Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

[johnnycakes]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: f0rTyLeGz</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Sure... heck, light has reached us from 13 billion years ago, I believe. And out of those billions of galaxies, that have evolved during all those billions of years... and yet not one of them has come up with a omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being. Go figure?! </div></div>




I get your point 40,

See, God made us here on Earth and saw how screwed up a job he did and quit the people making business. That's why there aren't any more intelligent beings. God just can't get it exactly right .

But seriously , I can't speak for you and all others but I can't grasp what eternity means in a length of time that has no end - I can't grasp the concept of something not having an end or having such great length as to be unfathomable.

The same for the flip side of time which is space. It goes on forever and I can't grasp that .

So what then is an infinite intelligence and of what is it capable??


Pardon me while I slip off and boggle a bit.

[f0rTyLeGz]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">... I can't grasp what eternity means in a length of time that has no end - I can't grasp the concept of something not having an end or having such great length as to be unfathomable. </div></div>
That's not really the case you know? Space is finite, and doesn't go on forever.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
The same for the flip side of time which is space. It goes on forever and I can't grasp that .</div></div>
Space is finite, and doesn't go on forever... again.

When I was a boy... back in the 50's living in Montgomery, Alabama, one of my little pleasures was buying sci-fi comics at the drug store. They also sold Mentor paperbacks, and I bought and read many of them. One of the books I read was &quot;One, Two, Three, Infinity,&quot; by George Gamow. A read that changed my life, because after reading it, I was able to get my brain around big numbers.

Space is limited by the same &quot;Singularity&quot; concept that you like so much... but, in the other direction. You go back and back in time...or out in astronomy, and you reach a place where everything goes flat, and turns into a dot, and no one knows what happened after (before) that.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">So what then is an infinite intelligence and of what is it capable?? </div></div>
When Kurweil predicts &quot;'that all of the particles of the universe will be endowed with data processing capabilities and will also be able to store knowledge. This is the point where the universe will &quot;wake up.&quot;' He is saying exactly that... that OUR earthling consciousnesses will become omniscient, and omnipresent.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

40,

As long as the speed of light remains the limiting factor in the universe, for all intents and purposes, space does go on forever in the sense that it would take what? trillions of years to get from one end to the other or loop back on itself.

Good answer on the on the question of ultimate intelligence.
We will all be one.

Again, something else that is difficult to grasp and still perhaps? inevitable?

Anyway, If I want to see Kurzweil's technological Singularity I'll have to live to be 101.
I'll give it a try.

[f0rTyLeGz]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The more I think about the Singularity and what it means the less day-to-day troubles of the world seem important to me</div></div>
It sounds like Heaven. Or Paradise.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The world and humanity will be dramatically changed and for the best within 40 years or so regardless of all that happens between then and now and unless we, as a race, destroy the planet before then.</div></div>
Humans haven't change that much in the last 14 or 15 thousand years. There is human nature to deal with. The soap opera drama in the lives of the poor and the rich have much in common. In past societies that are freed from want, jealousies, the will to dominate, and control, others does not disappear. No well functioning society ever went shining.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">It sounds almost religious-crazy but there is absolutely no doubt of the exponential growth of knowledge and artificial intelligence that will bring on the change.

What is different about this belief is that it doesn't need to evangelize or seek new members because it will happen, IS HAPPENING regardless of who knows about it.

And no God is required. </div></div>
What you are envisioning sounds a whole lot like gods to me. Super intelligent, kind, productive beings (that are BILLIONS of times more intelligent than we are), that solve our problems. They make us humans live for a thousand years. They feed us, and build us houses, cure our medical problems, and take care of us in every possible way.

But power, and independence are human nature. Will humans allow super-intelligent computers and robots to lead them to the greatest good for the greatest number? What if we all need DNA changes to remove archaic emotional responses with regards to fight or flight, and dominance submission?

Just thinking... but the drone thing is pretty amazing. I used to argue that Obama stayed in Afghanistan because the weapons builders promised him that they would get Osama in two years. I guess I was wrong about that. But trust me drones will be overhead EVERYWHERE very soon. And they will soon have your phone number, and picture, and they will know your patterns, and... they will get smaller and smarter... and busier. Won't the state police, and city police, and every place that needs top security want these eyes and ears to control crime? Won't they just keep getting better until they are 100% on their own? Even building themselves?

