When will Ray Kurzweil die?

[MooMoo2]

Ray Kurzweil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil is a guy who thinks he can live forever: http://www.livescience.com/health/ap...il_050213.html

He was born in 1948 and is 59 now, so any guesses on when he's going to die?

And yes, I'm feeling a bit morbid today

[ewmayer]

There was a partial thread about RK a few years back:

http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthr...8310#post68310

[jasong]

I don't necessarily believe that this particular person will live forever, but, barring the possibility it's stopped by Armaggeddon(sp?) I believe in the Singularity. Recently, I've considered the possibility that the Noah's Ark story is prophecy rather than history. As for that last part, I was bored and just thinking, but the idea is thought-provoking, at least to me.

[davieddy]

This would be more interesting if I knew
about whom th**** you were speaking.

[retina]

Your poll is not valid because you left off the option for never dying. He did claim he will live forever so it seems only fair to include that option.

While we're on the subject of forgetting things, I think you also forgot the compulsory "Chocolate is yummy" option. That will help judge the level of seriousness people here give to this topic.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by retina

Your poll is not valid because you left off the option for never dying. He did claim he will live forever so it seems only fair to include that option.

Doesn't the "2046 or later" option cover that case?

Unless, of course, you believe Kurzweil could survive inimical phenomena such as hadron decay, exponential cosmological expansion or a Big Crunch (though that last seems unlikely on current beliefs in cosmology).


Paul

[retina]

Originally Posted by xilman

Doesn't the "2046 or later" option cover that case?

Unless, of course, you believe Kurzweil could survive inimical phenomena such as hadron decay, exponential cosmological expansion or a Big Crunch (though that last seems unlikely on current beliefs in cosmology).

I agree with you about the phenomena you mention sending him to oblivion, indeed I doubt he will get as far as 2045 to see the singularity but just for the sake of respect (he might be right and still be around to see the end of the universe) it needs a "never die" option. Of course anyone that actually selects that option should be automatically forced to read "A brief history of time" 10 times without bathroom breaks in between.

[MooMoo2]

This thread faded from my memory for quite a while, but I'm bumping it up again due to some recent events over the past week that made me remember it.

1.) There was an article about him in Rolling Stone that was recently published (February 19, 2009 issue). Link to the article is at

http://www.box.net/shared/static/az0d7ic6il.pdf

for those of you interested in it who don't subscribe to the magazine.

I'll give you a quick quote: "He (Kurzweil) plans to bring his dead father back to life. "Nanobots can extract some DNA from his grave site," he says. "Then they'll get memories from my brain and put it all together."

2.) He founded a "Singularity University" at the beginning of the month, and he's the chancellor and trustee of it:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/...ntsrc=hm_topic

What surprised me the most is that he somehow convinced Google and NASA to sponsor it too. Wow. I wonder whether how many people will attend.

3.) He was born on February 12, 1948, so he just turned 61 yesterday. The average lifespan of an American man is 75, so he's got 14 years to go if the hundreds of pills he's taking each day:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...il-singularity

don't affect him negatively. I guess we'll know the answer to that question by 2023.

4.) He's got a documentary coming out in late spring:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049412/

edit: Just remembered, he's also got a new book coming out this spring that tells you how to live forever:

http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Nine...4562418&sr=1-5

----------------------

Meanwhile, economies around the world are collapsing, unemployment is rising, and we've just recovered from a spike in energy and food costs. Not a good time to tell people that utopia is just around the corner. It's like Al Gore going to Siberia during a winter storm to give a lecture on global warming.

[cswchan]

I actually met him briefly in 82 or 83... was down at one of his companys... Kurzweil Music Systems.

[cheesehead]

Can I change my vote?

Snake1: For the right price, almost anything can happen…

[jasong]

We're supposed to have computers sewn into our clothing by 2010, according to him. While we've got about 9 months to go, I don't see that happening in time for his prediction to be true.

Has anyone done a "When will Moore's Law die?" poll. Although, now there are so many different ways people define Moore's law that I guess the poll is sort of silly. Better yet, let's try to guess the date that the Turing test will be considered as having been passed.

I believe Ray Kurzweil defined that as being when a computer posing as a human is mistaken for a human at least 40% of the time. And for those who say this is below random chance, yes it is, but the the testers are assumed to be "hostile" so that's the reason for the fudge factor. (well, I assume that's the reason, plus the testers aren't actually making random guesses, so saying it's a human means they really think that)

Edit: For those who don't know, the test is given via chat forums, like irc, Mersenne Forum, Twitter, etc. It's assumed that the first passed tests will be text-based.