Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Почему Рэй Курцвайль - Мудак

Спонсор месяца - ВотИменно.Ру



n "Transcendent Man" it is a sadder than usual Ray Kurzweil who appears on the screen. The 2009 documentary film about Kurzweil, an acclaimed inventor and futurist, shows that the laws of entropy are at work on his body. He undergoes open heart surgery during the course of the film even as he continues to espouse the belief that technological developments over the next 30 years will make human immortality a reality.

To bridge the gap between now and then, the 63-year-old Kurzweil downs 200 pills a day consisting of various herbs, vitamins or other supplements to "reprogram" his body's biochemistry and improve his chances of reaching what he calls the "singularity," a time after which technological change will occur at a pace so fast that the only way we will be able to understand it is to merge with our machines. Humans will at that point become human-machine hybrids.

(It would not matter much what Kurzweil thinks were it not for his globetrotting speaking tours and widely read books that have influenced much of the world's elite who also seem similarly bereft of a suitable education in the relevant sciences. Moreover, his meta message seems to be that we should just sit back and let technological geniuses like him fix every problem including climate change and resource depletion.)

What Kurzweil misses is that humans became human-machine hybrids with the first stone spear tip, and that the results of our marriage with tools have been mixed. Not to worry, Kurzweil tells us in the film, "technology has been the only thing that's enabled us to overcome problems." There's not a hint of recognition that technological solutions have a habit of spawning new problems. There's not a hint of recognition that as we catapult into the digital and biotech ages, we are actually losing basic knowledge about how to interact with the Earth around us in ways not dependent on fragile, hypercomplex industrial systems.

The ultimate expression of Kurzweil's vision is his desire to resurrect his beloved father from the grave using technology that will supposedly become available by the time the singularity arrives. It reminds me a bit of Jurrasic Park, the Michael Crichton novel depicting the resurrection of dinosaurs from DNA found in ancient preserved mosquito blood. It seems the premature death of Kurzweil's fathehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifr continues to be a cause for genuine heartache for Kurzweil to this day. Who wouldn't want to bring back deceased loved ones so as to enjoy their company again?

Kurzweil's misguided lunacy is summarized by a neuroscientist interviewed late in the film. Kurzweil has misunderstood death as a technological problem with a potential technological solution when, in fact, it is a spiritual problem without any technological solution. Can human life be extended by technology? Of course. Can the quality of human life be improved in old age by technology? Of course. Can death be avoided altogether by technology? Of course not. Читать дальше.

Спонсор месяца - ВотИменно.Ру

1 Comments:

Anonymous imil said...

Курцвайля не читал, но осуждаю.

Впрочем, автор статьи - мудак еще больший. Потому что строит свою критику на бредовых философских рассуждениях типа "Everything we do has unforeseen, hidden and occasionally devastating consequences because of our puny understanding".

Критику по делу можно прочитать у PZ Myers-а, например: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/ray_kurzweil_does_not_understa.php

4:13 AM  

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