Robin Hanson on the Singularity

An excellent talk. One of the things I think Hanson should have mentioned earlier was the fact that early agriculturalists seem to have been poorer (shorter/more malnourished, etc) than hunter-gatherers, which demonstrates that a step "forward" can lead to actual declines in standard of living, by making reproduction faster.

I listened to an hour or so. I'm not sure who invented the Singularity concept, Hanson or Kurzweil or perhaps a group of people, but I find Kurzweil's coverage more thorough and insightful.

If there is a difference, Hanson emphasizes the economic aspects (growth rate, employment) over the technology - whereas Kurzweil pursues the intersection of ultra-cheap computation, self-replicating nanotech, and biotech. E.g. nanotech blood corpuscles, nano-scale brain scans, brain wetware 'rehosted' on silicon running a million times faster, solving the speed of light problem, thermal limits to computation, and so-on.