Help debunking Singularity woo?

Gullible Jones · Post by **Gullible Jones** » 2008-02-09 03:17am

Okay, on another forum I frequent a Kurzweilian has just shown up, and has spat out a massive quotation of Kurzweil's Wikipedia page in support of the Singularity. It's several pages worth of textual fellatio - apparently a lot of Wikipedians are Singularity fans - but the upshot is that Kurzweil has made lots and lots of highly accurate predictions.

So... I need some help. I'm snooping around for instances of Kurzweil being completely wrong with predictions that weren't no-brainers (where a no-brainer is something like "the military will increase it's use of smart/computerized weaponry" - duh!)... Anyway, probably in part because it's late (but also because I suck at Googling) I'm not finding a whole lot. Can you guys point me to some instances of Kurzweil fumbling the crystal ball?

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2008-02-09 06:24am

Kurzweil is a man of many logical crimes, most of them involving minsinterpreting hopelessly oversimplified graphs based on dubious data to start with. That said I do have a copy of 'The Singularity Is Near' (it was a freebie) and I can't recall many predictions that fall outside the 'blatantly obvious to anyone with a clue' and 'not testable yet' categories.

lazerus · Post by **lazerus** » 2008-02-13 09:43am

Uh...

Kurzweil is not a crackpot. As Starglider implied, he is guilty of the crime of Excessive Optimism when it comes to interpreting his data, but if your hoping to prove what he says is ludicrous your out of luck: Its not. It's true that a lot of his predictions fall into the category of "Blatantly obvious to anyone who knows anything about technology," but since the book was intended for public consumption, I don't consider that to be a bad thing. I enjoyed it.

As for "debunking" his claims, just point out that none of his predictions have come true yet. That doesn't make them bad, but until his ideas start panning out, they can't honestly say he has made "Many accurate predictions."

petesampras · Post by **petesampras** » 2008-02-13 10:50am

Kurzweil wrote one of the best introductions to the field of AI (for its time.)

"The Age of Intelligent Machines"

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2008-02-14 02:31am

I say enter a bet with Kurtzweil. He predicted immortality within 2015 recently. If you win you walk away with his money if you lose you become immortal
l
Either way you win.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2008-02-14 10:00am

Sarevok wrote:I say enter a bet with Kurtzweil. He predicted immortality within 2015 recently. If you win you walk away with his money if you lose you become immortal
l
Either way you win.

That is a really good idea; think I'll drop him an email on the off chance he'd take the bet.
I thought that he was predicting the singularity taking off somewhere around 2035, though?