Accelerating Future

“One consideration that should be taken into account when deciding whether to promote the development of superintelligence is that if superintelligence is feasible, it will likely be developed sooner or later. Therefore, we will probably one day have to take the gamble of superintelligence no matter what. But once in existence, a superintelligence could help us reduce or eliminate other existential risks, such as the risk that advanced nanotechnology will be used by humans in warfare or terrorism, a serious threat to the long-term survival of intelligent life on earth. If we get to superintelligence first, we may avoid this risk from nanotechnology and many others. If, on the other hand, we get nanotechnology first, we will have to face both the risks from nanotechnology and, if these risks are survived, also the risks from superintelligence. The overall risk seems to be minimized by implementing superintelligence, with great care, as soon as possible.”

– Nick Bostrom, “Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence”

Lanier’s latest eye-roller is up at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Decay in the belief in self is driven not by technology, but by the culture of technologists, especially the recent designs of antihuman software like Facebook, which almost everyone is suddenly living their lives through. Such designs suggest that information is a free-standing substance, independent of human experience or perspective. As a result, the role of each human shifts from being a “special” entity to being a component of an emerging global computer.

Um, OK. I agree in some sense… on Facebook, I’ve said in response to David Pearce that the site “makes us more trivial people than ever” and shortens our attention spans. I often find myself agreeing with “Luddite” Andrew Keen, who is unfairly put down by open-everything fanatic and geek darling Larry Lessig. Even from this natural “Luddite” perspective that I hold (the word “Luddite” is stupid, people, stop using it), Lanier’s article still seems odd.

Facebook does have the potential to enrich lives and humanness rather than turn everything into information, when it is used in moderation. If you know any teenagers, you can see how they easily and seamlessly integrate online messaging with real world mutual interest and even obsession. If anything, technology enables a kind of hyper-sociality for them that makes most people over 35 uncomfortable. (I don’t necessarily blame them — I block hundreds of people in my Facebook news feed, and try to spend less than half an hour on the site per day.)

Also, it’s different when you’re part of the club versus outside it. I have noticed a syndrome whereby famous people tend to shy away from Facebook, as if it is too plebian for their tastes. They never even really try it. As far as I can tell from simple searches, Lanier is too cool to have a Facebook at all.

Even Andrew Keen has a Facebook page, with the humorous tagline “the anti-christ of Silicon Valley”.

Lanier writes:

This shift has palpable consequences. For one thing, power accrues to the proprietors of the central nodes on the global computer. There are various types of central nodes, including the servers of Silicon Valley companies devoted to searching or social-networking, computers that empower impenetrable high finance (like hedge funds and high-frequency trading), and state-security computers. Those who are not themselves close to a central node find their own cognition gradually turning into a commodity. Someone who used to be able to sell commercial illustrations now must give them away, for instance, so that a third party can make money from advertising. Students turn to Wikipedia, and often don’t notice that the acceptance of a single, collective version of reality has the effect of eroding their personhood.

Wikipedia has some problems, but by and large, it massively increases knowledge. If I smashed every Americans’ television and made them read Wikipedia in the time they spent watching TV or movies, people in bars and on the street would be a lot less boring to talk to. Not everyone is as wealthy as Mr. Lanier and can buy as many books as they like. Still, there definitely and most obviously is a place for knowledge outside of Wikipedia. Wikipedia, when used as a starting point and not the final word, is a fantastic tool. Just because some people lazily use it as the final word does not mean that it is universally bad. The same people would use dead tree encyclopedias as the final word, anyway.

This shift in human culture is borne by software designs, and is driven by a new sort of “nerd” religion based around a core belief that a global brain is not only emerging but will replace humanity. It is often claimed, in the vicinity of institutions like Silicon Valley’s Singularity University, that the giant global computer will upload the contents of human brains to grant them everlasting life in the computing cloud.

Interestingly, I may be part of the “nerd religion” Lanier is describing, if the religion consists of feeling that human-friendly Artificial General Intelligence could do a tremendous amount of good in the world and is worth pursuing vigorously. However, I consider talk of global brains to essentially be nonsense. A choir is only as good as its worst member, and human cognition and organizations are constrained by similar rules. No single unit of contribution to any project can be greater or better than the brilliance of the smartest human, and the only reason we’re so oblivious to this is because humans are the only general intelligences that we are evolved to model and think about. We also don’t like to think any thoughts that make ourselves and our society seem any less than awesome.