[SmoothOperator]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

I like Ray Kurzweil, smart guy, very accomplished and I understand the concept of the singularity and think something like that could happen in the future. When Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near came out in 2005, I actually read it cover to cover. The book is so heavy by the way and built like a bible it makes for a good door stop. But his enthusiasm for the future aside I think his prediction that the singularity will happen in 25 to 30 years from now is off the mark, way off the mark. And how convenient for him that the singularity arrives just in time to save him from dying like something from a Hollywood movie. But just look at the last 10 years - has technology really dramatically changed our lives? I dont see it. Cell phones and the Internet are the two biggest things I suppose and they were already in existence it is just that they are now everywhere and a standard part of life. But much as I love my iphone I have not seen any technology in the last 5 to 10 years that made me think the event horizon called the singularity is just around the corner.

Furthermore I think Kurweil discounts the human capacity for self destruction and the fact that emotionally speaking we are babies. I think it is more likely that man creates a weapon that wipes us all from the face of the earth than something that extends human life indefinitely. Just look at how emotionally charged people get about religious belief and their willingness to kill in the name of religion. I don't think mankind has the maturity to create the kind of utopia Kurweil envisions in 25 to 30 years. We are just not there yet.

[rudemonk]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: f0rTyLeGz</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> But trust me drones will be overhead EVERYWHERE very soon. And they will soon have your phone number, and picture, and they will know your patterns, and... they will get smaller and smarter... and busier. Won't the state police, and city police, and every place that needs top security want these eyes and ears to control crime? Won't they just keep getting better until they are 100% on their own? Even building themselves? </div></div>

there is now porting technology being deployed, which completely copies everything in your phone.

on colbert, kurzweil said he would love to have his iphone in his head.

[rudemonk]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: SmoothOperator</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> But just look at the last 10 years - has technology really dramatically changed our lives? I dont see it. Cell phones and the Internet are the two biggest things I suppose and they were already in existence it is just that they are now everywhere and a standard part of life. But much as I love my iphone I have not seen any technology in the last 5 to 10 years that made me think the event horizon called the singularity is just around the corner. </div></div>

but smooth, check it out do you think the middle east would be capable of rising up like this without modern tech?

it's only a matter of time before technology seeps into places in this world that are, for all intents and purposes, stone age.

I do tend to lean towards agreeing with those who consider the human being to be the part of this where the singularity can go kablooiee.

because generally speaking the greatest technological wealth closely aligns with regular wealth. and if anything shows what those people are like, it's greed and control. so if one of them crosses the boundary first, it can be a big problem.

if humanity is not homogenous, and it isn't, how do we know how a sentient machine will see us. hence all the hand wringing in Sci Fi.

[SmoothOperator]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

The impact of the internet is undeniable. But I don't think the rise of social networking tools like twitter and facebook over the last 10 years is as revolutionary as people think, which is not to say they have not made an important impact.

To get us from where we are now to where Kurzweil envisions the biological sciences need to start making exponential progress like has never been seen before. Medicine and health sciences as we know it now are geared towards treating chronic disease and even there it comes up short. Cancer, heart disease and alzhiemers still run rampant. Overall longevity has increased by a few years the last 100 or so years because of access to clean water, better hygiene and not because of anything radical that modern medicine has delivered.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

40,

I think many of us have trouble imagining a far closer to perfect human being evolving based purely and, perhaps justifiably on our up-until-now relatively primitive societies and ways of thinking.

The exponential technological advances will, in all likelihood, produce means of accessing the brain's learning centers and a means of teaching far better than the teacher and 30 kid classroom method we now use. Along with that advanced and accelerated (and far less expensive) means of learning will come a far more universally educated human race.

That well educated and sophisticated humanity will be well equipped to keep pace with and manage the technology until Kurzweil's Singularity.
After that ...no one has a clue as to where that hyper intelligence capability will carry humanity

Personally, I believe that a far better educated human race will lead to a far more logical, humane and peaceful planet which may well have all the characteristics one would now think as Utopian. Once the causes of need, greed, wars are eliminated, the world's thinking will change dramatically and permanently within a generation or two

Having machine and machine intelligence do all the grunt work, digging ditches, running factories, the dirty work, or ALL the work should not be regarded as anything less than our intellectual triumph of science over human suffering.

