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.
3 Comments on this post
Leave a CommentThe singularity is near… I can smell it.
Comment left on 10.26.2010 by Aiden Wiechula
Reverse engineering is most probabaly the research topic in nervous system for next ten years.
Comment left on 12.8.2010 by Brainy
Now this is very interesting, much like how they are seeking to reverse engineer a chicken back into a dinosaur.
This is very interesting and I wonder how they know they reversing the path correctly, or just creating a new species themselves, not bringing back an old stage previously.
Comment left on 4.16.2012 by Andrew