Good read, I'm fascinated by what I've learned of Kurzweil's work and this article dovetails nicely with your recent PBS Digital Studios video. You may recall that in the comments you and I talked a bit about how some of the embrace given to these theories stems out of a similar "fear of death" that spawned religions. You mentioned that you were: What's your take on Kurzweil's 2045 prediction? Is it rooted in solid thinking or is it wishful?in talks with a researcher at the Global Brain Institute to conduct a psychological survey of singularity/global brain theorists and their perspective on death, the idea of singularity as religion, and whether they feel there own fear of death effects extrapolations and predictions for a 2045 singularity.
-In your preliminary work, have you found that the younger the theorist, the later the date for the singularity?