If this guy is right, the entire content of this site, and all our SRS decks, will be completely irrelevant in 35 years.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert...y-kurzweil

I have a Kurzweil keyboard, and damn that guy invented some good keyboards.

I wouldn't take the singularity stuff too too seriously though. I think Kurzweil is right that people think of technology in the wrong way (they make policies and talk as if it increases in a linear way, when actually computer-related technologies have been increasing exponentially), but predicting how things will be in the future is basically impossible. There's too many factors influencing how things could turn out.

But we could all be dead in 35 years, or the technology could not pan out, or some governmental idiots could ban the technology, I'm going to keep studying.

Besides, I have books I want to read *now*.

I figure to be maybe 10 years old in 2045, so it will be an exciting time!
Of course, since I will have been born with the technology, I will not appreciate it.

You are all forgetting that the world will end next year.

We traveled back in time and prevented that 2012 stuff.
Before, Bush had been elected to a 3rd term despite public opinion polls in the low 20s and all Hell broke loose.

Jarvik7 Wrote:You are all forgetting that the world will end next year.

The world as we know it

背中に気をつけろ。
ためらわず撃て。
弾を切らすな。
ドラゴンには絶対、関わるな。

If you ask me technology seems to be making this generation dumber - kids constantly glued to Facebook and whatnot. |:

I was a kid back in the 70s when there was no internet or cell phones, and most kids where I grew up did not pick up a book and read when bored. We thought, "Let's go shoot something" and took our riffles out into the woods. Or maybe we threw rocks at the neighbors chickens.

Those who are interested in knowledge are living in a golden age. The vast majority of kids will want to remain dumb asses (like I did), and can use the same technology to remain stupid.

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Ray Kurzweil is on Triangulation #9 Video Podcast from TWiT.

ファブリス Wrote:Ray Kurzweil is on Triangulation #9 Video Podcast from TWiT.

Great expansion of the nibble given on the Colbert Report

For some perspective (in some ways another extreme), it might be a good idea to read this article... http://www.newsweek.com/2009/05/16/i-robot.html (found through wikipedia's page on the guy)

Surreal Wrote:For some perspective (in some ways another extreme), it might be a good idea to read this article... http://www.newsweek.com/2009/05/16/i-robot.html (found through wikipedia's page on the guy)

Maybe the article isn't so balanced, but I agree with most of it and it does pinpoint Kurzweil's main flaw--he is so certain where there is no certainty. He's like the Karl Marx of technology.

Also, I had forgot about Kurzweil's silly health ideas. It's pretty lol-tastic.

Eh, it's not like certainty is a bad thing for an advocate, even if it's unfounded. And it's not like he has an impossible vision of the future, just a very, very optimistic one. I certainly wouldn't mind if he ends up being right.

Sometimes I feel like a technological singularity will happen before I master Japanese, though. Even if that's after I'm dead. :p

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In the New Age / pseudo science circles there is this idea connected to the Mayan calendar, that there are cycles which become shorter and shorter, but the same amount of "change" happen within each cycle. Actually thinking of it, it's all mired with Terence Mckenna's timewave idea thing as well. Haha. Anyway.. there is one idea in there I liked, which is that as we get faced with ever increasing amount of information, we just get overwhelmed. So we move into "fight or flight" response due to the stress. The fight response is terrorism, revolution and so on. Not necessarily all good or all bad, just a "fight" response. And the "flight" response is us basically diving into more movies, videogames, music, sex, and God knows how many escapes we come up with these days.

So yeah, I'm not talking about any kind of serious research here, but I find the idea interesting. Because I do feel in my life that it's becoming difficult, as you get faced with all the doom and gloom around the world, to keep a balanced outlook. I'm still undecided whether I should just quit trying to get a grasp on things and become a happy hippie, play the guitar and just stop worrying about anything that's not entering an immediate perimeter of 10 meters around me. After all that would be living in the moment right?

Ray Kurzweil's chat on triangulation was refreshing. Quite optimistic. I liked how he pointed out that we feel that so many things are wrong, but that is also because we finally know about all these things that we would never have heard of before. If it wasn't for the internet we just wouldn't know anything about Egypt, Libya and so on, or very little.

.... And we would worry a lot less too. Hmmmm.

I guess you just have to get busy with your life, so you don't have too much time thinking about all of this. (>_<)

The root word in enlightenment is light. We live in an age where light is being felt in all areas of daily life like it has never been before in history. We are a more enlightened society now than we have ever been before. This does seem to be an age where people are kinder to each other for no other reason than any act can be seen worldwide in a matter of seconds. I think it is an evolutionary process of becoming more altruistic.

Go back to any time in history and one can see people were horribly cruel to each other. Most of the cruelty that occurred we will never be aware of because they did not have devices to record it live. The first half of the 20th century is when we first began recording on such a scale and one would be hard pressed to find another time when our ugliness was exposed to such an extent. Not that we were more cruel during that time, we just had more people alive to suffer it and more technology to record the atrocities.

bodhisamaya Wrote:Go back to any time in history and one can see people were horribly cruel to each other. Most of the cruelty that occurred we will never be aware of because they did not have devices to record it live. The first half of the 20th century is when we first began recording on such a scale and one would be hard pressed to find another time when our ugliness was exposed to such an extent. Not that we were more cruel during that time, we just had more people alive to suffer it and more technology to record the atrocities.

There's an interesting talk on TED along those lines: that we're the least violent era by a wide margin.

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_o...lence.html

zigmonty Wrote:There's an interesting talk on TED along those lines: that we're the least violent era by a wide margin.

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_o...lence.html

Very nice. I had forgotten that TED has Japanese subtitles.

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zigmonty Wrote:There's an interesting talk on TED along those lines: that we're the least violent era by a wide margin.

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_o...lence.html

Oh man, those were the days... when you could burn trolls and anybody who disagrees with the admin *dreamy*.