Kurzweil on climate change

The Guardian has a syndicated NPR interview with Ray Kurzweil, in which the Mighty Prophet of the Singularity explains why solar power is going to save us and why we never worry about anything ever again:

One of my primary theses is that information technologies grow exponentially in capability and power and bandwidth and so on. If you buy an iPhone today, it's twice as good as two years ago for half the cost. That is happening with solar energy -- it is doubling every two years... But doubling every two years means it's only eight more doublings before it meets a 100 percent of the world's energy needs. So that's 16 years. We will increase our use of electricity during that period, so add another couple of doublings: In 20 years we'll be meeting all of our energy needs with solar, based on this trend which has already been underway for 20 years.

Really? What about cloudy weather? Or will the singularity deal with that too?

Personally, I prefer Karl Schroeder's more pessimistic attitude to the singularity as saviour:

Here's the problem: 25 years [until the singularlity saves us all] is too late. The newest business-as-usual climate scenarios look increasingly dire. If we haven't solved our problems within the next decade, even these theoretical godlike AIs aren't going to be able to help us. Thermodynamics is thermodynamics, and no amount of godlike thinking can reverse the irreversible.

I think all geohacking advocates should give serious thought to having that last line tattooed across the insides of their eyelids...

Handedness and mental rigidity

According to a short piece in New Scientist people who don't favour a particular hand "...are more easily persuaded to feel a certain way than consistent right-handers." The science bit says that this could be do with the increased number of connections between the part of the left brain that generates a consist world view and the part of the right brain that notices when the world view needs to be updated:

"Increased access to the part of the brain involved in noticing things that don't fit might make you more likely to change your mind," [Ruth] Propper [of Montclair State University, NJ] says.

Intriguing.