I am a regular reader of both PZ Myers and /r/science. On those two sites, a heated debate has developed during the last week over Ray Kurzweil’s claims of the possibility of reverse engineering the human brain by 2030.
I’ll give you a quick history of the debate so far. It all started when Wired published an article titled “Reverse-Engineering of Human Brain Likely by 2030, Expert Predicts,” in which Ray Kurzweil predicts that the reverse engineering of the human brain will be possible by 2030. This article immediately produced controversy, and PZ Myers wasted no time in writing the article “Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain.” Kurzweil was quick to respond to that in “Ray Kurzweil Responds to ‘Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain’.” Myers followed with another, and maybe final response: “Kurzweil still doesn’t understand the brain.”
Finally a neurologist, Steven Novella, has joined the debate in “Myerz vs Kurzweil on Brain Complexity.” He does a good job of deescalating the debate, and has a similar stance to mine. Both Myers and Kurzweil don’t completely understand each other’s point of view. Myers is correct in saying that Kurzweil does not understand how the brain works. Kurzweil is also correct in saying that Myers doesn’t understand exponential growth of information technology. I also think that Myers has been too harsh on Kurzweil, who is not a the complete moron that Myers makes him out to be. Despite what either Myers or Kurzweil has to say, the reverse engineering of the brain is currently happening, and we can only wait and see what the people working on it come up with in the future. The future is hard to predict, and the only way to know for sure what is going to happen is to wait and see. The singularity may or may not be near.
Michael Shermer is the editor in chief of skeptic magazine. He gave this TED talk a few years ago, and it it worth revisiting.
If you don’t feel like watching the whole thing, fast forward to the 11:40 mark to catch the best part of the clip.
check it out….
I normally hate motivational speeches. Most of them are filled with too many analogies that are taken too far, and contain little substance.
On the other hand, this short clip by John Cleese is definitely worth a watch. He briefly describes his creative process, and shares a few tips that are actually feasible to implement.
I highly recommend checking this out:
Last night’s futurama episode had a heavy evolution vs creationist theme. Although these kinds of comedy bits normally just make me depressed about the state of the world, this one was actually pretty funny. I was able to not get mad at the fact that creationists exist, and actually have a bit of fun with it.
I found the best part of the episode up on youtube. Check out the clip here. Sorry, embedding was disabled.
In other news, I’ve added a shelfari widget to the right side bar. It shows the books that I’m currently reading. Now that exams are over, it will actually be getting updated now as I finish books.
Last tuesday, Apple announced the Magic Trackpad. For those of you who ignore apple news, the magic trackpad is basically a larger version of the trackpad found in the macbook pros. It is marketed at desktop users, and from some of the pictures on apples’ site, it is being marketed as a mouse replacement. Some bloggers are even claiming that this is the end of the mouse era.
There is no way that this trackpad will completely replace the mouse. It is likely that something will eventually replace the mouse, but this is not it. I could see the Magic Trackpad becoming a common peripheral, maybe finding its home on the left side of a keyboard, but it will never replace the mouse.
A trackpad will never be as precise or as fast as a conventional mouse. This is due to some simple biomechanics. A trackpads precision and speed could potentially be increased by some smart motion sensing algorithms, but if these algorithms existed, they could be applied to mouse-movements as well, making those even more precise and speedy.
Don’t worry, your mouse isn’t going anywhere….
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