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Saw him give a talk promoting his latest book last month, was heavily disappointed. Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any

by GuiA 14y ago

Saw him give a talk promoting his latest book last month, was heavily disappointed. Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any depth or critical insights. I recall someone calling it "creationism for people with an IQ over 140"; it's a fair description. It's a shame, he's brought many great contributions to our field, but I fear he has jumped the shark a while ago. Maybe going to Google will force him to work on solutions to problems of which the correctness can be more easily assessed.

praxeologist 14y ago
>It's a shame, he's brought many great contributions to our field What field? The fluffsters? Saying stuff like, "Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any depth or critical insights.", is saying nothing.
- GuiA 14y ago
  He did a lot of work in text to speech, speech recognition, OCR, etc. back in the day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Mid-life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Mid-life
  - praxeologist 14y ago
    Of course, fluffster was directed at you and I know what Kurzweil did.
    - pretoriusB 14y ago
      No, of course you've been pwned, and you should be more graceful about it.
vecinu 14y ago
I tend to feel the same way about him and the state of his life at the moment. I am very grateful for the inventions he brought forth and his work on AI but I think his current goals in life are unreasonable and of course, related to the death of his father. As much as he doesn't want to be human anymore, his entire goal in life relies on the human condition...to reconnect with his father and transgress life in its current form. I think he could do so much more at the moment if, like you said, he would focus on problems that can be solved as soon as possible and demonstrate a use of his solution.
Alex3917 14y ago
"Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any depth or critical insights." While are a number of obvious problems with the theory, it's still an invaluable idea. Even if 2042 doesn't pan it, Kurzweil has still provided an enormously powerful tool to help understand the world around us. (Well, technically he didn't invent the idea, but he was the one who did most of the work aggregating the data.)
jere 14y ago
>I recall someone calling it "creationism for people with an IQ over 140"; it's a fair description. Really? Because if so, then they stole that quote almost verbatim from Mitch Kapor when he was discussing the singularity in 2007. And it seems to have a lot less relevance to a book about how the brain works than it does to an imagined singularity. >Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corporation, has called the notion of a technological singularity "intelligent design for the IQ 140 people...This proposition that we're heading to this point at which everything is going to be just unimaginably different—it's fundamentally, in my view, driven by a religious impulse. And all of the frantic arm-waving can't obscure that fact for me." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Criticism
- Osmium 14y ago
  In fairness, that's how good quotes usually work: they tend to be retold time and again and adopted for other purposes until it's no longer clear who said it originally. So I wouldn't be too quick to call fowl on this one. I'm not sure one can "steal" a quote...
  - jere 14y ago
    I'm fine with reusing quotes, but in this instance it seems like a rather ham-handed application of it. The singularity reeks of religious concepts. Kurzweil even called his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines" before it was "The Singularity is Near." He literally thinks he's going to be able to live forever (and the technology to do so will be available within his own lifetime). Yada yada... basically what I'm saying is the the quote fits that book perfectly. Now we're talking about his new book "How to Create a Mind", which is a theory about how the brain works and how reverse engineer it, and the quote doesn't seem to fit. I'm guessing someone was just trying to sound intelligent... but then why does the OP agree with them?
    - Alex3917 14y ago
      I think age of spiritual machines is actually the perfect title. The whole idea of the singularity is that you can't predict the nature of emergent phenomena based on lower level inputs, specifically with regards to the future of technology. This is basically analogous to the fact that we can't predict consciousness or intelligence by looking at the properties of matter or even biology. I also don't see anything religious about the concept. Religion by (etymological) definition seeks to understand or connect with ultimate source of things, whereas the singularity is A) about the future and B) says that the future is going to be impossible to predict or understand because of accelerating change. At best you might be able to argue that it's vaguely teleological, but I'm not even sure that that is correct because the theory doesn't make any real predictions for what happens in the longterm after the singularity.

by GuiA 14y ago

praxeologist 14y ago

>It's a shame, he's brought many great contributions to our field What field? The fluffsters? Saying stuff like, "Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any depth or critical insights.", is saying nothing.

GuiA 14y ago
He did a lot of work in text to speech, speech recognition, OCR, etc. back in the day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Mid-life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Mid-life
- praxeologist 14y ago
  Of course, fluffster was directed at you and I know what Kurzweil did.
  - pretoriusB 14y ago
    No, of course you've been pwned, and you should be more graceful about it.

vecinu 14y ago

I tend to feel the same way about him and the state of his life at the moment. I am very grateful for the inventions he brought forth and his work on AI but I think his current goals in life are unreasonable and of course, related to the death of his father. As much as he doesn't want to be human anymore, his entire goal in life relies on the human condition...to reconnect with his father and transgress life in its current form. I think he could do so much more at the moment if, like you said, he would focus on problems that can be solved as soon as possible and demonstrate a use of his solution.

Alex3917 14y ago

"Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any depth or critical insights." While are a number of obvious problems with the theory, it's still an invaluable idea. Even if 2042 doesn't pan it, Kurzweil has still provided an enormously powerful tool to help understand the world around us. (Well, technically he didn't invent the idea, but he was the one who did most of the work aggregating the data.)

jere 14y ago

>I recall someone calling it "creationism for people with an IQ over 140"; it's a fair description. Really? Because if so, then they stole that quote almost verbatim from Mitch Kapor when he was discussing the singularity in 2007. And it seems to have a lot less relevance to a book about how the brain works than it does to an imagined singularity. >Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corporation, has called the notion of a technological singularity "intelligent design for the IQ 140 people...This proposition that we're heading to this point at which everything is going to be just unimaginably different—it's fundamentally, in my view, driven by a religious impulse. And all of the frantic arm-waving can't obscure that fact for me." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Criticism

Osmium 14y ago
In fairness, that's how good quotes usually work: they tend to be retold time and again and adopted for other purposes until it's no longer clear who said it originally. So I wouldn't be too quick to call fowl on this one. I'm not sure one can "steal" a quote...
- jere 14y ago
  I'm fine with reusing quotes, but in this instance it seems like a rather ham-handed application of it. The singularity reeks of religious concepts. Kurzweil even called his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines" before it was "The Singularity is Near." He literally thinks he's going to be able to live forever (and the technology to do so will be available within his own lifetime). Yada yada... basically what I'm saying is the the quote fits that book perfectly. Now we're talking about his new book "How to Create a Mind", which is a theory about how the brain works and how reverse engineer it, and the quote doesn't seem to fit. I'm guessing someone was just trying to sound intelligent... but then why does the OP agree with them?
  - Alex3917 14y ago
    I think age of spiritual machines is actually the perfect title. The whole idea of the singularity is that you can't predict the nature of emergent phenomena based on lower level inputs, specifically with regards to the future of technology. This is basically analogous to the fact that we can't predict consciousness or intelligence by looking at the properties of matter or even biology. I also don't see anything religious about the concept. Religion by (etymological) definition seeks to understand or connect with ultimate source of things, whereas the singularity is A) about the future and B) says that the future is going to be impossible to predict or understand because of accelerating change. At best you might be able to argue that it's vaguely teleological, but I'm not even sure that that is correct because the theory doesn't make any real predictions for what happens in the longterm after the singularity.