Kurzweil in the Lyons’ Den | Hacker News Reader

Kurzweil in the Lyons’ Den

singularityhub.com

15 pointskkleiner4 comments

I read an enjoyed Lyons' article on Kurzweil last week. Despite its critical bent, found it to be quite even-handed and informative. I did not, however, notice that the author was Dan Lyons of Fake Steve Jobs fame.

Lyons clearly has a knack for turning personality defects into leads to stories. His article is as much about the eccentricities of Kurzweil as much as it is about his theories themselves. Also, journalism is not the same as philosophical discourse, one should include character details as context for the ideas. One need not study the ideas in a vacuum. In all honesty, that makes the stories all the more enjoyable.

This analysis of the newsweek article is spot on. Lyons is an entertainer and Kurzweil is a prophet. Throughout history, visionaries of the future have been attacked. Kurzweil is no exception.

These attackers profit because many people choose to disagree and we select opinions that agree with ours. The future Kurzweil describes is coming.

The only thing that could stop it is an all out war on technology, but technology itself is used in that war, so it's a bit of a paradox... or I don't know what you'd call it exactly, but the only thing that could defeat the singularity is that which is causing the singularity to ... evolve.

It's like we are witnessing evolution in process. like the telescopic evolution scene from Waking Life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saxX-Z6w3p4

Throughout history, visionaries of the future have been attacked.

So have a lot of crackpots. Being attacked is no proof of being right.

You do nothing but preach to the quire: those that already agree will nod in agreement, those that disagree read nothing they could possibly be persuaded by. What is the point of your comment?

Still, I’m tired of being sold the story of someone’s life, when it’s their work that will impact mine.

This sentence did it for me - I definitely agree. There's a tendency to focus on life stories these days, and they're given the same importance as the accomplishments of the people whose stories they're looking at, which doesn't seem right.

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