Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil was at St Thomas in St Paul Wednesday night and I was lucky enough to get to listen to his talk. I'd rate it as maybe the fastest 90min lecture that I've sat through. I've Blogged on "The Singularity Is Near" previously. Ray is a strict materialist atheist that is EXTREMELY optimistic about technology. As readers of this Blog know, while I believe in realism, I'd much prefer to listen and read someone that errs on the side of optimism than pessimism. There is great plenty of that.

He discussed "designer drugs". Formerly we took compounds that seemed to do what we want (lower BP, decrease pain, remove fluids, etc) and messed with them vs trial and error. We are now able to look at how systems in the body work and design drugs that affect the systems in the way we want. Two examples are a pill that prevents the body from storing fat, and one that raises the HDL cholesterol enough to actually clean out arteries. These two drugs are supposed to be on the market in less than five years and should radically change health care and how good people look at the beach.

He believes that all his fantastic predictions for medicine, nanotech, high speed computing and AI are in fact "conservative" even though they sound off the wall. Two examples of his predictions, are that he predicted the internet in the mid-90's and a computer beating a human and chess before the millennium. In the early '90s, he was being mocked by people saying they didn't see any internet, and the chess programs were terrible compared to even a master level human. Both predictions came to pass right on schedule.

I don't tend to believe that many of his predictions will come true, BUT, "hopeful" is very nice to see these days since there is so much of "hopeless". I believe Ray is very much close to the truth than those who are sure that nothing good is going to happen.