Should 2012 really be 2045? Ray Kurzweil says yes!

[jah_yout]

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

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">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.</div></div>

this is simply not true...
there were people living into their 90's and 100's 5,000 years ago;
there are people dying of natural causes in their teenage &amp; pre-teenage years right now...
it is a myth that humans are now living longer than ever...pure myth as life expectancy varies from place to place &amp; people to people;
any strides we made in technology has been neutralized by the harmful effects to the environment which many of these developments have caused...e.g. far more radiation &amp; pollution in the atmosphere

[f0rTyLeGz]

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

Have you ever seen this table... Patents by country?

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_all.htm

Won't these Kurzweil breakthroughs come with patents? Did not Kurzweil's inventions in computing make him a rich man?

When I read through Kurzweil's predictions there is little said about how ALL people will live, and most of these advances seem to me to be marvels that advanced societies will enjoy. I see mention of an &quot;underclass,&quot; and Luddites.

This is a prediction for a few decades from now...&quot;The decentralization of the population will make societies less vulnerable to terrorist and military attacks.&quot;

[f0rTyLeGz]

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

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
this is simply not true...
there were people living into their 90's and 100's 5,000 years ago;
there are people dying of natural causes in their teenage &amp; pre-teenage years right now...
it is a myth that humans are now living longer than ever...pure myth as life expectancy varies from place to place &amp; people to people;
any strides we made in technology has been neutralized by the harmful effects to the environment which many of these developments have caused...e.g. far more radiation &amp; pollution in the atmosphere </div></div>
Have you seen this link? World Life Expectancy

[SmoothOperator]

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

When I read through the Kurzweil prediction link it is very obvious he has gotten many things wrong if you hold him to a specific timeline:

2009
Most books will be read on screens rather than paper. <span style="color: #FF0000">Nope. I have a kindle, but I still read more on paper</span>
Most text will be created using speech recognition technology. <span style="color: #FF0000">Nope</span>
Intelligent roads and driverless cars will be in use, mostly on highways. <span style="color: #FF0000">And Nope. It has been discussed but we are not even close yet</span>


I will say though I can see these predictions coming to pass in the next few years though.

[johnnycakes]

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

40:
Have you ever seen this table... Patents by country?

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_all.htm

Won't these Kurzweil breakthroughs come with patents? Did not Kurzweil's inventions in computing make him a rich man?

When I read through Kurzweil's predictions there is little said about how ALL people will live, and most of these advances seem to me to be marvels that advanced societies will enjoy. I see mention of an &quot;underclass,&quot; and Luddites.



40,

If your assumption is correct that people will think and act the same at or near the time of Kurzweil's Singularity , then PERHAPS greed and all that will negate the benefits of that advanced intelligence .

I just doubt that is likely. Capitalism is showing its basic weaknesses and is failing badly, moving on to some form of socialism is the logical progression, it working better than capitalism and being a democratic economic form which a higher level intellectual society would naturally gravitate towards. If you do not believe in the exponential progress in many fields allied with or directly related to machine intelligence, then you will never think positively about what is coming.

40:
This is a prediction for a few decades from now...&quot;The decentralization of the population will make societies less vulnerable to terrorist and military attacks.&quot;


40,

If , as I predict, humanity will evolve in a societal way as well as technologically, the causes of terrorist attacks and the need for any nation to have a military will be eliminated by the time of Kurzweil's Singularity.


You cannot think about 2045 as just another 35 years away and that in that time
that the same snail's paced linear progression will continue. We will make something like 100 years of progress in that time compared to what we saw from say 1990-2010.

This is like nothing humanity has ever seen and I can understand the trouble many have getting their brains wrapped around the concept .

[johnnycakes]

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">When I read through the Kurzweil prediction link it is very obvious he has gotten many things wrong if you hold him to a specific timeline:

2009
Most books will be read on screens rather than paper. <span style="color: #FF0000">Nope. I have a kindle, but I still read more on paper</span>
Most text will be created using speech recognition technology. <span style="color: #FF0000">Nope</span>
Intelligent roads and driverless cars will be in use, mostly on highways. <span style="color: #FF0000">And Nope. It has been discussed but we are not even close yet</span>


I will say though I can see these predictions coming to pass in the next few years though. </div></div>




Smooth,

Kurzweil's predictions are dead on when it comes to the computing power, decreasing computer costs, and other technical aspects of our society.

