- Peter Xu
- Maspeth, NY
- United States
Jeannette K. Watson Fellow, Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship
This conversation is closed.
How does one predict the date when an entire nation would fall?
Ray Kurzweil is an inventor and futurist. He has been known for his highly accurate predictions such as when computers would be able to beat the best human chess players (Deep Blue IBM). His current primary prediction is the time of the coming singularity, the point where man and machine merge. But what has puzzled me was how he was able to predict something like the fall of the Soviet Union? If one is to predict the time when this would happen to a certain accuracy, there must be some mathematical analysis involved. What factors would one consider in determining when the Soviet Union would fall, and how would one put that into a mathematical model that would estimate the date of this event?