You bring up some good points but you ruined it from the get go by starting out with poisoning the well[1]. Right or wrong, Kurzweil is not doing it for the spe

You bring up some good points but you ruined it from the get go by starting out with poisoning the well[1]. Right or wrong, Kurzweil is not doing it for the speaking engagements, he's not doing it for the money. He believes what he says. And where he might be wrong is because he believes it too much; he wants to live forever and for that to happen his predictions have to right. Kurzweil's arguments about biology are definitely his weakest. He does arbitrarily chart advances as that PZ piece points out. I find that biologists get more enraged about Kurzweil's predictions for this reason, and because biologists tend to have a "my field of study is the most important in the world" attitude in general. It's hilarious that PZ says that Kurzweil's book is terrible because he got the biology wrong, then says he has some points about Moore's Law and AI.... it shows the self-importance PZ places on himself. The only thing that will decide whether we reach a TS is not how fast medical technology advances. The only thing that matters is reaching strong AI. If we reach strong AI it's game-over for everything else. We'll have all of the bets you place virtually overnight, if our new masters decide to keep us around that is. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well