The Singularity Is Near ( book )
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Ray Kurzweil is a terrible writer. He has a brilliant mind with alot to say, but he is stymied by the fact that he is incredibly reduntant, arrogant in his prose, and deep down a boring person. Singularity describes a future in which technology becomes so advanced that humans can transcend biology. Through Ray’s 3 fields, G, N, and R (Genetics, Robotics, and Nanotechnology), we will achieve a technological state where basically anything is possible, including, and pretty much specifically, living forever. Ray asserts that by taking over 300 pills a day, he already has stopped the aging process. A fact he backs up by claiming a blook test taken 15 years ago matches identically to his blood test taken this year, whereas modern science would predict certain characteristics to show his aging in that period.
This is obviously an incredibly technical (although readable) text, and I won’t try to summarize his proposals in this modest review. Suffice it to say however, that he could’ve said all he wanted to in exactly half the pages. He repeats everything, almost word for word, at least twice in different chapters. In that regard this book reads like an advanced textbook on Future 101. He takes many assumptions for granted, and his last few chapters about potential arguments take the worst excerpts from most of his opponents.
Ultimately, there are two major questions regarding Ray’s future. The first is the matter of a conciousness. Do we have one? Ray, like myself, argues that while we of course experience something we have come to know as a self, all that it really is a complicated process of indiviual parts working together. In it’s simplest form, if we could reduce a living being to 2 cells and still have it be conscious, then both cells would independently have no idea what consciousness was, but the organism as a whole would. This is what humans experience. Unfortunately, Ray, like myself, has trouble explaining why this is the case. Granted, it should be the burden of the religious and spiritual to explain why the reverse is the case (that consiousness is the fundamental human quality that may involved something non-material, or at least non-determined). Even with unlimited technology, it is unlikely we will ever be able to determine once and for all if a spirit does exist. Are we pawns of the material universe that act only according to specific causes, like machines, or are we independantly shaping our own futures based on something that has the will to act freely? Who knows. Certainly not Ray, if his defenses are any indication. He reasonably does admit that the question is open, but only in passing.
The second problem, while less important in real life, is much more glaring in Ray’s book. Ray envisions a future in which everyone is connected to everyone else’s intelligence via a massive network. Everyone has the same, enhanced intelligence, and everyone has access to everything. Ray never once mentions the inherent problem that in a perfect utopia of his own making, there would be no room for differences. Sure, people could choose to be different, but what would be in the incentive? At that point in the future, different would mean less. Everyone would choose to be the best and most optimal form of what it then means to be human. In this future, we are all the same, down to the tiniest string or particle or whatever theory of the day is working in 2150. This is a terrifying proposal. Ray needs to write a book about the implications of his ideas, rather than just their capabilites.
All in all, a pretty good read, even if it is incredibly slow. Ray is intelligent, but does a bad job of hiding the fact that he thinks so. He brushes over powerful philosophical quandaries with the air of someone who can’t be bothered to think about them. Like most “patternist” (re: materialist), he is super intelligent, but not quite as smart as he thinks. He should step back and re-evaluate what it means to be human, rather than trying to prove how human a machine can be. It may be that we are the same as advanced machines (I’m more of that opinion than not!), but it may also be that what makes us different is exactly that - our differences.
P.S. John Searly, a known idiot, is reduced unfairly to kindergarden level by Kursweil. Fans of Singularity should check out Searle’s writing and make judgments on their own, as some of it is much more complicated than Ray gives him credit for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searle#Artificial_intelligence
