Ray Kurzweil - Transcendent Man, page 1

Originally posted by harrytuttle

We will advance more from 2029 to 2050 than we did during our entire existence on Earth. It's essentially the next stage of evolution, on an accelerated pace the likes of which nature has never witnessed.
He's a prophet.

He isn't a prophet, just excellent at predictive modelling. Maybe that is a modern day prophet, he has Hollywood stars flocking to him as we speak, the Deepak Chopra of technology.

SD you still onto this singularity stuff? KEWL!!!

For all his cleverness (and I really mean that, he is incredibly smart) he can show us how we will advance, but not WHY we need to advance.
I am not a particularly 'spiritual' person, I do currently adhere to a premise, that is all 'existence' are required as a function and all existence is evolving. All evolution is a result of need. So WHY are we (all life not human only) needed? Is it random? evolution is a repeating pattern to suggest otherwise.
Evolution creates a capability to advance to the 'next 'stage' What is the next stage? WHY is advancement required. What "need" are humans satisfying?

As biological machines we have evolved very slowly, Kerzweil lists biologically the following as our developments, skull size, thumb usage, and weakening of jaw. Our brain is now dedicated to the cerebral cortex to allow reasoning and create hierarchical structures.
Biological evolution consists of 10 000's of bytes of information in current hominoids, that enable us to evolve culturally and technologically.

The progression of human measure of work activity is a smooth and predictable s curve .
www.youtube.com...
Humans as a biological collective are able to be predictive modelled. So he is not a prophet, rather he understands predictive modelling.
He predicts the intersection of biology with technology. I would add it is still currently controlled by the biological entity, the biological result of the "why" allowed us to move into technological and cultural evolution. Technological advances to come are a result of biological evolution.
so what "need" did bilogical evolution satisfy?

All of this is still done as humans, and our required function. Why is it required? What is the "need" that propagates infinite evolution. To me it appears that the environmental need is not what is resulting in our technological evolution, rather, its a 'need' to replicate the system we already are in. That we are indeed still bound by the function in the universe to propogate inifinty. The need to understand self. We dont know why we are (f) functions, so we continuously look for how functions work, replicating the system infinitatly.
I am not saying anything is wrong with that, just important to consider WHY we evolve not just HOW we will.

EDIT to add, there is no destination? Our model of evolution is infinite .

[edit on 11-10-2009 by zazzafrazz]