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I think it depends on how 'chaotic' new discoveries are. For example, discovering relativity helped us to explain the world as it already was; e.g. it explaine

I think it depends on how 'chaotic' new discoveries are. For example, discovering relativity helped us to explain the world as it already was; e.g. it explained the precession of Mercury's orbit, but Mercury's orbit was already precessing. On the other hand, since we discovered quantum mechanics, it's affected many aspects of the world. Many quantum effects only cause small deviations in measurements, similar to those of relativity, and naturally "average out" on the macro scale. Yet once we noticed them, we were able to amplify these effects, and now quantum devices like semiconductors are all over the place; even something mundane like the postal service now involves computers, and hence to be explained fully requires quantum mechanics. I can imagine a future where all of our discoveries are of the relativity kind; i.e. making more precise predictions of some measurements, and having little effect outside of those measurements (although relativity has certainly changed our perspective and interpretation of the universe!) I can also imagine a future where we discover some minor correction to a measurement, say a slight shift in the spectral lines of novae, which is explained via an effect we can harness and which will affect all manner of things in the way quantum physics has. For example, maybe the discrepancy is explained as a weak gravitational repulsion; or due to matter making short jumps through time; or some other phenomenon which affects natural systems in subtle ways, but which we can amplify artificially to have far reaching effects.

XorNot 10y ago
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7047/full/436150a.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7047/full/436150a... Nature publishes short sci-fi stories in each issue. This one is kind of amazing.
- chriswarbo 10y ago
  Well, it's a little amusing I suppose, but I don't see what makes it 'kind of amazing'. I never understood claims like "if there's no free will, why do anything?"; it doesn't matter whether something's deterministic or not, only whether it's predictable or not. The only non-BS form of "free will" I've come across is Wolfram's approach of computational irreducibility, where "I" am the computational process which calculates my behaviour. From that perspective, even if someone can predict my behaviour and choices with 100% accuracy, it's still "me" making those choices, since their model of me is just another instance of me. Everything else is just geocentric fairytales.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    If there's no free will, why do anything? Because I can't not do it, because I have no free will...
  - XorNot 10y ago
    I like the hook of 1 second negative-time circuits being mass produced. So much so you can put them on keychains, buy them at a dollar shop, whatever. That's the thing you really need to imagine: a world filled with gadgets more common then iPhones, that do a very trivial bit of future prediction that massively undermines our entire perception of reality.
- teraflop 10y ago
  There's a similar idea in Greg Egan's recent Orthogonal trilogy [1]. It's a fascinating series that explores a universe with different law of physics from our own, with the physical implications worked out in considerable detail. One of the more intriguing (although hand-wavy) ideas is that in this universe, it's fairly straightforward to construct a device to send information backwards in time -- but if you actually do so, social and technological progress will immediately grind to a halt, on purely thermodynamic grounds. The idea is that any information that you send back seems to "appear from nowhere" as part of a stable causal loop, and so the entropically-favored outcomes are the ones where as much of the information as possible is uninteresting. [1] http://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/ORTHOGONAL.html http://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/ORTHOGONAL.html
- joeyo 10y ago
  The really amazing thing is that the "Predictor" device actually exists [1], and has since 1963 when it was invented by neurosurgeon W. Grey Walter. Here's a description of it from Dan Dennett's Book Consciousness Explained: Grey Walter performed his experiment with patients in whose motor cortex he had implanted electrodes. He wanted to test the hypothesis that certain bursts of recorded activity were the initiators of intentional actions. So he arranged for each patient to look at slides from a carousel projector. The patient could advance the carousel at will, by pressing the button on the controller. ... Unbeknownst to the patient, however, the controller button was a dummy, not attached to the slide projector at all! What actually advanced the slides was the amplified signal from the electrode implanted in the patient's motor cortex. ... One might suppose that the patients would notice nothing out of the ordinary, but in fact they were startled by the effect, because it seemed to them as if the slide projector was anticipating their decisions. They reported that just as they were "about to" push the button, but before they had actually decided to do so, the projector would advance the slide - and they would find themselves pressing the button with the worry that it was going to advance the slide twice! Now that you know it's real, will you behave any differently? 1. Not the negative time delay mechanism, though.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  Reminds me of a short-story, "All the Myriad Ways" by Larry Niven, although that was almost the opposite, because it dealt with a different kind of "pointlessness". Specifically, about how choices were robbed of meaning when -- in some universe or another -- you made every one of them, as opposed to losing meaning because choices were impossible or predetermined.
  - chriswarbo 10y ago
    Whenever scifi invokes the "infinite number of parallel worlds" trope I become much more cynical about all of the subsequent events. "Will he reach the airlock in time?" well there's an infinite number of him that do, and an infinite number which don't. And an infinite number where he's a banana. The only question is which outcome the writer has decided to show us.