Humanity will be freed of all rote work and be able to concentrate on the arts, sciences sports, entertainment and overall advancement of the human race and the expansion of human intelligence out into the universe.

Working 40 hours a week and historically and in other parts of the world much longer hours than that just to survive has been slowing our progress as a race.
The elimination of wage slavery will be just one of the things to which we, as a race can look forward.


I guess what I'm trying to say is that you cannot base what you think the exponential technological advances coming will bring based on what has been.

This will be a whole new game, a new life, something humanity has not come close to experiencing in it's 100,000 history.

A good analogy would be bringing a man of 10,000 years ago into today's modern world. He would have no idea of what an automobile is or what it does and would run from the sound of the motor. Airplanes? totally magic to our cavemen.

Well, the technological advances predicted (and usually very accurately) by Kurzweil for 2045 (the Singularity) will make a jump from what WE now have to something that will make today's technology seem as primitive as a stone ax to us.


I don't think most of us are mentally prepared to accept what Kurzweil predicts so deep are the implications and so unknown the ultimate outcome of the development of a hyper-intelligence.

What we are capable of absorbing is the day to day incremental progression of technology: hand held computers, advanced cell phone and so on as they come out.
What we are getting but not seeing are the technological advances in medicine and computers that have no direct bearing on our personal lives but which are going on as we speak about them.

That , at least , is as it has always been although Kurzweil points out that it took decades for the original telephone to get to the general public back at the turn of the 20th century but just months for cell phones around 100 years later. Kurzweil thinks that our acceptance and adaptability to new technology is also increasing in an exponential manner such that it is WE that will control the machines and not vice versa.

Machine intelligence control of humanity would necessarily involve a form of consciousness on the part of the AI and AI consciousness is, until the Singularity, just one of many possibilities and not at all a certainty..

[johnnycakes]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

Smooth Operator,

It seems you are discounting the exponential human development that Kurzweil envisions alongside the technological advances that will make that human progress not only possible but inevitable.

The race cannot gain a billion times the knowledge it now has and not be positively change by it for the better providing you believe that a more intelligent society is a more rational and therefore a more peaceful and kindly society that a far more ignorant one.

And it is not just that we will be incrementally smarter as a race but infinitely smarter and that intelligence will make both teaching and learning FAR more effective and UNIVERSAL than ever before possible in the 100,000 years since our beginning.


You read the book but seem to be discounting what Kurzweil has to constantly dwell on and that is the EXPONENTIAL growths in critical areas that we will soon see.

What he says and what is proving true ( in his predictions) is that we cannot think in that LINEAR way that is so intuitive, so natural to our human way of thinking as regards progress in technology and other societal ways and still be able to see what Kurzweil and others see: that shortly in a decade or two our technological (and other ) advances will greatly accelerate and not plod along as it has for the centuries past.

Our past is no indication of our future.

What we are seeing coming down the road at us is something unlike anything in human experience .

This might be considered akin to having an advanced race of extraterrestrials land and give us all the advanced science necessary to create a Utopian existence for all the inhabitants of the planet except that WE will be that advanced race.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

&quot;Overall longevity has increased by a few years the last 100 or so years because of access to clean water, better hygiene and not because of anything radical that modern medicine has delivered.&quot;


Smooth,

The life expectancy of a human in the United States in the year 1900 was about 48 years.

Today it is near eighty.

THat is due to causes you stated but also due to antibiotics, antiseptic practices, x-rays, vaccines and many many technological advances you are not taking into consideration. How about modern dentistry with implanted teeth?

Organ transplants, pacemakers, insulin and on and on.

Cancers, Alzheimer's, heart disease, spinal injuries and most other conditions will, have cures within 30 years. Nano technology will enable nanobots (microscopic computer base robots) to run through our bodies and fix or eliminate many of the things now either deadly or chronic and many other diseases will be treatable with future DNA therapy, work on which is already underway.