Unlike other futurists he then goes on to predict the timing for the full scale use of the technology and this is where he is off a few years here and there.

The technology for all that stuff you mentioned does now exists. It just has not yet been put into full use.

[johnnycakes]

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

Cavemen died in their twenties, often from rotted infected teeth.

The AVERAGE life expectancy at the turn of the century was about 50 years.

Now the AVERAGE life expectancy is around 80.


You are conflating the fact that a few people in the old days lived relatively exceptionally long lives with the average for those years.

Millions of newborns died from sepsis and/or killed their mothers as they were born.


Modern medicine is what has changed those horrendous mortality rates and death at early ages from things we now cure or treat.

[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">If , as I predict, humanity will evolve in a societal way as well as technologically, the causes of terrorist attacks and the need for any nation to have a military will be eliminated by the time of Kurzweil's Singularity.

You cannot think about 2045 as just another 35 years away and that in that time
that the same snail's paced linear progression will continue. We will make something like 100 years of progress in that time compared to what we saw from say 1990-2010.

This is like nothing humanity has ever seen and I can understand the trouble many have getting their brains wrapped around the concept .</div></div>
I have been reading at Kurzweil's forum today... I'm not alone in my questioning the Utopian, Paradise, Heavenly vibe of your take on the future. And there are many excellent posts and conversations there. Perhaps you have read there? http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/

[SmoothOperator]

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

Kurzweil is clearly over enthusiastic in his predictions. For example he predicts in this 2005 article that between 2000 and 2014 the rate of technological progress will exceed the 20th century in it's entirety. Well we are in 2011. It has not happened and I just don't see it happening in the next 3 years. No one can predict technological progress with any specificity because there are just too many variables and unknowns. Which is why I think he should stick to making general forecasts and leave out the crazy timelines that serve to damage his credibility and the idea of the singularity.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/next/human-20/2005/10/24/1130006035858.html

[johnnycakes]

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

40:

.[/quote]
I have been reading at Kurzweil's forum today... I'm not alone in my questioning the Utopian, Paradise, Heavenly vibe of your take on the future. And there are many excellent posts and conversations there. Perhaps you have read there? http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/ [/quote]


40,
Thanks for that link. I spent about half an hour reading through about four threads there.
They aren't saying much different there than I am seeing here.

Those people who have a low opinion of humanity; who believe it to be at its base as a part of its makeup inherently greedy, warlike, immoral and those who believe in gods and intelligent designers have little faith and hope that the soon-to-be 24-7 availability of a super intelligence will be a boon to humanity.

We Singularitarians and communists, being more optimistic can't think that it will be anything less than an unqualified boon and a changing point for the human race that WILL lead us to the sort of Utopia ((that which the religiously inclined call heaven ) that we now can only imagine and even so we are probably underestimating the reality of what will come

The Kurzweil site seems to reflect similar differences in how people feel about the possibilities of a Kurzweilian Singularity as we are seeing here.

There does not seem to be any controversy about whether or not the Singularity/the exponential growth of AI into a super-intelligence. will occur but just perhaps a time difference of ten years at most.

All else is conjecture and that conjecture will be based on how each of us views our fellow humans.

[f0rTyLeGz]

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

I thought this essay was pretty interesting... Complexity and Collapse - Empires on the Edge of Chaos

[johnnycakes]

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

40,
I read that this morning.
None of what Ferguson said took Kurzweil's Singularity and the exponential growth of AI into consideration and so I have a great deal of difficulty taking him seriously when he talks about a bleak future without that consideration of tremendous technological and machine intelligence advances.

The long slow collapse of the American Empire is now underway and it will continue coincidentally with the advent of the technological surge predicted by Kurzweil and others.

Aas the old empire collapses, new ideas and new technologies that develop during the collapse will step up to create a new human society on the planet.

