The author should have submitted the last two paragraphs, and left it at that. The singularity does indeed seem to be more of a religious than a scientific visi

The author should have submitted the last two paragraphs, and left it at that. The singularity does indeed seem to be more of a religious than a scientific vision - rapture for nerds. This is the only worthwhile sentence I find in this article. John Horgan sounds like so many other critics declaiming that dramatic technological progress is impossible. History has in many examples proved critics wrong in a spectacular way. Although he doesn't say it directly, Horgan implies that "thinking" machines will not be created in at least 50 years - which to me sounds just as ridiculous as declaring heavier-than-air flight or space flight impossible. The article doesn't really contain any decent points at all - the author cites neuroscience researchers east and west claiming that any dream of smarter-than-human machines are impossible, which seems to me as far from refuting any central argument. 'We don't understand the brain, so intelligence and consciousness can never be understood in a decent time-frame' seems to be as close to a key point as any I am able to interpret out of this. The implication of his thought experiment is that our psyches will never be totally reducible, computable, predictable, and explainable". Never explainable? Just like the stars, motion, nuclear physics and the rest of the human body? Cochlear implamts are also cited as having "poor sound quality" - how does this prove that implants won't get better? There is really nothing to see here - perhaps there would be if the author made his points a bit clearer.