Also going on is a mapping of the human brain. How it works in its entirety.
All of the work in DNA, brain mapping and other areas will be hugely augmented and indeed made possible through computer and other technological advances and bring about the cures we have looked for so long.



&quot;To get us from where we are now to where Kurzweil envisions the biological sciences need to start making exponential progress like has never been seen before.&quot;


Smooth,
The exponential curve in technological progress that we are coming up on is by nature, something that has never happened before just as man's first airplane flight had never been done before.

Mankind has spent 100,000 years gathering the knowledge that has brought us to this point and it is at this point or just a few years more that the line on the exponential technological growth chart starts its rapid exponential expansion.

So we will have growth in AI and other technological fields that now seems unlikely or impossible if you do not either take Kurzweil's exponential progress seriously or are locked into humanity's intuitive linear thinking which has no way of grasping or understanding the concept of exponential progress.


Not to worry.
It is coming down the street in a (relatively) short time regardless of whether or not you believe it plausible or possible.

[SmoothOperator]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

I don't take issue with Kurzweil's predictions of the future per se, it is the timeline I have a problem with. Believe me I think his ideas need to be taken seriously, it is just that generally I have a problem when anyone starts to prophecy and puts a timeline on specific events happening such as Kurzweil's prediction that intelligent roads or highways would by now allow humans to sit back and let the computers do the driving. He has gotten some things generally right but has been wrong about some other things. But like I said if I thought he was a quack I would not have bothered to read his book. I pay attention when he speaks but I do think his love of technology some times results in over enthusiastic predictions. The idea of the singularity happening at some point in the future is exciting enough for me.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

SmoothOperator,

Kurzweil has been fairly dead on with his technological predictions as that field, at least, is amenable and easy to trace in its exponential growth. Where people find fault with him and his predictions go off are when he does go into specific timetables for the USE of these developments. The developments are happening as he foresaw. The specifics of the applications are just sometimes off his schedule but within sight.

As for the timing of the Singularity, Kurzweil says that he could possibly be off ten years at most but doesn't think that big an error is likely given the already exponential growth of AI.

[f0rTyLeGz]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I think many of us have trouble imagining a far closer to perfect human being evolving based purely and, perhaps justifiably on our up-until-now relatively primitive societies and ways of thinking.

The exponential technological advances will, in all likelihood, produce means of accessing the brain's learning centers and a means of teaching far better than the teacher and 30 kid classroom method we now use. Along with that advanced and accelerated (and far less expensive) means of learning will come a far more universally educated human race.</div></div>
I don't think the brain has a &quot;learning center.&quot; It seems to me that education is a class and cultural phenomena. For example we Americans have a 180 day school year. The Japanese have 240 days. Many countries don't educate girls at all, and educating the boys is pretty much making them memorize the Koran in many Muslim countries.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">That well educated and sophisticated humanity will be well equipped to keep pace with and manage the technology until Kurzweil's Singularity.
After that ...no one has a clue as to where that hyper intelligence capability will carry humanity </div></div>
Who manages technology now? When will this &quot;sophisticated humanity&quot; take over and manage technology's growth until the Singularity?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Personally, I believe that a far better educated human race will lead to a far more logical, humane and peaceful planet which may well have all the characteristics one would now think as Utopian. </div></div>
Being educated has never led to people being &quot;peaceful&quot; in the past.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Once the causes of need, greed, wars are eliminated, the world's thinking will change dramatically and permanently within a generation or two </div></div>
Again, Im wondering what the &quot;cause&quot; of greed is, and what is the &quot;cause&quot; of war? People exercise power imho to control and dominate, and to have the pick of the best women, and take your stuff. It's not because they are hungry. In the country you like people are just getting the right to own their homes. Every house will have value, and once property has value, so does everything else.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Having machine and machine intelligence do all the grunt work, digging ditches, running factories, the dirty work, or ALL the work should not be regarded as anything less than our intellectual triumph of science over human suffering.</div></div>
Is everyone on the planet going to be like the Saudi royal family. Will people own machines that compete too? ... or will it be like the Heaven that some people imagine, and people spend their time sitting praising the god 24/7/&amp;#8734; ?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Humanity will be freed of all rote work and be able to concentrate on the arts, sciences sports, entertainment and overall advancement of the human race and the expansion of human intelligence out into the universe.</div></div>
I thought machine intelligence would be what spreads out through the universe, since they will be a billion times smarter than we are? But once again this scenario sounds like Paradise. People will be soo happy and fulfilled that there will be no conflict?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Working 40 hours a week and historically and in other parts of the world much longer hours than that just to survive has been slowing our progress as a race. The elimination of wage slavery will be just one of the things to which we, as a race can look forward.</div></div>
I think differently... I think we Americans have made these huge technological advances because we have a free press, and the right to assemble. We are free. Free to move from poor to fabulously wealthy and powerful. Did... does this happen in under communist or highly socialized governments? Who are the great philanthropists, capitalists or socialists?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I guess what I'm trying to say is that you cannot base what you think the exponential technological advances coming will bring based on what has been.

