"The Singularity is Near"

MidnightWizard

MidnightWizard

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IF some of the people here think discussion of certain topics makes me "looney" I wonder what they think of this guy ..............


Washington (UPI) Jun 4, 2010
He speaks nine languages, taught himself Icelandic in a week and invented his own language he calls Manti.
The 31-year-old autistic savant does complex celestial computations in seconds, sees hundreds of numbers on
a blackboard once and can recite them in the correct sequence minutes later.

or

this book / movie

"The Singularity is Near"
...this will be one of the most cited books of the decade."
- Kevin Kelly co-founder of WIRED, on Ray Kurzweil's book, The Singularity is Near (on which the movie is based)
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A story about the Future

"The Singularity is Near: A True Story About the Future," by filmmakers Anthony Waller, Ray Kurzweil, Ehren Koepf and Toshi Hoo, with Executive Producer Martine Rothblatt (Terasem Motion InfoCulture), makes its world premiere on Saturday, June 12, 2010 at the 30th Annual Breckenridge Film Festival.

The feature-length documentary film presents the daring arguments from Kurzweil's New York Times bestselling book, "The Singularity is Near."
He predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become trillions of times more powerful and increasingly merged with computers.
This will be the dawning of a new civilization, enabling us to transcend our biological limitations. In Kurzweil's post-biological world, boundaries blur between human and machine, real and virtual.
Human aging and illness are reversed, world hunger and poverty are solved, and we cure death.
He maintains a radically optimistic view of the future course of human development while acknowledging profound new dangers.
Kurzweil examines the social and philosophical implications of these profound changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with big thinkers, including former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke; technologists Bill Joy, Mitch Kapor, Marvin Minsky, Eric Drexler, Sherry Turkle and Cynthia Breazeal; Future Shock author Alvin Toffler; civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz; venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and environmentalist Bill McKibben.
Kurzweil illustrates the future with a narrative story about an "AI" seeking her human rights, featuring popular NCIS actress Pauley Perrette and personal development guru Tony Robbins.
The Singularity Is Near offers a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

The Breckenridge Theater (operating as the Backstage Theater) is located at 121 South Ridge Street, Breckenridge, CO 80424.
A discussion with Ray Kurzweil will immediately follow the screening. Festival passes are available now or by phone at (970) 547-3100.
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Probably too cerebral for most here :(:cry:
 
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Do you think the common man would be told if/when the singularity is reached?
 
AstroTurf said:
Do you think the common man would be told if/when the singularity is reached?
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We won't need to be told: it will simply happen, and nothing will be able to stop it. I only hope that I live long enough to experience the Singularity, and witness humankind transcend mortality.
 
I remember Sci-fi back in the day used to harp on about this, a single point where progression is just so fast it happens in the blink of an eye.
 

The 31-year-old autistic savant does complex celestial computations in seconds, sees hundreds of numbers on a blackboard once and can recite them in the correct sequence minutes later.
Click to expand...

But did he have his scaling set to logarithmic or linear when he saw this? :p

Articles like this always seem to focus on the hardware, taking it for granted that the software will be there too. From my programming/system integration perspective I would expect that "death cure" will be in beta for some time, even when the "problem" is no longer CPU bound.
 
Ja, I was there when that happened... dang near dropped my Yogi Sip! :eek:
 
The only bit that interests me:
taught himself Icelandic in a week
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Now if only he wrote a book how he did it, we would have a new national language that would do away with the 12 useless ones we have and we'll all be speaking Icelandic.
 
 
Garyvdh said:
Ja, I was there when that happened... dang near dropped my Yogi Sip! :eek:
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Me too! I dropped my "Label"...

I get so ashamed at...uhm...uhhhmmm..me....us...it...

Here's life...

My daughter started messing around with boys at 14. In the 80's, we were laughing at "there's no virgin in 'Toti, over 12". We must have evolved. :p
 
MidnightWizard said:
IF some of the people here think discussion of certain topics makes me "looney" I wonder what they think of this guy ..............
Probably too cerebral for most here :(:cry:
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Hype. Great marketing - to sell books.

Then again many people envision trans-humanism, it's not a new concept. You can see a lot of it in San Francisco too.
 
phenom said:
Well an immorality myself, and also a true admirer of this man and his creative talent and persistence. I don't think that this guy has coins in the right basket this time.

Frankly and yes it does concern us all, What he is asking for here is really life without a dick / true bumpalons.

Unfortunately, what he says may be completely plausible: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?156542-New-Biometrics-tech-to-be-commercialised http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?159973-The-future-of-humanity-SD-cards http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?143473-Mechanical-organs-a-horrible-choice!

And yes, there are many in the immortalist/lifeist croud which apposes transhumanism. Wish i had more time today to go into this topic.

The Immortalist community has this to say: http://www.longevitymeme.org/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=1



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPKDrGS89I0

Best alternative and also a all-rund solution to some of the worlds greatest problems i think would rather be whole-body transplants, this one would be much more feasible and simple too.

Others include those lead by medical researchers such as aubrey de Grey, who simply wants to get this right through medication, perhaps even OTC, rather than have any thing replaced or any surgery done. however i still think that transplanting the brain would be the best option as this way we are sure proof to get away from 99% of all illnesses that we may encounter in the future, and we will still remain completely human too, we could even choose a more hunky body if we'd like.

but one things for certain, if the world continues to progress, then this would be the greatest and most interesting century in all history, we here could literally become the first true immortals. Theoretically it is certainly possible, we just only need to get to make it feasible. :)
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F**k theory. Look at yourself in the mirror.

Look at yourself.

You, as you stand there, have lived forever.

From unicellular organisms, your eyes, your heart muscles, your bones, and others, through to complex systems forming in that head of yours...

You, being alive, are immortal.

Die without an heir. You die out. Nature, God, The Selfish Gene, demands procreation.The Jewish nation reign supreme in this simple knowledge.
 
Lightscribe said:
F**k theory. Look at yourself in the mirror.

Look at yourself.

You, as you stand there, have lived forever.

From unicellular organisms, your eyes, your heart muscles, your bones, and others, through to complex systems forming in that head of yours...

You, being alive, are immortal.

Die without an heir. You die out. Nature, God, The Selfish Gene, demands procreation.The Jewish nation reign supreme in this simple knowledge.
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Yay, sex will be so much f**kin fun when i'm a corpse. :D

i won't be sentient, therefor i won't be alive. The atoms that have made me have existed forever, not me myself. ;)
 
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