Never attribute to malevolence and conspiracy what can be explained by ineptitude and apathy. - Skeptic folk saying
On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 5:08 PM, Scott Locklin <[email protected]>wrote: > Raul: > > >Of course I might be wrong about that. But we certainly seem to be > > >investing a lot of money into making sure that academics are... > > >well... academic, and so specialized that we do not accomplish much of > > >anything useful. > > > IMO, this is just something that happens in the late stages of > bureaucratization. Though I am no expert, other than a few grad school > courses, and talking to real experts, I don't think there is anything > particularly wrong with QM. Maybe there will be something more satisfying > one day, but at present, there seems no reason to doubt the results. Stuff > like string theory, or doing decades of "research" on programming imaginary > quantum computers, though: this is just an academic glass bead game. If > it's not physical, as in, you can do an experiment with physical objects, > it's not physics. The experimental side is the hard part. A lot of theory > is just collecting a paycheck for being smart. Easy living if you can get > the work though; I considered it as a career path before coming to my > senses. > > > >My take is that we do have a huge optical computing infrastructure > > >already built. And that our government is so twisted around its own > >structure that it can't admit, yet, to having built it, nor what its > > >capabilities are. > > > >And I think I know why. And I'm trying to work up enough courage to > > >express those thoughts. > > I'd be curious what you're thinking here. The spooks certainly have stuff > we don't specifically know about (crazy space planes, big computers, big > ASIC things for doing crypto, weird ECM doodads), but it seems to me a > large scale revolutionary invention like a useful optical computer would be > difficult to hide. You can infer a lot about spooky government priorities > going through the SBIR funny papers; all the "total information awareness" > successors were pretty obvious looking at these some years ago. You could > also tell the F-35 was doomed back in 2006 or so. It seems like a big > optical computer would require infrastructure and new doodads that you'd > hear about from time to time. You'd probably also see things from Coherent > and Newport (and, I dunno, maybe Cisco) which could be used for such a > beast. > > FWIIW, I think this project has the best chances of turning Fusion into an > energy technology. I'll eventually be going through some of the patents on > my blog, but they seem like serious people with some really good ideas. > > > http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/the-secret-us-russian-nuclear-fusion-project/19039 > > > -SL > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > -- Devon McCormick, CFA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
