[extropy-chat] Kurzweil reviewed in Weekend Australian newspaper

[Damien Broderick]

At 08:14 AM 12/17/2005 -0500, Robert Bradbury wrote:

>The review is an interesting summary of Ray's perspective but provides 
>nothing substantive to indicate real flaws in the argument.

I hope it was obvious I regarded this as a loony and incompetent review, as 
badly so as some egregious pro-"Intelligent Design" or pro-Leon Kass 
review. I posted it here because the Weekend Australian newspaper is a big 
frog in a comparatively small pond, but one that most people on the extropy 
list would not otherwise know of, or see. It's important to be reminded 
that this kind of response crops up even in far-flung Australia.

Andres Vaccari, the reviewer, doesn't feel any need to *argue* why Kurzweil 
is wrong. I see this sort of shrugging evasion in most of the unfavorable 
reviews. For trivial example, I can't imagine what he thinks he's saying 
when he decries the claim that "modern warfare claims fewer casualties 
thanks to more accurate weapons." What's he comparing this with, hitting 
each other with sticks and rocks? As somebody commented here yesterday: 
"Some 20,000 paratroops were EXPECTED to be sacrificed on D-Day just to 
distract the Germans from the beaches of Normandy, and more troops were 
lost in a practice run a few weeks before the Normandy invasion." Granted, 
that ignores the civilians, but civilian casualties are surely lower now 
than in the days of carpet bombing.

And so on.

Damien Broderick