The problem is, social feelings create such positive affect, it makes us want to ignore the simple truth that a group of humans is just that — a group of humans — and not a superintelligence as defined by Bostrom or Vinge.

Still, I do think it would be cool to be an upload in some kind of computing cloud, so maybe there is a connection here.

There is right now a lot of talk about whether to believe in God or not, but I suspect that religious arguments are gradually incorporating coded debates about whether to even believe in people anymore.

Maybe this signifies movement towards non-anthropocentric theories of personhood and ethics? If so, sounds swell to me.

Robin Hanson on Who Should Exist? and Ways to Pay to Exist.

IEEE Spectrum has an interview with Ratan Kumar Sinha, who designed India’s new thorium reactor.

The popular website “The Big Think” has a couple transhumanist writers, Parag and Ayesha Khanna. Their latest article, Can Hollywood Redesign Humanity? continues forward the H+/Hollywood connection which has been promoted previously by Jason Silva and others. “Documentaries Ponder the Future” is another one of their articles.

Some of you may have been following Scott Locklin’s “reality check” on nanotechnology, which was linked by CrunchGear and Hacker News.

My opinion of the post is that is confuses Drexlerian nanotech with nanotechnology “in general”, and makes many major errors, including denying the existence of micromachines and nano-sized elements that drive larger systems.

The article is also wrong because it claims that, in his book, Eric Drexler is just porting macroscale designs to the nano-world, but the entire work (Nanosystems) takes great pains to analyze the differences between the nanoscale and macroscale and introduce engineering innovations that could be a good starting point for true molecular manufacturing. Another error the article makes is suggesting that Drexler dismisses using biology as tools for nanomachines, which is ironic considering that Drexler advocates “molecular and biomolecular design and self-assembly” approaches to molecular nanotechnology, and often discusses the protein folding path on his blog.

Drexler posted a response to Locklin in the comments section:

Hi Scott,

In my view, molecular and biomolecular design and self-assembly are the most promising directions for lab research in atomically precise nanotechnology. There’s been enormous progress — complex, million-atom atomically-precise frameworks, etc. — but much of the work isn’t called “nanotechnology”, and this leaves many observers of the field confused about where it stands. I follow this topic in my blog, Metamodern.com.

Regarding the longer-term prospects for this branch of nanotechnology, there’s a publication that offers good starting point for serious discussion.

The technical analysis that I presented in my book Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, (it’s based on my MIT dissertation) was examined in a report issued by the National Academy of Sciences, on “The Technical Feasibility of Site-Specific Chemistry for Large-Scale Manufacturing”. The report finds no show-stoppers. It notes uncertainties regarding potential system performance and “optimum research paths”, however, and closes with a call for funding experimental research.

This report was prepared by a scientific committee convened by the U.S. National Research Council in response to a request from Congress. It is based on the scientific literature, and on an NRC committee workshop with a range of invited experts and extensive follow-on discussion and evaluation.

I think that this report (and the Battelle/National Labs technology roadmap) deserves more attention from serious thinkers. It deflates a lot of mythology about a topic that just might be real and important.

If either of these publications has been mentioned above, I missed it.

In general, I think Locklin’s post is a very well-designed piece of flamebait, and I commend him for drawing attention to his post. Some group of people really love talking about nanotechnology, and they need some outlet, and this is a fine outlet of the week. Locklin is right that a lot of nanotechnology is just chemistry or materials science with a cool name slapped onto it, but certainly not all of it.

Funny quote from the comments thread: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo”.

In the comments, Martin said:

I wonder how accurate it is. Uncle Fester became underground famous in the 90s when he published books on meth and acid manufacture, but other clandestine chemists criticized his syntheses for being inaccurate.

From this small snippet, it sounds like he wants you to go out and find the right Clostridium species and strains in soil and culture them yourself, which sounds as impractical as his suggestion in the acid book to grow acres of ergot-infested rye. :)

Any more comments on why this is impractical? It sounds much simpler than growing acres of ergot-infested rye. He describes how he would isolate spores, first by heating the culture (this kills anything that is not a spore), then encouraging growth in an anoxic environment (kills anything that is not anaerobic). This leaves only anaerobic bacteria derived from spores.

The book does claim that botulinum germs are “fussy about what they like to grow in, its pH, and its temperature” and that “This need to exclude air from the environment where the germs are growing is the most difficult engineering challenge to the aspiring cultivator of Clostridia botulinum“, so he’s not saying that it’s a cakewalk.

