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Less inflammatory title: These are some cherrypicked reasons why Kurzweil might be wrong, ignoring reasons why Kurzweil might be right. But that wouldn't make

Less inflammatory title: These are some cherrypicked reasons why Kurzweil might be wrong, ignoring reasons why Kurzweil might be right. But that wouldn't make the front page. Also, I'd be a little less critical if this article wasn't citing all this quantum consciousness pseudoscience as one of the main reasons why Kurzweil is wrong.

raverbashing 14y ago
More importantly The implementation details are not relevant We don't need to know how something works in the lower level to reproduce it and especially copying is not necessary. It may be helpful. Very helpful. But not essential ARM does not copy x86 and yet it achieves the same goal. How a gecko attaches itself to the wall was not known until recently, however it's possible to study how to do something similar without studying the Gecko. Sure, if you study it it's a shortcut. And this is a very specific and low level example. For higher level things, the levels of abstraction that even nature creates make the lower level details irrelevant. The functioning of a wing is independent of it's a bird or an insect wing (it is dependent of size, shape and speed, not origin) A Shark and a Whale are completely different animals, and yet, they have lots of similarities. So I'm thinking Ray's success or failure has almost nothing to do with our knowledge of the brain.
nollidge 14y ago
Cherrypicked? He's describing how consciousness currently manifests itself. Which cherries did he forget to pick? Also considering much of Kurweil's "evidence" is best-fit graphs of cherry-picked data points, it's kind of ironic to lob that the other way. > if this article wasn't citing all this quantum consciousness pseudoscience Yeah, I guess if by "all this pseudoscience" you mean a two mentions of two very minimalistic claims. It's not like he's fabricating Deepak-Chopra-esque word salad.
- streptomycin 14y ago
  Cherrypicked? He's describing how consciousness currently manifests itself. Which cherries did he forget to pick? Any cherry that doesn't fit his preconceived conclusion. Kurzweil has eloquently made his arguments in his books and elsewhere, which are summarily ignored here. But it's not like Kurzweil is some random crackpot that nobody supports, there are tons of scientists who agree with him. For instance, Henry Markham and his collaborators have made similar predictions about how their work will lead to human-level AI in the relatively near future. Yeah, I guess if by "all this pseudoscience" you mean a two mentions of two very minimalistic claims. It's not like he's fabricating Deepak-Chopra-esque word salad. Two brief bullet points out of a list of six brief bullet points is a fairly substantial chunk of the argument.
  - pknight 14y ago
    Why not supply some actual reasoning to make your points? Such as 'bullet point x' should be valued lightly because of 'insert evidence/arguments here'. Just calling things pseudoscience or stating that he has 'lot's of support from other people' only implies that you're being defensive.

raverbashing 14y ago

More importantly The implementation details are not relevant We don't need to know how something works in the lower level to reproduce it and especially copying is not necessary. It may be helpful. Very helpful. But not essential ARM does not copy x86 and yet it achieves the same goal. How a gecko attaches itself to the wall was not known until recently, however it's possible to study how to do something similar without studying the Gecko. Sure, if you study it it's a shortcut. And this is a very specific and low level example. For higher level things, the levels of abstraction that even nature creates make the lower level details irrelevant. The functioning of a wing is independent of it's a bird or an insect wing (it is dependent of size, shape and speed, not origin) A Shark and a Whale are completely different animals, and yet, they have lots of similarities. So I'm thinking Ray's success or failure has almost nothing to do with our knowledge of the brain.

nollidge 14y ago

Cherrypicked? He's describing how consciousness currently manifests itself. Which cherries did he forget to pick? Also considering much of Kurweil's "evidence" is best-fit graphs of cherry-picked data points, it's kind of ironic to lob that the other way. > if this article wasn't citing all this quantum consciousness pseudoscience Yeah, I guess if by "all this pseudoscience" you mean a two mentions of two very minimalistic claims. It's not like he's fabricating Deepak-Chopra-esque word salad.

streptomycin 14y ago
Cherrypicked? He's describing how consciousness currently manifests itself. Which cherries did he forget to pick? Any cherry that doesn't fit his preconceived conclusion. Kurzweil has eloquently made his arguments in his books and elsewhere, which are summarily ignored here. But it's not like Kurzweil is some random crackpot that nobody supports, there are tons of scientists who agree with him. For instance, Henry Markham and his collaborators have made similar predictions about how their work will lead to human-level AI in the relatively near future. Yeah, I guess if by "all this pseudoscience" you mean a two mentions of two very minimalistic claims. It's not like he's fabricating Deepak-Chopra-esque word salad. Two brief bullet points out of a list of six brief bullet points is a fairly substantial chunk of the argument.
- pknight 14y ago
  Why not supply some actual reasoning to make your points? Such as 'bullet point x' should be valued lightly because of 'insert evidence/arguments here'. Just calling things pseudoscience or stating that he has 'lot's of support from other people' only implies that you're being defensive.