Taking into account physical limitations

Talk about scientific and technological developments in the future
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Karl Rock
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Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:26 am

Taking into account physical limitations

Post by Karl Rock »

I have seen a lot of future predictions who seem to ignore physical factors and take into account only theoretical possibilities.

Particularly, the fields which are the newest, are the one more subject to this effect, such as nanotechnology and brain computer interface.

For example, there are lots of discussions about grey goo. I think grey goo is a byproduct of tendency of futurists atributing magical qualities to naotechnology. "grey goo" exists in nature in the form of bacteria, but 4 billion years of evolution have not made bacteria so efficient that they can process all the earth, there are too many different materials and material states to be processed by a single type of bacteria. I don't think such thing is possible.

The same thing apply to other types of nanotechnology. Futurists often talk about how we could see people made of claytronics who can instantly morph into any shape, have super strenght, shoot lasers and fly. It's hard to think such thing is even possible. Nature have built real robots made of nanomachines, animals, and none of them come close to this.

In the field of brain computer interface, we see the same theoretical ideas, such as machines giving humans super intelligence. Human brains do not work on the same speed as computers, it's unlikely we could simply download knwoledge in our brains like that, most likely brain computer interface will be limited to communication no much better than our smartphones give us today.

When talking about singularity, it is often assumed that the development of ASI will automatically change the world, either by machines killing us all or bringing utopia in about a day. However, let's take into consideration that taking over the world have been tried by real humans and have involved long times and massive amount of resources. Likewise, bringing utopia would need years of resource extraction and mass production. The impact of ASI would likely happen over decades just as have been the impact of electricity, as people find ways to apply it.

It's important to be prudent in predictions, not making predictions too bold, at the risk of public discredit.
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Powers
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Re: Taking into account physical limitations

Post by Powers »

Obvious Chat-GPT is obvious.
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erowind
Posts: 544
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 5:42 am

Re: Taking into account physical limitations

Post by erowind »

Powers wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 11:16 pm Obvious Chat-GPT is obvious.
I do wonder how many years it will be before it isn't so obvious?
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