Come on, are you really comparing religious myths to logical consequences of ever accelerating technological progress? If you think that the idea of a [relatively near] Singularity/Doomsday is "silly", then look at the alternatives: perpetual technological stagnation due to "social" factors or because suddenly ("magically"), against all odds, human knowledge hits a permanent, fundamental ceiling which prevents us from developing "strong" AI *and* nanotech *and* intelligence augmentation by means of genetic engineering. Profoundly illogical, and almost as silly as waiting for Jesus IMHO.
> or the Golden Bullet of nanotech which will
> magically make all our technological, social, and economic problems
> disappear.
No, but it will solve *most* contemporary problems, and of course create some new ones that we currently can't even imagine. Planning ahead for more than, say, 50 years is probably a waste of time. Planning ahead for more than a century is utterly absurd. By that time we'll all be dead or ascended.
> History has proven that humanity's predictive powers are often quite
> lacking, and certainly no reason not to reasonably plan for the future.
History won't be of much use in the future. Unlike our ancestors, we're about to change some *very* fundamental things; the fabric of life itself, one might say. Instead of simply making more and better monkey-tools, we'll cease to be monkeys altogether. Now *that's* what I call a revolution.
> Raising the average human IQ through a program of Conscious Evolution
What do you exactly mean by "Conscious Evolution"?
> is a
> worthwhile goal, and one that shouldn't be quashed merely because one model
> predicts doom for humanity's future...
That one model (which is in fact two models in one; the roads to extinction and ascension are paved with the same technologies) isn't just any model, but the most likely extrapolation of current trends. If you have a better model, I'd love to see it.