[rudemonk]

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

Michio Kaku weighs in:

<span style="font-style: italic">Question: Do you believe in the coming singularity?

Michio Kaku: There was a conference out of Sylmar that made headlines around the world. The brightest minds of artificial intelligence converged onto Sylmar and a reporter asked them a question&quot; &quot;When will this fabled singularity take place? When will the machines take over? When will machines become smarter than us?&quot;

Well the answer was quite interesting. Among the top people assembled in one place the answers were anything from 20 years in the future to 1,000 years in the future—with some AI experts saying never. Some people put it at 2029. They even give you an exact date. 2029, that’s going to be the moment of truth that one day a robot will wake up, wake up in the laboratory, look around and say, “I am aware.” “I’m just as smart as you.” “In fact, I could be even smarter if I put a few more chips in my brain.”

Other people say: &quot;Not so fast, not so fast because Moore’s law is going to break down.&quot; The reason why many people are so confident about this prediction of the so called singularity is because of Moore’s law that computer power doubles every 18 months and it’s a curve that has held sway for 50 years. If you go back 100 years back to the time of mechanical hand-crank computers, put that into Moore’s law and you still get a nice fit, so believe it or not Moore’s law has been in operation for about 100 years, going back to hand-crank calculators with computer power doubling every 18 months.

Well can this go on forever? And the answer is no because eventually physics takes over and that is physics says that silicon is unstable at the molecular level. Transistors get so small, so powerful and they generate so much heat that the silicon chip melts and electrons leak out because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You don’t know where the electron is anymore. Therefore, we physicists are looking for replacements for silicon. The post-silicon era will be about 10 to 15 years in the future. Silicon Valley could become a rust belt. Think about it, every Christmas your PCs, your computers, your gadgets will be just as powerful as they were the previous year and then the question is are you going to buy? Are you going to buy any more computer products for Christmastime knowing that they’re just as powerful as they were the previous year? Probably not. Which means that the computer industry could begin to shake as a consequence.

So we physicists are looking at optical computers, quantum computers, DNA computers, protein computers, all sorts of different kinds of architecture down to the molecular, down to the atomic, down to the microscopic realm, but none of them are ready for primetime yet.

So my answer is I don’t know. All I’m saying is there is vast uncertainties in projecting Moore’s law into the future. However, I would say by end of the century it is definitely conceivable that if we work out the technical problems we might be able to create machines that are as smart as us. Right now our machines are as smart as insects. Eventually they’ll be smart as mice. After that they’ll be smart as dogs and cats. Probably by the end of the century, who knows, they’ll be as smart as monkeys. At that point they could become potentially dangerous because monkeys can formulate their own plans. They don’t have to listen to you. They can formulate their own strategies, their own goals and I would say therefore at that point let’s put a chip in their brain to shut them off if they get murderous thoughts. Isaac Asimov advocated something like that with his &quot;Three Laws.&quot; I say hey, put a chip in their brain to shut them off if they start to get murderous.

Recorded on September 29, 2010

Interviewed by Paul Hoffman</span>
from Big Think

[f0rTyLeGz]

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

<span style="font-size: 14pt"><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'">The Promise of Rapture for the High-Tech Elite</span></span>

<span style="color: #9999FF">By ELIZABETH LESLY STEVENS
Published: April 23, 2011 </span>

Ray Kurzweil, the influential technologist, came to the Palace of Fine Arts theater in San Francisco a few days ago to promote his vision of “the Singularity.” One attendee admiringly described it as “the cult Rapture of the Nerds.”

It was a much more fitting prelude to the Easter holidays than Mr. Kurzweil would like to think.

The Singularity, as he explains it, is a point in the near future when rapidly escalating technological advances will allow the most evolved humans (i.e., Mr. Kurzweil and his early-adopting followers) to incorporate technology into their bodies. Doing so will allow them to live hundreds of years and perhaps forever. Mr. Kurzweil wrote a book on the subject in 2005 and has been proselytizing ever since. The quick sell: Join me in outsmarting death.

This vision has obvious appeal to the Silicon Valley set, which holds sacred the belief that technology can solve most any problem; Google’s co-founder Larry Page, and a long list of other tech celebrities, helped establish Singularity University, where rich or deep-thinking techies try to get an edge on the future.

