This statement seems to me to be extraordinarily (relative to the capabilities of the presumed authors) ungrounded in empiricism. All sorts of ideas in it are framed as declarative fact, when I think they should be more accurately presented as conjecture or aspirations of unknown certainty. I'm very interested in the Singularity Institute people at overcomingbias addressing these concerns directly.
By request of the community, an Open Thread for free-form comments, so long as they're still related to the basic project of this blog.
A word on post requests: You're free to ask, but the authors can't commit to posting on requested topics - it's hard enough to do the ones we have in mind already.