Review of Transcendent Man (2009) by John H — 09 Jun 2011

The blurred boundary between human and machine is dark, and Ray Kurzweil, like almost all others in his field, is missing many key pieces of the very puzzle, for work on which, he has received most of his acclaim.

Perhaps much of the blame can be placed on the narcissism or closed-mindedness it took for him to pigeon-hole the cause of the only "future" existence of God and the cause of WWIII solely into his own field of expertise.

Though benefits to health and economies may emerge from a climate of developing resources, transcending biology will not come from privileging the tool of intellect at the total expense of the tool of emotions (that is true no matter how many honorary PHDs the maker of a rebuttal may or may not have).

The organism becoming aware of evolution did not cause the cessation of that evolution and transfer of it's 'evolutionary momentum' to become merely an evolution of one of the organisms evolving creative outlets of limited scope, nanotechnology (if you even want to call that secondarily effectual response a form of evolution at all).

But, that seems to be a main tenant of this picture. A new frontier that allows for transcending biology is nowhere near the average human, and is certainly not technocratic and cannot be as deluded as this film is, if earthlings are to ever cultivate it at all.

That development comes in the various forms of putting being reasonable, impartial, and fair, and having spiritual development as the centering goal and focus of developing civilization. The cult of Ray Kurzweil seems to have their heads in the cloud computations of the deadliness of some uncontrollable cybernetics, so much so that they don't bother to consider that their school of thought, which is intended to bridge philosophy with science, is obviously based on a fundamental assumption of the betrayal of experience in the first place.