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The only worthwhile thing it mentions is Ray Kurzweil, then discards it out of hand without actually considering the methodology because it must be unsound to b

The only worthwhile thing it mentions is Ray Kurzweil, then discards it out of hand without actually considering the methodology because it must be unsound to be so precise: > The few who did predict what ended up happening, notably Ray Kurzweil, made lots of other confident predictions (e.g., the Singularity around 2045) that seemed so absurdly precise as to rule out the possibility that they were using any sound methodology. The methodology (ignoring all other detailed knowledge) is roughly our progress with computers and software being exponential for its entire history. What lay people don't get about literal exponential growth[0] is how slow it is (vs linear, polynomial) before it 'hockey sticks'. I assume everyone here knows that and the Wikipedia link is only for the pictured graph as reference. If each unit on the x-axis is a decade of computer hardware and software advancements, we may very well be only two ticks away from the singularity. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth

tim333 3y ago
Kurzweil's best arguments are really quite simple. If you plot computer per dollar on a log graph it forms a fairly smooth line like: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/SPIkvg3D8tlFQvQJ8OEjFpTRdVjZr9PUCYUuyHfEyZGEe9LJHm2hipFm4SnuNShKeoi3j-UMfc99RXpVUonmw94IE75MLIvsO5Ef81LJT5YTWxtAYN_Tw6TgldY-bN1-BfJnDLeZ5SJa-jUj7Q https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/SPIkvg3D8tlFQvQJ8OEjFpTRdV... And you can get out pen and project it into the future. The line is actually a bit faster increasing than exponential so curves up. You can then compare that to human capabilities to get rough dates for stuff https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Kurzweils-8-71-chart-of-exponential-growth-of-computing_fig1_333518196 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Kurzweils-8-71-chart-of-... and that's pretty much all there is to it. It's held up quite well so far and has a good chance of doing so in the future. It's not really that the increases were slow in the old days but that your old pc going faster didn't really mean much to people whereas overtaking human capabilities may be more of a thing.

tim333 3y ago

Kurzweil's best arguments are really quite simple. If you plot computer per dollar on a log graph it forms a fairly smooth line like: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/SPIkvg3D8tlFQvQJ8OEjFpTRdVjZr9PUCYUuyHfEyZGEe9LJHm2hipFm4SnuNShKeoi3j-UMfc99RXpVUonmw94IE75MLIvsO5Ef81LJT5YTWxtAYN_Tw6TgldY-bN1-BfJnDLeZ5SJa-jUj7Q https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/SPIkvg3D8tlFQvQJ8OEjFpTRdV... And you can get out pen and project it into the future. The line is actually a bit faster increasing than exponential so curves up. You can then compare that to human capabilities to get rough dates for stuff https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Kurzweils-8-71-chart-of-exponential-growth-of-computing_fig1_333518196 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Kurzweils-8-71-chart-of-... and that's pretty much all there is to it. It's held up quite well so far and has a good chance of doing so in the future. It's not really that the increases were slow in the old days but that your old pc going faster didn't really mean much to people whereas overtaking human capabilities may be more of a thing.