Re: "knockdown crush" - here's Peter Voss on what seems to me to be obvious:

"His [Kurzweil's] approach is fundamentally looking at the wrong solution. He is talking about reverse engineering the human brain. Now, to me that's really, really hard way to solve the problem, you know, it's using tools that are really not well suited for building a human brain or reverse engineering the human brain. So I favour the engineering approach, where you say what is the problem we are trying to solve, and how can we best solve it using the technology and the tools and the equipment we have available. So that's the approach we are using - reverse engineering the brain I think is really, really hard - and that could take many decades."

- http://www.singinst.org/media/interviews/petervoss