3 ms·

It's not obvious at all. And I spent months writing about such issues in my physics dissertation. If we're talking about some theoretical far-off future, then

It's not obvious at all. And I spent months writing about such issues in my physics dissertation. If we're talking about some theoretical far-off future, then I posit that prices should be constrained by the conservation laws of physics coupled with the distribution of conserved quantities in the universe. Greater technical ingenuity may get you more redness or more temperature or more velocity, but it will never get you more mass-energy, more momentum, or more charge.

comboy 10y ago
Didn't want to get too far with this to avoid derailing thread into an AI one, but once you are not restricted with human body you can get a lot more done with much less energy. But that's just some orders of magnitude and it does not matter that much with the exponent. So what do you use this energy for? Probably want to know more. Energy is necessary for computation but that's pretty much all what universe is - energy and mass. If you know the process of harvesting it (technology = information) then it's not like you need to do some work. The idea of doing some physical work to get something done is getting deprecated. Once you know exactly how to do something, you can set it up. Information becomes results. So what if there are others that also want to have access to the energy and mass available in the universe, some kind star wars scenario? Technological progress destroys raw power, so it's about who can develop faster. Progress is done through computation. For computation we need algorithm (=information) and energy. Amount of energy influences speed of computation linearly. I'm making an assumption that with algorithm improvements you can do better, much better.
- rimantas 10y ago
  Energy is necessary in any process where you want to decrease entropy.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Is that dissertation available anywhere? dredmorbius@gmail.com if you don't care to share publicly.
- tedsanders 10y ago
  It's not publicly available, unfortunately. I'll send you a copy this weekend. (The main topic is not about the long-term limits of technology, but there is some discussion in the introduction and appendices.)

comboy 10y ago

Didn't want to get too far with this to avoid derailing thread into an AI one, but once you are not restricted with human body you can get a lot more done with much less energy. But that's just some orders of magnitude and it does not matter that much with the exponent. So what do you use this energy for? Probably want to know more. Energy is necessary for computation but that's pretty much all what universe is - energy and mass. If you know the process of harvesting it (technology = information) then it's not like you need to do some work. The idea of doing some physical work to get something done is getting deprecated. Once you know exactly how to do something, you can set it up. Information becomes results. So what if there are others that also want to have access to the energy and mass available in the universe, some kind star wars scenario? Technological progress destroys raw power, so it's about who can develop faster. Progress is done through computation. For computation we need algorithm (=information) and energy. Amount of energy influences speed of computation linearly. I'm making an assumption that with algorithm improvements you can do better, much better.

rimantas 10y ago
Energy is necessary in any process where you want to decrease entropy.

dredmorbius 10y ago

Is that dissertation available anywhere? dredmorbius@gmail.com if you don't care to share publicly.

tedsanders 10y ago
It's not publicly available, unfortunately. I'll send you a copy this weekend. (The main topic is not about the long-term limits of technology, but there is some discussion in the introduction and appendices.)