I can see why you might feel their claim about being a “leading dialog” was slightly dishonest and be piqued by that, but do keep in mind that their strategy of increasing the status of futurism helps your career and research interests. They are contributing to an unusual public good that benefits you – shouldn’t you mix some appreciation in with your criticism?

Better not to have gotten into the whole mess in the first place – but essentially, yes: perpetuating the dopey “Singularity” terminology is a bad thing to be doing – and I think that all those involved should cease at the earliest opportunity.

I don’t really see how anyone can argue that the things Kurzweil actually claims are accelerating are not actually accelerating.

Robert: trying to correct terminology can be easily counterproductive. Look at Richard Stallman; how many people discount him as a crank solely because of his efforts to get people to make a legitimate distinction like Linux vs. GNU/Linux (or ‘intellectual property’ or…)? Quite a few. And his attempts have helped him or the FLOSS movement not in the slightest.

I don’t think we could ask it “solve quantum gravity” or “create a being more intelligent than yourself” and expect much.

And how much can you expect if you asked humans to do the same thing? Humans have had 200,000+ years to do those things. So far, nada. I’m not impressed.