Good God--The Transhumanism Bluff

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Good God--The Transhumanism Bluff

Ray Kurzweil is one of America's geniuses.

I myself own lots of books written by him.

So why is he a blithering idiot in the video below?

 

Man, that video was painful to watch.

From what I saw, Joe Allen's comment has a lot more truth to it than anything Kurzweil said.

In case you are not familiar with Kurzweil, he's the guy who says we are going to live forever, merge with AI, get to the singularity, and so on. And he lives a regime of vitamins, exercise, etc., to guarantee that. I don't know if he takes blood transfusions with blood from young dudes, or maybe farts around with nanobots and all that crazy stuff the rich big tech hipsters like to do, but whatever he is doing, it sure looks like it ain't working.

Instead, it looks like something is eating him alive right now.

Let's call it reality, shall we?

 

 

Seriously, Kurzweil comes off as being a pampered elitist who has been surrounded by "yes men" so long, he doesn't know how to carry on a conversation with a minimum of logic anymore. He appears to expect his pronouncements to be met with oohs and aahs. And when that doesn't come, but a reasonable question based on reality comes instead, he just repeats the pronouncement.

Also, he appears to be bewildered that he is getting old and decrepit.

As I watched that video, I began to wonder if Kurzweil already passed on and this was an AI humanoid robot version of him getting stuck in algorithm loops.

 

That's a quip, but I would not be shocked if it later came out that this was the case.

 

Transhumanism mixes real science with mumbo-jumbo, gobs and gobs of crony corporatist money, and a big-ass evasion of reality.

That's one reason AI does not scare me, nor the predictions of sentient AI, destruction of humanity and all that other bullshit.

Setting aside religious speculations, the human brain evolved on top of a biological species of individuals where there were two core standards for brain evolution inside of human bodies: (1) survival of the fittest individuals and, (2) reproduction of individuals to ensure the survival of the species. Lifespan and death of all individuals has been universal during this entire process and all known history. There is not one exception except for those individuals currently living as the individuals before them lived.

That is true for all species where a brain is present in the individual members.

Hell, that is true for life in general, brain or no brain.

 

AI comes from non-organic materials and deductive structures and standards.

One can do a lot with science alone, but this difference is foundational metaphysically. It is at the premise level epistemologically. It's worse than apples and oranges. It's like trying to make a boulder sing opera or yodel.  

 

Will AI become dangerous? No doubt. Nuclear fission sure is. That human discovery and related inventions can blow up the world. But they can also light up and power the world for advanced productive human life.

I believe AI will be like that.

 

Meanwhile all the AI gurus and transhumanists, especially those of the elitist persuasion, will turn into a variation of Ray Kurzweil at the end, unless they are squished or otherwise killed before they expire of natural causes.

 

So I ain't worried.

I am what I am and life is what it is.

Not what these highly intelligent technocratic new-age bullshit artists say it is.

A is A.

(What a concept!  )

Michael