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If Kurzweil is right about even a fraction of the stuff he says, I'm fairly certain he'll prove to be an exceptionally important thinker. Unfortunately, I have
by TheTarquin 19y ago
If Kurzweil is right about even a fraction of the stuff he says, I'm fairly certain he'll prove to be an exceptionally important thinker. Unfortunately, I have serious doubts about almost everything the man says. He often seems to me to be taking the canned shot approach to writing: predict as many big things as possible and support them all as best he can, and see what hits.
In other news, this reminded me a post I saw a few years ago: http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2005/09/most-important-weblog-in-world-what.html http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2005/09/most-important-w...
"As the American economist Tyler Cowen points out, loony extropian and transhuman nanotechnoartificiallinteligenceoboosterist Ray Kurzweil is, because of his wild technoutopian prophesies, "the most important thinker today, if only in expected value terms".
Or at least he was, until this morning when while having my breakfast, I made the following prediction:
"Everything that Ray Kurzweil says will come true, and not only that but we will all get a pony"."
- ivankirigin 19y agoHype aside, he has an interesting approach to invention. He planned on launching a tool to help blind people read. It is a digital camera with a tiny computer. During development, people worked on algorithms on PCs knowing they would be deployed on a portable device not yet available. There is some use to plotting technological growth trends. I think Cowen's comment is a bit tongue-in-cheek.