You might want to check in with some neuroscientists. If you take offense at personal attacks at Kurzweil's sanity and intelligence you might want to ... prepare yourself. Imagine if a retired doctor started doing speaking tours about the future of the internet and computing and completely disagreed with the general consensus on HN about what could plausibly happen. Imagine what the comments about him on HN would be.
They would view Allen's response as "not delusional" rather than pessimistic. I'm often surprised by how widespread singularity fans think belief in it is.
Outside the tech industry, where people have spend their entire lives in a field that has seen no increasing exponential returns (other than problems solved purely by computation, which they consider a wonderful thing but often not a fundamental advancement to their field) there is very very little belief that "the singularity is near" or that kurzweils utopian interpretation of the singularity is correct.
They would view Allen's response as "not delusional" rather than pessimistic. I'm often surprised by how widespread singularity fans think belief in it is.
Outside the tech industry, where people have spend their entire lives in a field that has seen no increasing exponential returns (other than problems solved purely by computation, which they consider a wonderful thing but often not a fundamental advancement to their field) there is very very little belief that "the singularity is near" or that kurzweils utopian interpretation of the singularity is correct.