SneerClub

989 readers

2 users here now

Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

We regret to inform you that Ray Kurzweil is back on his bullshit (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

141 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (12 children)

Can someone explain why this level of hate?

I mean dude wrote a book about exponential progress (it works well in computers IMO) and tried to predict a lot of stuff. I read that lots of his predictions was "sort of" correct too?

Edit: thanks for nothing I guess. Downvotes and scorn lol.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago

It hasn't worked 'well' for computers since like the pentium, what are you talking about?

The premise was pretty dumb too, as in, if you notice that a (very reductive) technological metric has been rising sort of exponentially, you should probably assume something along the lines of we're probably still at the low hanging fruit stage of R&D, it'll stabilize as it matures, instead of proudly proclaiming that surely it'll approach infinity and break reality.

There's nothing smart or insightful about seeing a line in a graph trending upwards and assuming it's gonna keep doing that no matter what. Not to mention that type of decontextualized wishful thinking is emblematic of the TREACLES mindset mentioned in the community's blurb that you should check out.

So yeah, he thought up the Singularity which is little more than a metaphysical excuse to ignore regulations and negative externalities because with tech rupture around the corner any catastrophic mess we make getting there won't matter. See also: the whole current AI debacle.

load more comments (11 replies)