The AI researcher saw the word ‘Singularity’ and, apparently without reading our concise summary, sent back a critique of Ray Kurzweil’s “accelerating change” technology curves. (Even though SI researchers tend to be Moore’s Law agnostics, and our concise summary says nothing about accelerating change.)
Worse, when you try to tell someone who already mainly associates the idea of the singularity with accelerating change curves about the distinctions between different types of singularity, they can, somewhat justifiably from their perspective, dismiss it as just a bunch of internal doctrinal squabbling among those loony people who obsess over technology curves, squabbling that it’s really beneath them to investigate too deeply.
Beck probably has ghostwriters. That excerpt was probably written by one of them, and could just be something that Beck signed off on because he’s vaguely singularity-positive from having interviewed Kurzweil; it might be that Beck never read any of the references, and if that excerpt is is suprisingly high quality, we shouldn’t automatically attribute that to him.