Quoting, Jeff Bezos professor, Gerard O'Neil at Princeton, "Scientists tend to overestimate the impact of breakthroughs, and underestimate the impact of straight forward extensions of the knowledge we already have." This may be where physicists have let us down in the sense of being eager beavers in establishing the maximal numbers of qubits with their research budgets, rather than emphasizing How many entanglements result in successful operations? Off-On, 1/0's, Yes/No and all that is digital. We may now be arriving at the phase where 4 out of 10K entanglements actually work and instead ensure that most do work. That would then be the impact for all of us. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/06/1066317/whats-next-for-quantum-computing/
-----Original Message----- From: John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Fri, Jan 6, 2023 7:57 am Subject: Re: Are we entering a time of no more technological advances? On Thu, Jan 5, 2023 at 2:30 PM spudboy100 via Everything List <everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote: https://phys.org/news/2023-01-scientific-breakthroughs.html > Will AI ever come to the rescue or is there some unanticipated physical limit > on humanity's part? Although it's hard define an objective standard for such things I can't help but feel that society changed more between 1900 and 1950 than between 1950 and 2000, that's because before 1900 we didn't know a lot about electricity so the common man saw few if any occasions of it being put into practical use; and before 1900 we didn't have a technological ability to mass produce light strong parts at an affordable price that had the precision needed for an internal combustion engine. History shows that when a breakthrough is made you'll get a huge change in the way we live with the rate gradually tapering off until the next breakthrough. Today 2 breakthroughs are clearly on the horizon, Nanotechnology and AI, and they have huge and possibly infinite potential because as Richard Feynman said "there's plenty of room at the bottom", and because there's no obvious limit on how smart something can be. I think we're entering a time when more technical advances will be made but NOT by human beings and, depending on your perspective and that of the machines, AI will either come to our rescue or put scientists and engineers out of a job. There is a very good talk [the link is below] clearly making the case that Earth may be the only place in the observable universe where intelligent creatures evolved (intelligence being operationally defined as the ability to make a radio telescope). To some that may seem like a depressing conclusion but to me it is not because, despite looking for over half a century with ever larger and more sensitive telescopes, we have never seen even a hint of ET or his engineering and there are only 2 viable explanations for that: 1) For some unknown reason life is unable to make a significant impact on the universe. 2) The observable universe is finite so somebody has to be the first, and we are it. I personally find the second possibility less depressing than the first, but your mileage may vary and there is no disputing matters of taste. Why we might be alone John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis 84n -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2QZb7cW8BWzGSgjh0rTefjkq%3DOhcsHOXc98x8kAGAxdg%40mail.gmail.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1826192607.3338797.1673045033820%40mail.yahoo.com.
