should point out that my main beef with Kurzweil is over his timescales. They seem to be ludicrously on the optimistic side. My bet is that we as the human race will have long since been extinguished, or died at our own hands, before our technologies will have evolved sufficiently to act as perfect substitutions for our current carbon-based substrates of consciousness.