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Ray Kurzweil Responds To PZ Myers
On Tuesday we discussed a scathing critique of Ray Kurzweil's understanding of the brain written by PZ Myers. Reader Amara notes that Kurzweil has now responded on his blog. Quoting: "Myers, who apparently based his second-hand comments on erroneous press reports (he wasn't at my talk), [claims] that my thesis is that we will reverse-engineer the brain from the genome. This is not at all what I said in my presentation to the Singularity Summit. I explicitly said that our quest to understand the principles of operation of the brain is based on many types of studies — from detailed molecular studies of individual neurons, to scans of neural connection patterns, to studies of the function of neural clusters, and many other approaches. I did not present studying the genome as even part of the strategy for reverse-engineering the brain."
Clearly, this dispute should be resolved by a poll.
In retrospect, maybe I should have read both articles and thought about what I was writing first instead of just spouting off.
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We can easily do it within two decade: 2010-2019, and 3560-3569.
Ray Kurzweil / PZ Myers slash fiction.
Go on, try to tell me that's not brilliant.
This is just standard "20 years away" rhetoric from futurists: Fusion power within 20 years, Flying cars within 20 years, Duke Nukem Forever within 20 years...
If he dies soon and pulls a L. Ron Hubbard what sort of cult then will we have on our hands?
A cult focused on forwarding scientific research, intelligent technology, human longevity and the sort? We could do worse.
If you're going to stand up and tell people you think someone else is wrong and hasn't properly understood the problem, make sure you're not basing your opinion on a second-hand re-telling of what the guy might have said. I'm off to tell PZ Myers that Alan Cox claims to have documented a cold fusion powered time-travel device in the comments of the -ac branch kernels.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at your total ignorance. I have yet to see a cogent argument that shows materialism to be false.
[Insert quackery here]
Finally, as a scientist, you are completely blind to the scientific method. To use a computer analogy, the brain is the hardware, the mind the software, the spirit the story grandma tells herself when her computer breaks.
Kurzweil ridiculously optimistic, Myers ridiculously cynical?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I can see it now...
60% side with PZ Myers
30% side with Ray Kurzweil
10% side with CowboyNeal