First, I worked with Arnold Kling. He's a wonderful guy. I appear in his old book Under the Radar.

Second, Kurzweil is a creepy promoter of "inevitability." He is a bright guy with good access to privileged programmatic research. But he is a provocative peddling Howard Stern styled futurist.

I prefer Bill Joy's rightfully highlighting our policy options and virtues of learned caution. There are many things people can do we police against for good reasons.

Theoretical and now even many applied sciences deliver more cautionary signals than go-go-go signals. Software folks should take that as good news. Solving problems makes problems go away. Nice architecture and good food are their own problems without creating new ones.