Time has a decently long piece on Raymond Kurzweil - he's the inventor and futurist who's interested in life extension and large time scale predictions. I've been interested in him for a while now.
Also came across this organization from the article... seasteading, interesting. Piratebay.org almost bought a place a few years ago called Sealand that would have made them a sovereign nation or something. Interesting idea anyways.
Showing posts with label kurzweil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kurzweil. Show all posts
21 February 2011
13 April 2009
Reading for Monday
Apparently Dubai is a slave state run by dictators. It's a long read but if it's all true then it's worth it. Here's a blogger from Dubai who says otherwise. (HT: Freakonomics)
New experiments suggest that amino acids form and replicate with greater frequency than previously believed. Basically it's saying that the formation of life may not be so uncommon after all. The same ten amino acids that keep coming up in the experiments are also commonly found in meteorites that crash into earth... hm.
I've been reading a lot of GOOD Magazine recently which is really... good. The article below is features that crazy smart crazy dude I wrote about before, Raymond Kurzweil. He says just enough stuff that makes sense... but he also seems insane. The article deals with the future of transportation.
This is a short fascinating piece about unintended consequences due to restrictions. (HT: Freakonomics again)
On Forbes Sudhir Venkatesh, the sociologist featured in Freakonomics and who wrote Gang Leader for a Day, is profiled. He talks about poverty, the sex trade, and other marginalized segments of society. Great quote near the end: "[He] dismisses the 'culture of poverty' theory, which suggests that poor blacks in America don't work because they don't value employment. 'People in America want to work,' he says. They do so ever so industriously, even when they're breaking the law."
New experiments suggest that amino acids form and replicate with greater frequency than previously believed. Basically it's saying that the formation of life may not be so uncommon after all. The same ten amino acids that keep coming up in the experiments are also commonly found in meteorites that crash into earth... hm.
I've been reading a lot of GOOD Magazine recently which is really... good. The article below is features that crazy smart crazy dude I wrote about before, Raymond Kurzweil. He says just enough stuff that makes sense... but he also seems insane. The article deals with the future of transportation.
This is a short fascinating piece about unintended consequences due to restrictions. (HT: Freakonomics again)
On Forbes Sudhir Venkatesh, the sociologist featured in Freakonomics and who wrote Gang Leader for a Day, is profiled. He talks about poverty, the sex trade, and other marginalized segments of society. Great quote near the end: "[He] dismisses the 'culture of poverty' theory, which suggests that poor blacks in America don't work because they don't value employment. 'People in America want to work,' he says. They do so ever so industriously, even when they're breaking the law."
28 January 2009
Raymond Kurzweil and Aging
"Kurzweil expects that, once the human/machine race has converted all of the matter in the universe into a giant, sentient supercomputer it will have created a supremely powerful and intelligent being which will be Godlike in itself." - Wikipedia article on Raymond Kurzweil
At first glance that sentence is ridiculous and hilarious. Then it dawned on me that he kind of had a point. Anyways, his wiki is worth reading. It is a bit long however.
I first became aware of him when watching a show on research done to slow down and even reversing the aging process. It interested me because I had just read an article on MIT's Technology Review about (this is my non-pHD interpretation) the first insights as to exactly what causes aging. Bare with me; the only organism for which aging is understood is yeast. In yeast, aging occurs because as DNA duplicates itself mistakes are sometimes made. These mistakes are passed on from one generation of cells to the next and over time begin to account for an increasing share of the DNA sequence. Then there is a protein that gets involved and starts expressing dormant traits (I'm a bit shaky on that part) to fill in the gaps left by mistakes. Researchers have discovered a similar pattern in mice, but are quick to caution that aging is a very complex and haphazard thing... so this may not be the whole story. The point is that aging is not necessarily "natural", but rather just a screw up in our genes.
Long story short, Kurzweil proposes that aging will soon become a thing of the past. In a series of steps (or "bridge to a bridge to a bridge" as he calls it) humans will learn to slow down, stop, and eventually reverse aging. All supposedly within the next few decades. It would be easy to dismiss if he weren't so damned credible. He invented the flatbed scanner, text to speech synthesizer, text recognition software, and he sold his first software company at the age of 20. While he was a sophomore at MIT none the less. So at the very least he's a talented inventor, business man, and prediction maker.
There's a lot to write about on this guy. I guess I'm mostly fascinated by his research topics, ideas on increasing rates of change (in terms of technology), and his predictions. They're much further looking than mine and much more sci-fi. The odd thing is that as outlandish as they seem, if current computer advances continue I don't see how they will not become true.
At first glance that sentence is ridiculous and hilarious. Then it dawned on me that he kind of had a point. Anyways, his wiki is worth reading. It is a bit long however.
I first became aware of him when watching a show on research done to slow down and even reversing the aging process. It interested me because I had just read an article on MIT's Technology Review about (this is my non-pHD interpretation) the first insights as to exactly what causes aging. Bare with me; the only organism for which aging is understood is yeast. In yeast, aging occurs because as DNA duplicates itself mistakes are sometimes made. These mistakes are passed on from one generation of cells to the next and over time begin to account for an increasing share of the DNA sequence. Then there is a protein that gets involved and starts expressing dormant traits (I'm a bit shaky on that part) to fill in the gaps left by mistakes. Researchers have discovered a similar pattern in mice, but are quick to caution that aging is a very complex and haphazard thing... so this may not be the whole story. The point is that aging is not necessarily "natural", but rather just a screw up in our genes.
Long story short, Kurzweil proposes that aging will soon become a thing of the past. In a series of steps (or "bridge to a bridge to a bridge" as he calls it) humans will learn to slow down, stop, and eventually reverse aging. All supposedly within the next few decades. It would be easy to dismiss if he weren't so damned credible. He invented the flatbed scanner, text to speech synthesizer, text recognition software, and he sold his first software company at the age of 20. While he was a sophomore at MIT none the less. So at the very least he's a talented inventor, business man, and prediction maker.
There's a lot to write about on this guy. I guess I'm mostly fascinated by his research topics, ideas on increasing rates of change (in terms of technology), and his predictions. They're much further looking than mine and much more sci-fi. The odd thing is that as outlandish as they seem, if current computer advances continue I don't see how they will not become true.
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