[extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil

[Damien Broderick]

Hi Pietro

> Since this is my first posting

Welcome!

> A question for Damien Broderick: in your excellent book ( which, you may
be happy to know, lies on my night table) you do not analyse in depth
Kurzweil's ideas. Why?

Ray is increasingly prominent as a voice in singularity studies, but he
wasn't especially prominent when I was writing the first edition of THE
SPIKE in 1996. By the time I was preparing the revision/extension for
publication in New York four years later, Ray's spiritual machines book was
out and being noticed, but it seemed to me to cover much the same ground as
mine (in more detail in some areas and less in others). ButI considered his
own special contribution, the `Law of Accelerating Returns',

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?m=1

to be at the verge of bogosity (sorry, Ray) when regarded as a sort of
cosmic Truth. Moore's `law' (or observation or conjecture) by contrast is a
modest empirical observation with perhaps a little more power to it than
immediately meets the eye, due to the contingent drivers of industrial
capitalism.

But this is a topic that could surely use some discussion on the extrope
list.

Or were you thinking of some other ideas of Ray's?

Damien Broderick
www.thespike.us