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The models of quantum mechanics have already withstood experiments to a dozen decimal places. You aren't going to find departures just by banging around in your
by jfengel 2y ago
The models of quantum mechanics have already withstood experiments to a dozen decimal places. You aren't going to find departures just by banging around in your garage; you just can't generate enough precision.
The only way forward at this point is to start with the model and design experiments focusing on some specific element that strikes you as promising. Unless you're staring at the model you're just guessing, and it's practically impossible that you're going to guess right.
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- simpaticoder 2y ago>You aren't going to find departures just by banging around in your garage This kind of rhetoric saddens me. Someone says "design an experiment" and you jump to the least charitable conclusion. That people do this is perhaps understandable, but to do it and not get pushback leads to it happening more and more, to the detriment of civil conversation. No, the experiment I had in mind would take place near the Schwarzchild radius of a black hole. This would require an enormous effort, and (civilizational) luck to defy the expectations set by the Drake equation/Fermi paradox. It's something to look forward to, even if not in our lifetimes!
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- exe34 2y ago> No, the experiment I had in mind would take place near the Schwarzchild radius of a black hole I think the GP was thinking of more practical experiments, not science fiction.
- SiempreViernes 2y agoI mean you did just suggest that classical QM can be supplanted by your heavily underspecified finite(?)-state model for which you provide essentially no details, you must admit that's pretty crank-y behaviour.
- jiggawatts 2y agoOne particular model: the electron g-factor. Now go look up how precise a prediction the same model makes for the muon g-factor.
- CooCooCaCha 2y agoThis is one of the reasons I believe science and technology as a whole are on an S-curve. This is obviously not a precise statement and more of a general observation, but each step on the path is a little harder than the last. Whenever a physics theory gets replaced it becomes even harder to make an even better theory. In technology low hanging fruit continues to get picked and the next fruit is a little higher up. Of course there are lots of fruits and sometimes you miss one and a solution turns out to be easier than expected but overall every phase of technology is a little harder and more expensive. This actually coincides with science. Technology is finding useful configurations of science, and practically speaking there are only so many useful configurations for a given level of science. So the technology S-curve is built on the science S-curve.
- xvector 2y agoIt's an S-curve only so long as intelligence doesn't increase exponentially as well. What would the story look like if an ASI existed?
- CooCooCaCha 2y agoIt's just accelerated. AI is bound by physics just like everything else. The S-curve is really about fundamental limits. Lets say ASI helps us make multiple big leaps ahead, I mean mind blowing stuff. That still doesn't change that there must be a limit somewhere. The idea that science and tech is infinite is pure science fiction.
- Retric 2y agoExponential increases in intelligence doesn’t imply that the universe is more complex to compensate.
- thaw13579 2y agoThe first turn in an S-curve can easily look like an exponential. ASI has physical limitations, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t take an S-curve as well, although at a much different rate than human intelligence.
- 2y ago
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoTo be fair quantum mechanics was invented by guessing that energy might be quantized. It just happened to model the universe well.
- oneshtein 2y agoWaves are quantized (one wave, two waves, ...), so energy transfers by waves are quantized too.
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoWhat you are describing is periodicity. That’s different from quantization.