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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

The ones he was mostly right or right about were the less speculative and more generally predictable ones. Cast any of them in the negative, and ask yourself if the proposition felt more or less true.

The ones he was mostly wrong on, are the highly speculative ai boosterism which is why Kurzweil is laughed at by many people.

I've felt grumpy about Kurzweil since 1982 or so. He made some really good innovative stuff happen in computing for blind people and then dived into fame and attention seeking lunacy. He's unquestionably smart, far smarter than me. He appears to have set himself time wasting goals.

I totally fail to see what value he brings google compared to eg Vint Cerf or Rob Pike or Ken Thompson.

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Kurzweil since 1982 is easy to understand.

His predictions are part of his personal eschatology. He is man in religious quest for personal salvation.

All his past predictions and timeframes are conveniently set so that there is change for him to live forever. He is nutrition and immortality nut (Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever and Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever). He is now 72 years old. If he lives to old age with all his life extension pills and rapture of the nerds happens in 25 years he could just make it.

Looking at how quickly our knowledge of intracellular processes is growing, I fully expect us to invent biological immortality. In eight hundred years or so.

Well they should hurry up then!

The whole boomer thinks technology will allow him to live forever is something that was really common when I was growing up. I long decided animals are not at all evolved to last.

It will happen far sooner than you expect. In five hundred years.

If we can improve lifespan by more than 1 yr/yr, then you may already be immortal...

That would be completely logical. Predictions can be self-fulfilling, and he would have nothing to gain by placing his predictions for biological immortality out of his own reach.

That is the logic of religion - believing only things that allow personally satisfying outcomes.

That's not how religion operates at all. It is how New Age adherence works, see for example this recent article on how Covid exposed narcissism amongst its members:

https://www.elephantjournal.com/2020/12/how-covid-exposed-th...

Practically all religions promise better outcome after death is you live virtuous life.

You have to understand a person's motivations to understand that person. Kurzweil doesn't want to die. He wants to live forever, in some form. Once you understand that, you'll understand why he's so bullish on AI, gene therapy, lifespan extension, etc.

No rational person should want to die unless their life is full of suffering and they have no hope of recovery.

People who truly understand technology can be very optimistic about it's potential.

No rational person should want to live forever knowing the progressive deterioration of biological bodies.

I hope you’re aware that progressive deterioration is the first thing that the people working on this want to solve.

Exactly - if someone says immortal they usually mean "forever young" or equivalent.

Deterioration is not really compatible with forever anyway.

Really that's the fundamental misunderstanding here.

The idea is to prevent or recover from age-related disease and degredation.

Certainly most everyone likes the idea of staying healthier as they age. This is just progressing that idea with speculation about potential technologies.

> No rational person should want to die unless their life is full of suffering and they have no hope of recovery.

Or, no rational person should want to live, because life is mostly drudgery and inconvenience and it also includes a fair amount of pain and anxiety. If you're a materialist, death would free you from that and any regrets about missing out on any positives or guilt about unfulfilled obligations.

Of course rational people should want to die.

Death is a good thing on the whole. If we cease to die then humanity is doomed. Young people need to invent a world of their own at each new generation; if old people (and therefore, old ideas, old prejudices) never die then there is no room for new.

Additionally, from a practical perspective it becomes indefensible to make new people (have kids) because where will they all go?

Not dying is the most selfish attitude imaginable; that level of selfishness is irrational.

if old people (and therefore, old ideas, old prejudices) never die then there is no room for new.

This is a profoundly ageist viewpoint that sadly is very common in our industry. That’s why 40-somethings are laid off so 20-somethings can reinvent the wheel yet again in the shitty “framework” that’s fashionable this week. In every other industry, medicine, law, science you name it, experience is prized.

I think the op is arguing against having immortal 200 year old cyborgs running the world, not putting 40 year olds out to pasture.

If I had 50 years experience as a business leader, 50 more as a software developer, another 50 as a UI/UX designer, and 50 as a digital security consultant, I would be more valuable than 4 people who had 50 years each, because what would be meeting between the four would be instant and complete awareness of all issues and without communication ambiguity for me.

Certainly there would be need of a different economic model in a mortality-optional world so that young people who have yet to celebrate their first centennial can thrive, but that was also true when industry replaced feudalism and people started to stay in school until 21 (YMMV) instead of starting families the moment puberty hit.

If you had last practiced software development between 100 and 50 years ago, and spent the last 50 years doing business leadership, I don't think you'd necessarily have as much value in a software development meeting as someone who just finished 20 years of software development. Even more frighteningly, you would likely be very convinced of your knowledge in software development, and would have the gravitas to silence any opposition to your ideas.

Note: just to be clear, since text sometimes misses tone, I'm using a rhetorical 'you', not trying in any way to accuse you personally of the attitude described above!