This will be a whole new game, a new life, something humanity has not come close to experiencing in it's 100,000 history.

A good analogy would be bringing a man of 10,000 years ago into today's modern world. He would have no idea of what an automobile is or what it does and would run from the sound of the motor. Airplanes? totally magic to our cavemen.

Well, the technological advances predicted (and usually very accurately) by Kurzweil for 2045 (the Singularity) will make a jump from what WE now have to something that will make today's technology seem as primitive as a stone ax to us.


I don't think most of us are mentally prepared to accept what Kurzweil predicts so deep are the implications and so unknown the ultimate outcome of the development of a hyper-intelligence.

What we are capable of absorbing is the day to day incremental progression of technology: hand held computers, advanced cell phone and so on as they come out.
What we are getting but not seeing are the technological advances in medicine and computers that have no direct bearing on our personal lives but which are going on as we speak about them.

That , at least , is as it has always been although Kurzweil points out that it took decades for the original telephone to get to the general public back at the turn of the 20th century but just months for cell phones around 100 years later. Kurzweil thinks that our acceptance and adaptability to new technology is also increasing in an exponential manner such that it is WE that will control the machines and not vice versa.</div></div>
Utopia ... Paradise ... Heaven. Freedom from all want, sickness, death itself... this all sounds like religion to me. Like a faith in a magical future that is just around the corner.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!






40:

I think differently... I think we Americans have made these huge technological advances because we have a free press, and the right to assemble. We are free. Free to move from poor to fabulously wealthy and powerful. Did... does this happen in under communist or highly socialized governments? Who are the great philanthropists, capitalists or socialists?


&quot;..........Utopia ... Paradise ... Heaven. Freedom from all want, sickness, death itself... this all sounds like religion to me. Like a faith in a magical future that is just around the corner.&quot;



40,

As you said, you think differently.
I believe that Kurzweil is largely correct. You either don't believe what he and others are predicting or you have yet to grasp the implications of what the EXPONENTIAL technological and AI advances will make possible,

You also have the same low opinion of humanity as someone coming from a society that believes in original sin is likely to have.
You're NOT a communist in the classic philosophical meaning of the word and so do not have a clear picture of what capitalism is and is not and what communism is and is not and what socialism is and is not.

It is interesting but not surprising that you, like most working people, support capitalism or oligarchy because you have a basic misunderstanding of capitalism as exhibited by your first paragraph above.

You do not read the left media on a regular basis and get your information from the corporate media and it is often not factual and is in fact, disinformative: they feed us lies when they want us to believe things like Iraq having WMD and that capitalism is good and has no alternative...

This is apparent in all you have to say about capitalism and by the way you conflate capitalism with technological advances.

(BTW, It was the SOCIALIST Soviet Union that put a man into space ahead of all the capitalist countries ).

The good part about you and I disagreeing about what Kurzweil has predicted and the differences in how we think it will all turn out is that we'll know who is correct within 15 years or so.

We really won't have to wait that long as enough of this wizard technology will be developed in the next five years to show that Kurzweil is on the right track.

This is all good for you. If it doesn't work out as well as I think it will, your pessimism will have been justified. If it all turns out as I think it will, we'll ALL be better off.

Utopia?

You better believe.