The Singularity and its Complications

     I think that the singularity will eventually happen but I also think that Kurzweil is off on his timing. Because of the immense challenge of the biological limiting factors of the merging humans with technology I think it will require more time. One of the speakers in the movie The Transcendent Man, a biologist, says that Kurzweil's theories are possible but they are at an unrealistic timing. He says that from a biological point of view the singularity that Kurzweil depicts is impossible in his time frame. Kurzweil of course disagrees with his critics say according to Kurzweil, "Kurzweil is underestimating the complexity of reverse-engineering of the human brain or the complexity of biology." Kurzweil says, "I don't think I'm underestimating the challenge I think they are underestimating the power of exponential growth." I agree with Kurzweil in the sense that exponential growth can be staggering when analyzed but also one must take into account that these biologists do what they do for a living and they understand the field much more than Kurzweil does. Therefore you must account for their analysis of what's to come.
     Now it seems to me that the most difficult thing to grasp conceptually is the notion that we will eventually merge with machines to become immortal. Maybe it's because my whole life and everyone else who has lived before me has known that death is a definite phenomena and that nobody can escape it. Now Kurzweil says that in 35 years we will become immortal and cyborgs and that we will never age and only choose to die if we want to. This is hard to believe but Kurzweil explains why we can't believe it by saying that our brains are hard-wired to think linearly.
     The most challenging question that I was faced with was what is humanity? What does it mean, essentially, to be human. When I watched The Transcendent Man with my friends we talked about it for about an hour and the most persistent point was the criteria, if you will, for being human. Some said that your thoughts, experiences and reactions to certain situations was what made you human. Then with that definition of humanity you can say that your body has nothing to do with your humanity. In other words if you transplanted your brain into another vessel and you retained all of your consciousness and thoughts and cognitive properties that you had before this hypothetical transplant then you would still be "you." If that is true then why wouldn't everybody just upload their consciousness onto some global network and live connected and intertwined with everyone on the planet through the internet or some other uninvented mechanism? Well some might say you would lose your humanity; but what does that actually mean? During this discussion among friends I brought up a point that further complicated the conversation. Emotions. Wouldn't emotions be another part of your humanity? Isn't that what defines your personality? Well if thats true then when you fully merged with technology that would eventually become so much more intelligent than you, the technology would deem emotions unstable and inefficient and eliminate them. Now imagine yourself without emotions and no empathy for anything living forever in a technological oblivion. Sounds wonderful doesn't it?
     This  directly relates to Brave New World in the fact that the society in Brave New World bent on progress and efficiency. At the singularity  these robots or technological mechanisms will attempt to do the same with humans. They will attempt to make humans the most efficient race possible at literally any cost. Bernard thinks that in Brave New World the citizens are losing their authenticity of humanity. This ties directly into the argument I just made about the criteria for being human. One could say that Bernard is being romantic in his thinking about human existence, but who can say that he is wrong? The article says that us humans cannot think and comprehend the singularity because our brains think linearly. So until the so-called singularity actually occurs nobody can really know the implications of the singularity, therefore nobody can prove or disprove anything at this point.