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Yep. Kurzweil's theories are very similar. Also the Drake Equation. Great for late-night BS sessions, and maybe a fine thing to put some faith in -- but it ain'

Yep. Kurzweil's theories are very similar. Also the Drake Equation. Great for late-night BS sessions, and maybe a fine thing to put some faith in -- but it ain't science or logic. "...I had this massive argument 10 years ago with a politically active friend..." Reminds me of a similar story. Worked with a guy many years ago who was a double major, math and physics, I think. Brilliant guy. At the time, he assured me that now was the time to get in the market and bet on oil prices going higher. Peak oil was here! Shortages and chaos were upon us. I pointed out that peak oil had been called many times over the years. It was doubtful we were on that exact spot. In fact, some economists have even said that anything you can dig out of the ground is bound to go down in prices as extraction technology continues to mature. He countered by showing me a study from the U.S. Defense Department (I believe), it showed that yes, indeed, oil was going nowhere but up. I pointed out various examples of this type of thinking failing in the past. He pointed out that things can't continue on forever. Draw a trend line. There's no way that line can continue. Does this discussion sound familiar? We agreed to disagree, and I promised him that I would wait a few years and email him. We would revisit this discussion. Several years passed. Oil was not through the roof. In fact, IIRC, it was about in the same spot as it was before. So I emailed him. I asked him how he felt about his earlier assessment. I did not get a reply. Since then, of course, we have the advent of fracking, and the clear possibility that the U.S. is going to end up as a petroleum exporter, at least for a while. Faith is a fine thing. Heck, I'm a singularian, although I think we're looking at 300-500 years. But it's very important to be cognizant of those things you take on faith. Otherwise you end up having these long discussions in which your main defense is just repeating something along the lines of "science!" or "math!" over and over again.

netcan 11y ago
An interesting thing about Kurzweil's timeline is the 2045 singularity awakening date. It's conveniently scheduled around the end of his life, assuming medical technology extends life expectancy at his age to around 100 years. That said, I think what Kurzweil does is interesting and valuable. In fact, being so stridently futurist and speculative makes it a lot more honest than a typical "think tank" economic scenario predictions. You go into it with a much more assumption challenging type of good skepticism and engage with the unknowns. What makes you think 300-500 years? If we're talking 300-500 years, I'm lost. Compare 2015 to 1515. Consider accelerating rate of change, I think 300-500 years takes us outside of any kind of timeline we can map historically.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  I believe hard AI is going to be a lot more problematic to map out than we currently might think. I believe we're in for a push-back against overly-intrusive computer monitoring, which should slow down AI development. I also believe that "intelligent", "kind", "moral", and "useful" may also be much more mutually orthogonal than currently believed. Finally, mankind really needs to work through the period where mid-level AI could either exterminate us or love us into extinction. That's going to take some time to work out. But it's all just guesses, of course.
alphydan 11y ago
If you spoke to your friend 10 - 20 years ago, then he was right. Perhaps he imagined faster and more catastrophic dynamics, but inflation-adjusted Oil has been going up since 1998 [0]. If you had taken his advice and invested in oil futures in 2009, you could have become rather wealthy :) Of course, there have been impressive price fluctuation (One happening right now). But it's kind of expected in a highly complex system where technology, politics and financial crises interact in rather unpredictable ways. On average, I still think the trend is UP (and the "fracking miracle" will be a short lived spike). Peak Oil will happen (but predicting the date or dynamics inside a 20 year range is just as hard as predicting the timing and depth of a financial crisis). [0] http://inflationdata.com/articles/charts/inflation-adjusted-oil-prices-chart/ http://inflationdata.com/articles/charts/inflation-adjusted-...
gadders 11y ago
That reminds me of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager

netcan 11y ago

An interesting thing about Kurzweil's timeline is the 2045 singularity awakening date. It's conveniently scheduled around the end of his life, assuming medical technology extends life expectancy at his age to around 100 years. That said, I think what Kurzweil does is interesting and valuable. In fact, being so stridently futurist and speculative makes it a lot more honest than a typical "think tank" economic scenario predictions. You go into it with a much more assumption challenging type of good skepticism and engage with the unknowns. What makes you think 300-500 years? If we're talking 300-500 years, I'm lost. Compare 2015 to 1515. Consider accelerating rate of change, I think 300-500 years takes us outside of any kind of timeline we can map historically.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago
I believe hard AI is going to be a lot more problematic to map out than we currently might think. I believe we're in for a push-back against overly-intrusive computer monitoring, which should slow down AI development. I also believe that "intelligent", "kind", "moral", and "useful" may also be much more mutually orthogonal than currently believed. Finally, mankind really needs to work through the period where mid-level AI could either exterminate us or love us into extinction. That's going to take some time to work out. But it's all just guesses, of course.

alphydan 11y ago

If you spoke to your friend 10 - 20 years ago, then he was right. Perhaps he imagined faster and more catastrophic dynamics, but inflation-adjusted Oil has been going up since 1998 [0]. If you had taken his advice and invested in oil futures in 2009, you could have become rather wealthy :) Of course, there have been impressive price fluctuation (One happening right now). But it's kind of expected in a highly complex system where technology, politics and financial crises interact in rather unpredictable ways. On average, I still think the trend is UP (and the "fracking miracle" will be a short lived spike). Peak Oil will happen (but predicting the date or dynamics inside a 20 year range is just as hard as predicting the timing and depth of a financial crisis). [0] http://inflationdata.com/articles/charts/inflation-adjusted-oil-prices-chart/ http://inflationdata.com/articles/charts/inflation-adjusted-...

gadders 11y ago

That reminds me of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager