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by jumby 3454 days ago
Kurzweil's point is the following: "who cares". Even if it takes one-thousand years, it's a blink in the history of humanity / life.
2 comments

If that was Kurzweil's point, he wouldn't have made such specific predictions, nor would he have discussed bringing his father back to life digitally, or put himself on a regimen of supplements to stick around long enough.
Actually, Kurzweil cares. He keeps saying that according to his "laws", Singularity will happen by 2029.
Even more than that Kurzweil boldly predicts that nanobots will cure virtually all disease within ~15-25 years (by 2030s at least, but no later than the 2040s).

I certainly hope this prediction is true. But I think it has more to do with that fact that Kurzweil will be creeping towards the end of his life (gauged by average U.S. life expectancy) in the next 15 years.

Yeah, it's the old joke about futurists: When will humans become immortal? And every one of them gives an answer just short of their own expected demise.
> humans become immortal

The obligatory note: the true immortality is unattainable in principle without indestructibility (which is something that is hard to imagine even theoretically). Otherwise people will continue to die, en masse, from various unnatural causes. My guess as to the half-life of a human in the best of circumstances is just a couple of hundred years...

Just make backups.
Not all of them, but the others are signed up for cryonics.
Actually Kurzweil has always estimated the singularity at 2045. It's passing the Turing test he estimated for 2029. Not that he really defines the singularity.