Ray Kurtzweil, who apparently doesn't know what the word "exponential" means, because he thinks an "exponential" growth can have a vertical asymptote: ["As exponential growth continues to accelerate into the first half of the twenty-first century, it will appear to explode into infinity, at least from the limited and linear perspective of contemporary humans. "] (http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns) He does soften it a bit by saying "appear"... but still, exponential growth never goes to infinity, that's just mathematically not how it works.
And Nick Bostrom, who tells people it's totally plausible that we are living in a simulation, ignoring the mountains of evidence that we are not (including literal mountains, come to think of it), as well as the fundamental flaw in any epistemology that non-falsifiably claims reality is an illusion... and then to top it all off, his whole equation relies on the ridiculous assumption that the number of individuals in a simulation is equal to the number of individuals in a real universe (he calls both H). Frankly even the idea that we could be in a simulation stretches the whole idea of what a simulation is to the breaking point---a simulation by definition isn't real, and yet here we are with actual conscious beings, and he's claiming we're simulated. (The argument also relies on the assumption that transhumans would create holocausts for amusement, which means they are apparently psychopaths. And then he says this is the good future, the one we're hoping for?)
So not only have I shown you two examples, I've shown you two of the most prominent individuals in the entire Singularity movement, both of whom make really ridiculous claims that would not be taken seriously if they didn't have an almost religious aura of authority about them. Frankly Eliezer, you're the only prominent Singularitarian who doesn't act like a cult leader.
Frankly even the idea that we could be in a simulation stretches the whole idea of what a simulation is to the breaking point---a simulation by definition isn't real, and yet here we are with actual conscious beings, and he's claiming we're simulated.
But we don't have privileged, direct access to the real world anyway; everything you experience now, is, in a certain sense, a "simulation" constructed by your brain. (If you don't like the word simulation, you're welcome to choose another.) When you look at a red book, the reason you think there'...
Like any educated denizen of the 21st century, you may have heard of World War II. You may remember that Hitler and the Nazis planned to carry forward a romanticized process of evolution, to breed a new master race, supermen, stronger and smarter than anything that had existed before.
Actually this is a common misconception. Hitler believed that the Aryan superman had previously existed—the Nordic stereotype, the blond blue-eyed beast of prey—but had been polluted by mingling with impure races. There had been a racial Fall from Grace.
It says something about the degree to which the concept of progress permeates Western civilization, that the one is told about Nazi eugenics and hears "They tried to breed a superhuman." You, dear reader—if you failed hard enough to endorse coercive eugenics, you would try to create a superhuman. Because you locate your ideals in your future, not in your past. Because you are creative. The thought of breeding back to some Nordic archetype from a thousand years earlier would not even occur to you as a possibility—what, just the Vikings? That's all? If you failed hard enough to kill, you would damn well try to reach heights never before reached, or what a waste it would all be, eh? Well, that's one reason you're not a Nazi, dear reader.
It says something about how difficult it is for the relatively healthy to envision themselves in the shoes of the relatively sick, that we are told of the Nazis, and distort the tale to make them defective transhumanists.
It's the Communists who were the defective transhumanists. "New Soviet Man" and all that. The Nazis were quite definitely the bioconservatives of the tale.