Fantastically well demonstrated point, and good footnote. While I personally do make an effort to know the limits of my skill, I have absolutely witnessed many who don’t.

Ironically, there was a relatively recent study showing young doctors have better outcomes than old doctors. [0]

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctors-older-age-patient-morta...

> if old people (and therefore, old ideas, old prejudices) never die then there is no room for new

Is that because there's no room? Or because we're unwilling to accommodate the new?

Often, you can't have two things at the same time. For example, young people in the USA are overwhelmingly in favor of Medicare for all, while older people are more divided.

You can't have both Medicare for all and no Medicare for all - you can't accommodate the new without replacing the old.

> Additionally, from a practical perspective it becomes indefensible to make new people

Birth rates are currently below replacement levels in developed nations. And if you’re immortal, you can wait forever to start your family.

Not to mention there scould be space enough oce serious space colonization gets going. One could actually imagine many things progress better if you don't have to train new people all the time to replace those retiring & remove the stress death causes to all involved.

> Not to mention there scould be space enough oce serious space colonization gets going.

Even with the current falling birthrates, you would not be able to move more people off the planet than are being born on it, even with space elevators. Space colonization is not a cure for overpopulation of Earth. One of the things Kim Stanley Robinson explored in his Mars trilogy.

Space fountains and launch loops can have a very high throughput if you can get them to work - then the main problem becomes building in space accommodation fast enough.

For one fiction yet science based case of moving most of Earths population off planet during a short time window, see the following Orions Arm article: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/49b46fd2198ed

5.5 bilion people over 20 years.

Physics stops advancing.

Powerful people consolidate their power, discouraging subversive ("disruptive") technology.

Who says immortal people would behave like we see old people today ? With many of the biological clock and "not catching the train" stresses removed I would imagine mental health and general happiness would improve. And if you are living for hundreds of years, things will change around you and you will have to adapt anyway.

Part of the reason old people stick with old ideas and prejudices is that they have old brains. Real rejuvenation would make old brains as flexible as young brains, and there's already been research in that direction.

Sure, there's a component of that. But cognitive biases such as sunk cost and the huge value we give personal experience are much bigger determiners for this attitude I believe. It's simply very hard to change the mind of someone who has worked with the same assumptions for 20 years.

Hence, 'physics advances one funeral at a time' etc.

But there is a difference between saying I want to die eventually and I want to die now. At what age should the second one kick in? It makes more sense to say I want to die eventually, but then keep putting it off.

like others have said, I think this rests strongly on the assumption that immortal humans would act like old people today. I imagine if biological immortality is solved than "solving" such biases exhibited by older populations (which I don't think is entirely true either) would be right around the corner

Death is perhaps the most rational concept I can think of.

Exactly - any person dieing is a failure of society. Simple as that.

Maybe. Maybe not.

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/372

I read The Age of Spiritual Machines in ‘98 with high hopes but quickly found Kurzweil difficult to take seriously. The singularity fandom has always baffled me.

It's a religion based on the idea that technology will advance fast enough to make its followers immortal before they die.

I remember reading “The Age of Spiritual Machines” and the “events vs time” plot (criticized below)

https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-singularity/

was the calling bullshit moment for me [1]. It is a nice thought though - if we just wait then technology solves all of our problems.

[1] https://www.callingbullshit.org/

or fear of Roko's Basilisk [0]

[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk

>The singularity fandom has always baffled me.

It basically comes in two flavours. The "it's dangerous" crowd is as Ted Chiang put it imagining the singularity as no-holds-barred capitalism, because when they imagine superintelligence the only thing they can come up with is the companies they work for.The paperclip AI is just a VC funded startup, the only difference is it's even better at disruption than their employers.

The Kurzweil one is basically just recycled Christian eschatology, where the final judgement comes around, we'll resurrect the dead, defeat death and so on.

So it's basically two American timeless cultural classics, the funny part is that people in that crowd don't seem to notice it

> The singularity fandom has always baffled me.

I like it. Try to take as hard sci-fi. It's plausible enough to let your imagination run with it. Don't take it seriously enough to turn it into a religion and it's all good fun escapism. I've accepted that we all need a way to think away the fear of dying. I like this one.

Would be funny if Google brought on Robert Zubrin of Mars Society fame, or even funnier if they brought on David Brin of The Transparent Society.

>and more generally predictable ones

Can you really say that without the benefit of hindsight colouring that assessment?

A fair point, but I think when you compare Ray's predictions to Robert Heinlein (for example) you'd be more impressed with Robert's teleoperation [1] and mobile phones [2], predicted in the 1940s, than Rays singularity and his "AI will be mostly human led decision making"

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_manipulator

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Cadet

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