New Agers, too, find something alluring in the idea of man transcending the mere self and attaching to a more grandiose vision of the human project.

Yet there is a flip side to the Singularity, a distinctly unmodern religiosity of the sort that often horrifies high-powered engineers and sophisticated citizens of the New Economy. Mr. Kurzweil offers the best of both worlds, as it were: an answer to existential questions and the ageless quest for immortality, wrapped in a package of science and innovation.

Michael Lindvall, a theologian and pastor of Brick Presbyterian Church in New York, pegs Mr. Kurzweil’s Singularity dogma as a modern iteration of the Gnosticism prevalent in the second and third centuries.

Gnosticism “was basically the idea that people save themselves by being smart,” Mr. Lindvall said. “By knowing these secret things, you would become cognoscenti, one of the few, elitist. Gnostics looked down on the hoi polloi Christian masses.”

Kevin Kelly, a co-founder of Wired magazine and an influential technology theorist himself, is not an adherent of the Singularity, but has spoken at length with Mr. Kurzweil about it and certainly sees the appeal.

“It attracts people who are scientific, rational, not religious,” Mr. Kelly said, “and it offers them the same comforting idea that heaven offers to someone more religious.”

Mr. Kurzweil said, via e-mail, that any comparison of Singularity to religion was “incorrect.”

“Religions emerged in pre-scientific times” he wrote, and are “based on faith and not science.”

“We need to update our understanding of the destiny of our human-machine civilization based on what science now tells us,” he added. “The bottom line is that my thesis is based on a detailed scientific analysis of the history of technology and not on faith.”

Certainly, some of Mr. Kurzweil’s adherents seemed overcome with religious fervor at his recent San Francisco appearance. “His fans notoriously swarm the stage, like they are doing here!” an event organizer barked at other staff members during a V.I.P. reception, warning them to be alert.

Mr. Kurzweil predicts the Singularity will occur in about 2040. Mr. Kelly suggests he so tirelessly promotes it in hopes of speeding things along. In 2040, Mr. Kurzweil would be 92. He obsesses over his diet and consumes 150 pills a day to stave off aging.

Thoughts of mortality produce “profoundly sad and lonely feelings,” Mr. Kurzweil said in “Transcendent Man,” a filmed accompaniment to his live presentation. “So I go back to thinking about how I’m not going to die.” (The German words “kurz weil,” by the way, translate into “short time,” so perhaps Mr. Kurzweil was predestined to obsess over ways to extend his life.)

Ken Marks, a local mathematician, was one of 700 or so who came to hear Mr. Kurzweil — and he was skeptical about the whole thing. His objections were scientific, rather than theological, saying that the Singularity ignored the scientific principle of complementary pairs. Like space and time, or electric force and magnetic force, “death and life are a complementary pair,” Mr. Marks said. “Death is intrinsic to life.”

“If you do not have death, you do not have life,” he said.

Mr. Kelly suggests such scientific nitpicking wouldn’t hold much sway with Mr. Kurzweil, though he, too, is a man of science.

“The remarkable thing about Ray is that he has no doubt,” Mr. Kelly said. “He has an answer for every objection. His certainty is unwavering.”

Is that faith, in the traditional sense? “Exactly,” Mr. Kelly said. “He has faith.”

[email protected]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/us/24bcstevens.html?scp=1&amp;sq=ray%20kurzweil&amp;st=cse

[johnnycakes]

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

Thanks Monk,

Michio Kaku seems to not believe in exponential growth or at least did not make note of it in that admittedly short interview.
Neither did he mention when talking about the limits of silicon based chips that what comes after silicon s already in the works and I believe even one step beyond that exists at least in theory.

As 40's article said about Kurzweil, he has an answer for every criticism and doubter. He feels that he's got it right and so far no one has shown him to be very far off on what he is predicting.

It could possibly turn out that he's off by a decade since he's talking about 2045 as a date for the Singularity but we won't know if that is on track for say, another 15 years at which point we'll be at the big bend in the exponential curve of technological advance that Kurzweil predicted..