Of course, many of these underground books (Anarchist Cookbook…) are rife with misinformation. Anyone serious about producing botulism toxin would need actual biochemical knowledge and multiple corroborating sources. Still, there’s a lot of information in this particular book that would at least provide a compelling starting point.

It’s worth noting that Uncle Fester probably never synthesized all the compounds described in his book, which includes over half a dozen different types of nerve gas. He repeatedly points out that synthesizing these chemicals is a risk to the life of the person performing the synthesis. In some parts of the book, he names sources, like literature released by the military, but the vast majority of his book lacks citations.

Properly delivered from a plane, a few grams of botulinum toxin could kill hundreds of thousands, if not more, in a major city.

Silent Death by “Uncle Fester” has the full process instructions, including details on optimal delivery.

The LD-50 of botulinum injected into chimpanzees is 50 nanograms.

Combine it with effective microbots, and you have a situation where anyone can kill anyone without accountability.

This is one of the reasons I want a Friendly AI “god” (really more like a machine) to watch over me is that the dangers will simply multiply beyond human capability to manage.

Here’s a bit of an excerpt from my version of Silent Death:

Botulin is the second most powerful poison known, taking the runner up position to a poison made by an exotic strain of South Pacific coral bacteria. The fatal dose of pure botulin is in the neighborhood of 1 microgram, so there are 1 million fatal doses in a gram of pure botulin.

The bacteria that makes botulin, Clostridia botulinum, is found all over the world. A randomly chosen soil sample is likely to contain quite a few spores of this bacteria. Spores are like seeds for bacteria, and can withstand very harsh treatment. This properly will come in very handy in any attempt to grow botulism germs, because other germs can be wiped out by heating in hot water, leaving the spores to germinate and take over once they cool down. Much more on this later.

Another very important property of botulism germs is that they can’t survive exposure to air. The oxygen in it kills them, but does not kill their spores. Whatever toxin the germs made before their demise also survives. This needs to exclude air from the environment where the germs are growing is the most difficult engineering challenge to the aspiring cultivator of Clostridia botulinum.

Finally, all botulism germs are not created equal. There are subgroups within the species that make toxins that vary immensely in their potency. They are called types: A, B, C, D, E, F and 84. Type A is by far the most deadly, followed by type B and 84. THe other ones we won’t even bother to discuss. Also within a single type, there are individual differences in how much toxin a given strain will produce. Breeding and gene manipulation have a lot to do with this, and our government (and the Russkies as well) have put a lot of effort into picking out strains that make an inordinate amount of toxin. The champion as of about 30 years ago was the Hall strain, but I’m sure that they’ve come up with something better since then. The Hall strain of type A was able to make 300 human fatal doses of botulin per ml of broth it grew in.

Here we will explore the two major levels of use for botulin as an attack weapon: the individual or small group assassination, and the large scale assault with the poison in a manner similar to nerve gas.

Very informative! As a Russian, I love the “Russkies” anachronism.

99.9% of the population will dismiss the above as not a big deal, due to wishful thinking. It’s all just words on the page, until people start dying.

A minor personal announcement — I’ve been hired to work half-time for Halcyon Molecular in Redwood City. I’m mostly going to be working on improving their website content. Halcyon was founded by Michael and William Andregg, who I originally met in Tucson at a Center for Responsible Nanotechnology conference in 2007.

Halcyon is developing a technology to sequence genetic material at orders of magnitude faster than anything on the market or in the pipeline. Their technology and approach, which uses electron microscopy, is really unique. I’m happy I finally get to talk about the company and technology a bit in public because I’ve been excited about them in private for a long time.

You can read more about Halcyon at their website or at this TechCrunch article.

Also keep in mind that Halcyon is actively looking for new researchers.

The UK Telegraph has a nice new article on thorium, the energy source that provides a practical alternative to fossil fuels, unlike pipe dreams of wind or solar scaling up fast enough to save us.

Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium

If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years.

We could then stop arguing about wind mills, deepwater drilling, IPCC hockey sticks, or strategic reliance on the Kremlin. History will move on fast.

Muddling on with the status quo is not a grown-up policy. The International Energy Agency says the world must invest $26 trillion (£16.7 trillion) over the next 20 years to avert an energy shock. The scramble for scarce fuel is already leading to friction between China, India, and the West.

