[Scape]

[Scape]

[Khar]

Kurzweil is one of those scientists who talks way out of his field and makes expansive, wonderful predictions about the future, and because of this he gets a lot of media time even though he has never really deserved it. Some of his predictions, especially those about the internet, have come right, but he was not the only one to make such predictions either.

Two years ago, I shouldn't have had to drive a car, or use keys, and would still be enjoying a stock market boom due to the dot com sector, according to Kurzweil. He's been criticized by people in the biological sciences for not understanding the fields he is trying to talk about, as he attempts to apply a degree in Computer Science to neurology, neuroscience, biology, physics, economics and various other fields.

Even people in the field of AI research, one of the things he has written most extensively on, disagree fairly strongly with his assertions and projections. One of the best quotes I have ever read about him comes out from another person who has written in this field, Douglas Hofstadter, who wrote "It’s as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad. It's an intimate mixture of rubbish and good ideas, and it's very hard to disentangle the two, because these are smart people; they're not stupid."

There is always the possibility of future understanding improving our way of life, of how we approach things. However, I simply don't agree with his projections.

[Thanos]

Lately, I've been re-watching all my Battlestar Galactica DVD's in reverse order (i.e. all of Season 4, then all of Season 3, etc.). Going by the price about 30 billion people ended up paying for the cost of 'downloadable' immortality, I'd say the whole effort to live 'forever' is far too futile, destructive, and inherently anti-human to make it worth it. Yeah, BSG was just a TV show, but I really don't see that our real global elite wouldn't behave just as deplorably as sci-fi villians usually do in the pursuit of such a goal. Just like everything else invariably turns out, a paltry few would profit immensely while the vast majority of the rest of us end up getting permanently fucked over.

All this futuristic stuff is a bunch of BS anyway. Aside from the communicators of Star Trek being intergrated into society as cell phones, how many of these other predictions have even come close to coming true? Flying cars? Talking computers? Colonies on the Moon or Mars? Cities under the oceans? Turned out to be a big crapshoot where almost all the predictions turned up snake-eyes. We live in a world where the weather five days from now can't even be preidicted with more than 5% accuracy, but some guy on a stage is telling me that in twenty years I'll have nano-bots coursing through my blood stream that'll let me live to the ripe old age of 2000 years? Don't think so, chuckles. But, much like the moxie displayed by L. Ron Hubbard, I do respect your ability to milk a lucrative career out selling sheer nonsense.

[andyt]

Quote:

Future Babble : Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway

http://www.dangardner.ca/index.php/books/item/17-future-babble

Quote:

The core of Gardner’s account comes courtesy of the research of Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of California. In a nutshell, Tetlock determined that “experts” in any given field were just slightly better at making predictions than a dart-throwing chimp. In addition, the more certain an expert was of a predicted outcome, and the bigger their media profile, the less accurate the prediction was likely to be.

Looking at the results of a variety of psychology experiments and some of the more spectacular flame-outs from recent years (population doomster Paul Ehrlich is given a particularly rough ride), Gardner examines Tetlock’s paradoxical findings and shows why being forearmed doesn’t protect us much against those seeking to forewarn us. Topics covered include why and to what extent the future must always be uncertain, why smart people make dumb predictions (and how they rationalize their mistakes), and why we are so easily conned by glib “hedgehogs” (experts who are certain of one big thing) and less impressed by thoughtful “foxes” (experts comfortable with their doubts and limitations).

As Yogi Berra observed, 'it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.'