mwengler comments on Review of Kurzweil, 'The Singularity is Near' - Less Wrong

5 Post author: lukeprog 24 November 2011 08:30AM

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Comment author: mwengler 01 December 2011 06:21:32PM 1 point [-]

Kurzweil has never claimed that exponentials go on forever. He has claimed that many exponentials go on longer than the current technology would allow.

Even when there is only an overhead of 100X in which to grow something, knowing it is probably going exponentially with T timescale gives you a very different sense of the midterm future than thinking it is stagnant or saturated or linear. And the singularity is all about the midterm.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 02 December 2011 09:10:58AM 1 point [-]

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/environment/futurist-ray-kurzweil-isnt-worried-about-climate-change/7389/

Ray sez

But doubling every two years means it’s only eight more doublings before it meets a hundred percent of the world’s energy needs. So that’s 16 years. We will increase our use of electricity during that period, so add another couple of doublings: In 20 years we’ll be meeting all of our energy needs with solar, based on this trend which has already been under way for 20 years.

That's what he claims. He does it based on two mistakes - calling solar an information technology, and switching from looking at exponential growth in util/dollar to exponential growth in installed base.

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