Kirk Sorensen, the former NASA engineer that writes the excellent Energy from Thorium blog, is quoted in the article.

For those who missed it, I did a feature article on thorium back in 2006, titled “A Nuclear Reactor in Every Home”.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Rapid advances in bioscience are raising alarms among terrorism experts that amateur scientists will soon be able to gin up deadly pathogens for nefarious uses.

Fears of bioterror have been on the rise since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, stoking tens of billions of dollars of government spending on defenses, and the White House and Congress continue to push for new measures.

But the fear of a mass-casualty terrorist attack using bioweapons has always been tempered by a single fact: Of the scores of plots uncovered during the past decade, none have featured biological weapons. Indeed, many experts doubt terrorists even have the technical capability to acquire and weaponize deadly bugs.

The new fear, though, is that scientific advances that enable amateur scientists to carry out once-exotic experiments, such as DNA cloning, could be put to criminal use. Many well-known figures are sounding the alarm over the revolution in biological science, which amounts to a proliferation of know-how—if not the actual pathogens.

Another bit later in the article:

All the government attention comes despite the absence of known terrorist plots involving biological weapons. According to U.S. counterterrorism officials, al Qaeda last actively tried to work with bioweapons—specifically anthrax—before the 2001 invasion of that uprooted its leadership from Afghanistan.

This is great. It’s best to pay attention to obvious risks, like this, nuclear terrorism, the integrity of the power grid under solar storms, major earthquakes, etc., before they happen, not after. Often times, adequate preparation even requires little marginal effort.

It’s coming to Melbourne this September 7, 11, and 12th. The speaker list, which includes Gregory Benford, Russell Blackford, and Stelarc, is here.

I wish to qualify my statement in the previous post where I wrote, ” I currently think that EMP attack is the second greatest risk we face, right behind a genetically engineered superplague.”

What I should really say is that I think that any electromagnetic event that wrecks havoc on electronics is the second greatest risk, and that includes geomagnetic storms as well as EMP. I don’t want the particularly vivid risk of EMP attack to distract attention from the fundamental point that the most critical nodes in our power grids simply need to be more protected.

EMP attack is controversial. The experts are divided. Scientists can agree, however, that a solar maximum is on the way for 2013, and it could rival the Carrington Event of 1858 in its intensity.

The Space Review has an article that argues that EMP attack is unlikely while geomagnetic storms are the real threat.

I am concerned about the PR aspects of the EMP attack risk communication over the last couple years. Awareness of the EMP risk has spread much faster among the extreme right than any other portion of the political spectrum. This is already making it highly unfashionable.

Given the year (2010), I currently think that EMP attack is the second greatest risk we face, right behind a genetically engineered superplague. A small EMP-optimized nuke launched from a container ship in the Gulf of Mexico could take out the power grid of the entire continental United States. The same thing could be done anywhere, like Europe or Japan.

The facts are available from the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. No one cares except the Fox News crowd. It wasn’t like this only a few years ago: EMP attack was primarily a topic limited to analysts and sci-fi TV show writers. Obama seems concerned about nukes in general (which presumably includes the EMP risk that emanates from them), but not many on the left share his concern. People are too busy worrying about global warming. The aging Henry Kissinger is not a good spokesman for the nuclear security movement.

If an EMP attack came, cars and trucks would just stop. Factories, controlled by computers, would stop. Molten steel on the assembly line would cool and solidify in place due to failure of the heating elements. The vast majority of tractors, combines, and other heavy machinery would become useless. Transformers and other electrical elements, large and small, would be fried. The largest transformers have to be ordered from China and are generally ordered with a year of lead time.

An effective EMP attack on the US would cause tens of trillions of dollars of damage. Cities would run out of food in a few days. The US grain stockpile only has about a million bushels of wheat. Wheat is the only common grain with enough nutrients to sustain someone on an all-grain diet. A bushel is only 60 pounds, and someone needs about a pound of wheat a day to avoid hunger pangs. Ideally two pounds if you are doing manual labor. 60 million man-days of food is not a lot. The population of the United States is 300 million. That means our grain stockpiles are enough food for everyone to eat a fifth of a pound and then they’re gone.

The long-term prognosis will depend on how hard it will be to get crucial electronics for trucks and tractors in. If security collapses a few weeks after an EMP attack, foreign companies may be reluctant to do business here.

For a few tens of billions of dollars, we (the US) could shield our most important infrastructure from EMP attack. Our power grid is so naked and unprotected right now, we are practically asking to be nuked.