XorNot 10y ago

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7047/full/436150a.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7047/full/436150a... Nature publishes short sci-fi stories in each issue. This one is kind of amazing.

chriswarbo 10y ago
Well, it's a little amusing I suppose, but I don't see what makes it 'kind of amazing'. I never understood claims like "if there's no free will, why do anything?"; it doesn't matter whether something's deterministic or not, only whether it's predictable or not. The only non-BS form of "free will" I've come across is Wolfram's approach of computational irreducibility, where "I" am the computational process which calculates my behaviour. From that perspective, even if someone can predict my behaviour and choices with 100% accuracy, it's still "me" making those choices, since their model of me is just another instance of me. Everything else is just geocentric fairytales.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  If there's no free will, why do anything? Because I can't not do it, because I have no free will...
- XorNot 10y ago
  I like the hook of 1 second negative-time circuits being mass produced. So much so you can put them on keychains, buy them at a dollar shop, whatever. That's the thing you really need to imagine: a world filled with gadgets more common then iPhones, that do a very trivial bit of future prediction that massively undermines our entire perception of reality.
teraflop 10y ago
There's a similar idea in Greg Egan's recent Orthogonal trilogy [1]. It's a fascinating series that explores a universe with different law of physics from our own, with the physical implications worked out in considerable detail. One of the more intriguing (although hand-wavy) ideas is that in this universe, it's fairly straightforward to construct a device to send information backwards in time -- but if you actually do so, social and technological progress will immediately grind to a halt, on purely thermodynamic grounds. The idea is that any information that you send back seems to "appear from nowhere" as part of a stable causal loop, and so the entropically-favored outcomes are the ones where as much of the information as possible is uninteresting. [1] http://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/ORTHOGONAL.html http://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/ORTHOGONAL.html
joeyo 10y ago
The really amazing thing is that the "Predictor" device actually exists [1], and has since 1963 when it was invented by neurosurgeon W. Grey Walter. Here's a description of it from Dan Dennett's Book Consciousness Explained: Grey Walter performed his experiment with patients in whose motor cortex he had implanted electrodes. He wanted to test the hypothesis that certain bursts of recorded activity were the initiators of intentional actions. So he arranged for each patient to look at slides from a carousel projector. The patient could advance the carousel at will, by pressing the button on the controller. ... Unbeknownst to the patient, however, the controller button was a dummy, not attached to the slide projector at all! What actually advanced the slides was the amplified signal from the electrode implanted in the patient's motor cortex. ... One might suppose that the patients would notice nothing out of the ordinary, but in fact they were startled by the effect, because it seemed to them as if the slide projector was anticipating their decisions. They reported that just as they were "about to" push the button, but before they had actually decided to do so, the projector would advance the slide - and they would find themselves pressing the button with the worry that it was going to advance the slide twice! Now that you know it's real, will you behave any differently? 1. Not the negative time delay mechanism, though.
Terr_ 10y ago
Reminds me of a short-story, "All the Myriad Ways" by Larry Niven, although that was almost the opposite, because it dealt with a different kind of "pointlessness". Specifically, about how choices were robbed of meaning when -- in some universe or another -- you made every one of them, as opposed to losing meaning because choices were impossible or predetermined.
- chriswarbo 10y ago
  Whenever scifi invokes the "infinite number of parallel worlds" trope I become much more cynical about all of the subsequent events. "Will he reach the airlock in time?" well there's an infinite number of him that do, and an infinite number which don't. And an infinite number where he's a banana. The only question is which outcome the writer has decided to show us.