Re:Google Turns Your Android Phone Into An On-The-Fly Conver...
by feral on Thursday January 13, 2011 @11:33AM
(#2100325)
"So - go for it - tell me, right now, which of his many predictions are "obviously going to happen." and which are "Totally foolish". "
I'm not claiming to be able to make long term predictions.
I'm also not egomaniacal enough to think that anyone will care enough to come back and check my post in 5/10 years :)
I'm just saying to accurately evaluate how good his correct predictions were, we would need a benchmark of predictions of other people.
I think there's a lot of value to reading Kurzweils writing, and its entertaining. I just object to people who pick out the things he generously got right, and massively overestimate his success rate, including him. He recently announced an 86% success rate.
1) He shouldnt put sharp numbers quantifying things that have been loosely defined, and sloppily evaluated.
2) He has no-where near that, in my opinion.
I'm not claiming to be able to make long term predictions. I'm also not egomaniacal enough to think that anyone will care enough to come back and check my post in 5/10 years :) I'm just saying to accurately evaluate how good his correct predictions were, we would need a benchmark of predictions of other people.
I think there's a lot of value to reading Kurzweils writing, and its entertaining. I just object to people who pick out the things he generously got right, and massively overestimate his success rate, including him. He recently announced an 86% success rate. 1) He shouldnt put sharp numbers quantifying things that have been loosely defined, and sloppily evaluated. 2) He has no-where near that, in my opinion.
I dont want to go through 2 in detail, but I think its fairly clear from reading his prediction summary, or http://us.penguingroup.com/static/packages/us/kurzweil/excer... that while he got a good few things right, he got a lot wrong too.