Congratulations to Max More, Howard Blume, and Tom McCabe for winning the Humanity+ board elections.

Howard Blume is the newcomer. You may remember him as author of The Lucifer Principle. I don’t know a lot more about him other than that, but I welcome him to transhumanism.

Tom and Max More, of course, have been around for some time. Max More is the father of modern transhumanism. Tom McCabe is a young genius, but I’m biased, because I frequently get to chat with him at the SIAI offices.

Organized transhumanism… can it exist? That is the premise of Humanity+.

I am optimistic because it’s already 2010 and there are very few signs that nanocomputers will be developed in the next 10-15 years.

Moore’s Law does make it easier to develop AI without understanding what you’re doing, but that’s not a good thing. Moore’s Law gradually lowers the difficulty of building AI, but it doesn’t make Friendly AI any easier. Friendly AI has nothing to do with hardware; it is a question of understanding. Once you have just enough computing power that someone can build AI if they know exactly what they’re doing, Moore’s Law is no longer your friend. Moore’s Law is slowly weakening the shield that prevents us from messing around with AI before we really understand intelligence. Eventually that barrier will go down, and if we haven’t mastered the art of Friendly AI by that time, we’re in very serious trouble. Moore’s Law is the countdown and it is ticking away. Moore’s Law is the enemy.

– Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Why We Need Friendly AI”

If we get to superintelligence first, we may avoid this risk from nanotechnology and many others. If, on the other hand, we get nanotechnology first, we will have to face both the risks from nanotechnology and, if these risks are survived, also the risks from superintelligence. The overall risk seems to be minimized by implementing superintelligence, with great care, as soon as possible.

– Nick Bostrom, “Ethics in Advanced Artificial Intelligence”

Does the difficulty of making an AI Friendly decrease with increasing computing power? Not obviously so; if the problem of building AI in the first place is assumed to have been solved, then building a Friendly AI is a problem in architecture and content creation and depth of understanding, not raw computing power. Thus, increasing computing power decreases the difficulty of building AI relative to the difficulty of building Friendly AI. Anyone who can build an AI that runs on a PIII is vastly smarter than I am and hopefully knows far more than I do about Friendly AI. At that our current level of computing power, the genius required for AI exceeds the genius required for Friendliness. The same hopefully holds true at that point where AI first becomes just barely human-feasible.

Even so, increasing computing power will eventually decrease the genius required for AI to significantly below the genius required for Friendliness. If – at this point – smarter researchers still have a speed advantage, then humanity will be safer, though not safe. If researcher intelligence is relatively insignificant compared to funding disparities, then humanity’s safety will rely on how widely a workable theory of Friendliness is disseminated and accepted within the AI community. In either case, the potential will exist to screw up really big-time.

– Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Creating Friendly AI”

Friendly AI first, then nanocomputers. Not nanocomputers first.

There is a second SENS Foundation LA meeting this Friday, for those in the area. Here’s the beginning of the blurb:

On behalf of SENS Foundation I am excited to write to you to invite you to join us for our second SENS Foundation L.A. Chapter meeting to be held on Friday, August 27th, 2010, at the Westwood Brewing Company (1097 Glendon Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-2907) from 6pm until we have had enough fun.

In this second meeting we will be joined by the fabulous Dr Sarah Marr (SENS Foundation Vice President)… and, of course, me! ;-)

Sarah is going to take this opportunity to tell you a little more about SENS Foundation’s mission, and the ways in which it is working to communicate that mission. Our hope is that we’ll be able to empower all the members of the chapter to work with us in promoting the Foundation effectively.

The organizer of the LA chapter of SENS is the beautiful singer and pilot Maria Entraigues. She sings, she flies, she advocates life extension research… what a gal!

As a cryonicist, it feels good to have some kind of hedge against death, even if it’s not perfect. It’s much better than your hedge against death being a big invisible alpha male in the sky who talks to us in our heads.

For me, it’s easy to fantasize that if I happen to be hit and killed by a truck tomorrow, someone will quickly notice my cryonics necklace, call up Alcor, a heroic field technician will give me a heparin injection (to prevent clotting), quickly whisk me away to a hospital, where I am pronounced dead, packed with ice, and shipped to Scottsdale for an effective cryonic suspension.

