[ExI] Kurzweil accused of being a first-rate bullshit artist

[Stefano Vaj]

On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Eschatoon Magic <eschatoon at gmail.com> wrote:
> These days Kurzweil-bashing is a favored past-time of many idiots who
> will never do the tiniest fraction of what he has done. The man
> deserves respect, if only for opening our eyes to possible futures.

Personally, I find RK's scenarios quite compelling, and he is at least
bold enough to suggest that "it can be done, we have already be doing
it for a long time". Picking on details, when, say, "curves" are
certainly just mathematical metaphors of a plausible worldview, does
not really detract from their charm.

Where I personally part ways is where he shows a find of millenarian
faith in the fact that, say, the Singularity is going to happen no
matter what, out of some intrinsic, guaranteed mechanism, while the
opposite is true, that even our past achievements took place against
all odds, and overcoming incredibly difficult paradigm shifts and
technical difficulties by a mix of sheer will and vision.

This in turn led him to concentrate his current concerns on
"steering", on "risks, etc. Now, to reverse Carrico's approach, the
first thing for superlativity thinking is to get there in the first
place, not to take it for granted. If those who were considering human
flights had spent 95% of their time and energies pondering on
jet-originated greenhouse gases, we would still be traveling on
horseback.

-- 
Stefano Vaj