Name _____________________________________________

These responses were given by one of your classmates when answering the Singularity is Near criticism worksheet.

Over all I think the responses are excellent in that they get right to the point, and use evidence to back up their claims. Some of the claims are a bit terse, can we use the 3 Ways to Respond templates to improve them?

For each objection, rephrase the objection to use one of the templates we discussed earlier.

• The author fears death; he says the singularity may occur as early as 2045 but he may just be saying that because he want to experience the singularity---Chapter 7 Kurzweil does not respond to this criticism in Chapter 9. This leads me to agree with the critic over Kurzweil.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Doesn’t address how memory is stored in the brain---Chapter 3 This criticism is partially addressed in the response to "criticism from the complexity of neural processing", however the response is only partial and overall unsatisfactory which leads me to agree with the critic again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The author fails to address the differences in economic status, he apparently forgets that not "everyone everywhere [is] from the upper quarter of income earners in Silcon Valley" ---Chapter 5 This criticism is completely shot down by Kurzweil on the bottom of page 430, Kurzweil answers that "because of the ongoing exponential growth of price performance, all these technologies quickly become so inexpensive as to become almost free".
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Take one of your own objections and rewrite it using the templates
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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