MachineMachine /stream - tagged with Pharyngula https://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss LifePress therourke@gmail.com <![CDATA[Hate E-mails with Richard Dawkins]]> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZuowNcuGsc&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Mon, 29 Nov 2010 02:05:49 -0800 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZuowNcuGsc&feature=youtube_gdata <![CDATA[Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain]]> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/ray_kurzweil_does_not_understa.php

There he goes again, making up nonsense and making ridiculous claims that have no relationship to reality. Ray Kurzweil must be able to spin out a good line of bafflegab, because he seems to have the tech media convinced that he's a genius, when he's actually just another Deepak Chopra for the computer science cognoscenti.

His latest claim is that we'll be able to reverse engineer the human brain within a decade. By reverse engineer, he means that we'll be able to write software that simulates all the functions of the human brain. He's not just speculating optimistically, though: he's building his case on such awfully bad logic that I'm surprised anyone still pays attention to that kook.

Sejnowski says he agrees with Kurzweil&#039;s assessment that about a million lines of code may be enough to simulate the human brain.

Here&#039;s how that math works, Kurzweil explains: The design of the brain is in the genome. The human genome has three billion base pairs or six billion bits, which
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Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:04:00 -0700 http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/ray_kurzweil_does_not_understa.php