However, such a suspension would probably be considered seriously suboptimal. My blood would be clotted and my tissue would be swollen. According to the Alcor FAQ:

Standby is the process in which cryonics personnel are deployed and waiting near the bedside of a patient at serious risk of death. The purpose of Standby and a Standby Team is to take prompt action to restore blood circulation, administer protective medications, and start rapid cooling when the heart stops beating. This is critically important to achieve a good cryopreservation. Alcor attempts to provide Standby when needed to all members in the U.S. and Canada through its Comprehensive Member Standby Program.

One of the most important things is ensuring that the whole process begins before blood begins to clot. Why? Because the circulatory system is used to get the vitrifying agent into the patient’s body, which prevents crystal formation during the cooldown phase. If it’s clotted up, the vitrification process is ruined, and you have to go with what is called a “straight freeze”.

Under Alcor’s somewhat recent (five years old) Comprehensive Member Standby policy, monthly fees for Alcor memberships were increased by just $10.00, giving the member “standby coverage worth $35,000 or more that would otherwise have to be paid during a time of need or through pre-funding.” There is also $5,000 worth of coverage available for relocation assistance to Scottsdale, an opportunity worth taking advantage of if you have any serious doubts about your health.

Because of all the difficulties inherent in cryonics, it is definitely worth pursuing room-temperature neuropreservation, though I’m sure that process would necessitate a fresh brain as well.

Anyway, the message of this is, if you are really sick or in any danger of spontaneous death, be sure to get on Standby right away! I know a few stories of people signed up for cryonics who underwent sub-par (perhaps irrecoverable) cryopreservations because they were too lazy or stubborn to leave their houses and go under closer monitoring.

Your neural-encoded memories turning into a nutritious sludge for microbial growth — don’t let it happen to you! Your brain is not a petri dish, and should not be treated as one, even after metabolism ceases.

Great post by George Dvorsky lamenting how Ray-hatred is turning off people to the rich intellectual tapestry of non-Ray-related Singularity ideas. He provides a short list of non-Ray Singularity thinkers dating back half a century and their contributions to this emerging and confusing field: von Neumann, Good, Minsky, Vinge, Moravec, Hanson, Bostrom, Yudkowsky, and Chalmers.

The post also includes an image of George’s impressive recent painting, “Singularity”.

Over at Singularity Hub, Aaron Saenz is gushing over Michael Vassar’s Google TechTalk.

Aaron said:

Vassar is the president of the Singularity Institute and a prominent advocate for the belief that technologies may develop exponentially in the future.

Not really… my understanding is that the reason that Michael V. talks about the Enlightenment a lot is that he thinks that was the last major boost in human understanding and reason. He tends to focus more on human thinking than on our technologies, and sees the latter as an outgrowth of the former. That’s the primary idea behind the Vingean Singularity as well. (Remember that one?)

One of the apparent purposes of Less Wrong is to start a new Enlightenment. The jury’s still out on that one, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

The goal is to live forever and create massive structures that exist for a long time as well.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well. Living 90 years is not doing well.

“Arabian Nights” had the right idea — a new story, a new world, every single day.

Al Fin’s comments on the PZ Myers/Kurzweil tiff:

Lost in all the ballyhoo is the obvious fact that in reality, neither Kurzweil nor Myers understand very much about the brain. But is that clear fact of mutual brain ignorance relevant to the underlying issue — Kurzweil’s claim that science will be able to “reverse-engineer” the human brain within 20 years? In other words, Ray Kurzweil expects humans to build a brain-functional machine in the next 2 decades based largely upon concepts learned from studying how brains/minds think.

Clearly Kurzweil is not claiming that he will be able to understand human brains down to the most intricate detail, nor is he claiming that his new machine brain will emulate the brain down to its cell signaling proteins, receptors, gene expression, and organelles. Myers seems to become a bit bogged down in the details of his own objections to his misconceptions of what Kurzweil is claiming, and loses the thread of his argument — which can be summed up by Myers’ claim that Kurzweil is a “kook.”

But Kurzweil’s amazing body of thought and invention testifies to the fact that Kurzweil is probably no more a kook than any other genius inventor/visionary. Calling someone a “kook” is apparently considered clever in the intellectual circles which Mr. Myers’ and the commenters on his blog travel, but in the thinking world such accusations provide too little information to be of much use.

Past a certain level of popularity, the intellectual standards go to crap. Kurzweil is misleading on some points (the primary factor here is that Gizmodo misquoted him), but it also doesn’t take much of a deep critique from Myers to get his readers to chortle in affirmation.