Indeed, I do however always try to remind myself of how often the impossible has been achieved.
Time will tell!
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@draw That was a good article by By Mikhail Dyakonov and well worth the read.
And how often in theoretical physics an avenue of research proves to be unfruitful. Steady State Universe or String theory that has no results after decades. My view is that they will find uses for the machines that they have developed that can do some stuff (occasionally) and make some sort of hybrid system that can perform some functions faster than a traditional digital computer (rather like analogue computers used to be able to do) and might even be able to be used for some modelling of quanta. In other words we will see some benefits but not on the scale that was promised by the media and in funding proposals.
Well 3 decades have shown that the required time frame has been grossly understated at every turn.
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Well, I encountered that article a couple of weeks ago on Slashdot (article of @anon26713768 is there also mentioned). Because I don’t want to overdo the copy pasting of articles from there, I didn’t post it then. Also it seems to be more of an opinion of the guy that quantum computing is not possible/very far in the future.
And like you say: what form of quantum computing will eventually be delivered.
Instead of string theory, I was thinking about Nuclear fusion. That certainly takes its time to develop.
https://www.investinblockchain.com/decentralized-cloud-storage-platforms/
Not much to read, but Maidsafe are mentioned.
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At least we know that works. We have plenty of examples to aspire to. And the outcome will more than compensate for all the efforts/cost put into it. But quantum computers as promised is not a certainty and unlike traditional computing the purposes/algorithms will be more like it was with analogue computers. You program the hardware for certain functionality and it’ll do it. Analogue computers had (semi) infinitely variable parameters and didn’t run the program as a digital step by step process. Quantum computers will have (semi) infinite parameters and semi digital step by step process.
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That sounds l33t though, a security consultant that hacks with a ballpen deserves respect…
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In virtually all cases when I hear this phrase used it’s referring to something that would be so outrageously impossible to pull off that even stooping down to debating it is mentally damaging. “Truth seekers” are more often than not just thrill seekers, as @Nigel so aptly described.
For example, the Moon landings. Let’s ignore the sheer amount of independent evidence and focus instead on the people who were involved in it at a number of different levels. If you live in the US, chances are you know a few people who had an aunt or uncle working on the thing. How would the government manage to silence all of them? The same goes for chemtrails, by the way. Half the country should be in on the conspiracy to pull off something at that scale, not to mention the rest of the world…
Now, if you can show evidence to something extraordinary (or evidence that something is being actively hidden) and there’s no compelling counter evidence, there’s good reason to start an investigation. However, I tend to believe (for the reasons I outlined above) that in most cases when we seem to discover some large scale operation it’s just our brain (so eager to find patterns everywhere) playing tricks on us and, in reality, it’s just a few crooked people pulling a few strings to make a few millions for themselves.
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This sounds like a fitting description of any government worldwide.
…
Wait a minute!
Exactly.
Just because governments are made up of crooks it doesn’t mean they can pull off large scale conspiracies. For one, crooked people tend to be paranoid (for good reason: they surround themselves with other crooks) and that results in distrust and falling out.
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This I agree with. Many of the “conspiracies” just couldn’t be carried out due to the sheer grandiosity of such operations and the lack of control over the parties involved. (Or we’re worse psychologists than we believe.) On the other hand, I would wager there is a certain albeit small percentage of cases where even the most deranged and schizoid paranoiacs are actually onto something.
I also support not trusting and always questioning mainstream media (which are mostly owned by oligarchs these days anyway). The line is thin though and when it leads to pretend thinking and tin foil millinery, it’s probably better to be put on than put away.
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That doesn’t actually matter. It’s impossible to identify the real positives in the presence of that many false positives.
Study the subject inside-out and convince me you truly understand it. Collect evidence, and I mean real evidence, not some bullshit out-of-context misinterpretation of something you have no idea about, as usual in conspiracy theorist circles. Then, and only then, publish it. Be ready to answer all questions because your piece will be taken apart and scrutinized, as it should be. At the first sign that a “theory” is less thorough than this, I’ll freely dismiss it as just another bullshit conspiracy theory, and I’ll be right to do so.
It does matter. Because that slight possibility is precisely what calls for the latter part, to scrutinize anything at all. If it’s all bullshit by nature, why even bother to approach it in any rational manner.
Put under the sort of scrutiny and having to meet the credibility demands you’ve just outlined, most journalist would starve to death, no matter if they write for Washington Post or Truth For All Today! or Free the People Now!
… as they should, I may add. Though I would suggest them to look for a job they are actually good at.
Well, some people may never become good at anything, so I suggest lowering your standards once again and offering them a job where they’re bound to cause the minimum damage possible.
Every time a journalist comes out with a half-assed report about something that, if proven to be true, would be very important, the readers learn two things: 1) proof is optional, 2) nothing ever is certain. That kind of journalism is about entertainment, not about alerting the public to things that went wrong and need to be changed. It doesn’t (can’t) fix anything but it undermines the work of those journalists who do their jobs.
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Can you imagine all the journalists doing what you’ve just set as an example of great job?
Public would go totally numb and alerting anyone when something actually happens would only be possible through !televarieté! and screaming for attention in the cheapest sensationalist manner.
Bad journalist do not undermine the great ones. They underscore them. Same in any field.
.
In most fields, doing a lousy job gets you fired, or sends you to jail even. What would happen if a civil engineer could design one sub-standard bridge after the other with impunity? Would people dare to cross bridges?
That’s what happens in journalism though, but the effects are less visible though nonetheless dramatic. People no longer trust journalism, and for a good reason. In what way would that not undermine the reputation of the good jounalists too???
The public is already numb exactly because journalism is rarely beyond cheap sensationalism. They are deafened by it to the point that they can’t even hear a logical argument.
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Well he can’t. Because if he does it once, he won’t get to do it again, as a more capable engineer will get to design another one. And that’s the point.
If you’re not able to discern a good journalism from the bad one, is the bad journalism at fault? If you can’t tell a great piece of work even when measured against crap, how on earth are you gonna appreciate great work when everything meets the same standard?
Do you really believe that making everything great would work? It would just temporarily change the mediocrity standards.
Blaming public’s inertia on shoddy or yellow journalism seems dishonest. You are responsible for what you read. Not the schmuck who has written it. And you are responsible for the stance you take after you have read it.
You were saying journalist should be able to post stuff without due diligence, but now you’re saying they should or would be weeded out. Those two views are incompatible and we already know the bad journalists are not getting weeded out because we can see they have become the majority. Anyway, I’m probably finished with this discussion because I don’t have much else to say.
No.
No. I was talking about bad engineers. Because you were talking about engineers. And now I hope we’ll get to astronauts. I want to the Moon soon.
That’s because engineers were a bad parallel to begin with. Anyway, to my logic, those two views would still be perfectly in line.
They have become the majority because the very public you would rather see pampered wants to read columns for free. That is not a bad journalist’s fault. And the same public can say “no no no! This crap. I want something better!” And go elsewhere.
If they won’t because they’re numb, dulled out, lazy and slow, killing off bad journalism won’t help. If you terminated shitty writers, these folks would probably stop reading altogether.
And before you back out, let me tell you I despise bad writing as much as you do. But it’s definitely not what I blame for my stupor.