On some issues (political for example), Chomsky is out of his
field.
But here, he's on target as he's more in his element. I chuckled
at how he downplayed Ray Kurzweil and, oddly enough, I tend to
agree.
Kurzweil has fascinating ideas but yes, they're science fiction.
It's a popular belief at the moment - I remember when he was
working on voice translation machines in the early 1990s and his
singularity style ideas were considered flaky and nutty but he
grew in popularity until today where he's simply HUGE.
I think the ideas are mostly harmless, akin to a religious faith
in charts of future progress, but having played the stock
market, hearing predictions of inevitable positive (or negative)
futures come and go, as the normal waxing and waning of things
happened as they happen... watching housing prices go up and up
where I live to #1 hot real estate spot in the nation (Naples,
FL and Las Vegas tied for a couple of years), then watch them
fall to the underground, and then settle and recover...
...ANY predictions of infinite growth or infinite demise are, to
me, automatically false.
If there's no ebb and flow, no wax and wane, it's pure fiction.
Fun, but fiction. I hesitate on absolutes, but here, I give one.
[I also disagree on much of Chomsky's linguistics too. VERY
USEFUL, but some of it I believe is quite wrong. But I give him
credit where it's due - he is brilliant and brilliance sometimes
has a cost factor]
