Daniel,

It's not 'just QM' at all, it's about unification of all of physics. A current main barrier is QM, but the same interaction mechanism also allows SR to converge. (scattering is at c in the electron rest frame). ALL main physics questions are then answered at once. Most eminent physicists seem to agree unification is the key. Do you not? Perhaps you'd need to study my last 3 essays to understand the full picture (all top 7 community scorers). I've also answered in detail in my blog including in the post below.

Thanks. I'm a practical guy and recognise that all significant advancement is led by advances in science and technology. See my post to John above. I consider most essays here are either stating the obvious, give some ideal, or discuss a specialisation. Few actually point and steer a negotiable path with real chance of big progress. The 'quantum leap' I cite. I'm disappointed that didn't come across to all, but then current confusion means all have different views of the problem.

Have you noticed the propensity for unintended and even 'reverse' outcomes? That's because people take the obvious view and don't think through cause and effect. As an 'enabler' that's my job. I see most wandering around lost with no tangible way of making real progress or understanding of where to start. Clearly no one thing can improve our understanding better and more widely than unification of physics. I thought your essay showed you understood the importance of identifying and focussing on the right things. Was I wrong?

Best wishes

Peter

Thanks for writing, Eugene! I've checked out your essay and commented there.

I do think that societal phenomena could be crucial. It will be a challenge, though, to create a predictive theory reliable enough to make good predictions about future governments (or at least it seems so to me). I'd love to see more people taking up this challenge.

Thanks for your comments,

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for reading my paper and commenting on my page a while ago. I found your article to be exceptional, and I'm glad so many others here agree. Let's all think and work hard so our descendants will have a nice Large future!

I am about to rate your essay and I will rate it highly. All the best!

Warmly,

Aaron

    Hi Daniel,

    Important essay on steering away from danger. I liked Georgina's input on genetically modified plants and their danger.

    Kurzweil seems to see AI technology as approaching a singularity. I have my doubts. Groups of humans using AI as "augmentation" still beat any computer without human augmentation at chess. But who knows what the future brings.

    Nice work,

    Don Limuti

      • [deleted]

      Daniel,

      Clearly your proposition is correct, but without identifying the key areas which will enable consequential advancements across the board I confess I struggle to see it's uniqueness or value in giving a direction to steer. Even identifying our actual critical failures, wrong directions or the dangers facing us would be a step in that direction.

      I think you're correct in that there are always fundamental advancements which would save vast resources on less widely effective, but the skill is in identifying them. For instance a few posts above you effectively query the importance of the unification of the classical and quantum descriptions and understandings of the universe. Bringing together the 'two great pillar' of physics that remain entirely incompatible due to our ignorance.

      I see you haven't answered the question asked there. Yet it seems clear that closing this massive and fundamental divide, described as the holy grail of physics, would clearly have the widest of effects, yet you seem to see it as equal to all other areas, surely contradicting your approach?

      My own subject, eugenics, is slightly different in that it can represent as much of a danger as advancement if not reigned in, yet with all such areas a fundamentally better understanding of how nature works would help avoid the most serious mistakes. Another fundamental is the way we employ our brains, badly needing far better teaching methods as eugenics can't help.

      I'm really asking if the value is not in identifying the area where the greatest fundamental 'leaps' are possible. There does seem to be a lot of 'stating the obvious' in the essays without fulfilling the practical specifics of the scoring criteria. Do you not think your view falls into that category? I needed the commitment of a short list of suggested focuses at the end.

      But good writing, organisation and presentation of course.

      Judith

        • [deleted]

        It is probably the case that what is called a crucial phenomenon is determined so by politics. The orientation of scientific and technological progress has a fair amount to do with policy.

        I make an assessment of these ideas about hyper-advanced intelligent life and the Kardashev scale. I think it is unlikely that any IGUS (information gathering and utilizing system) can achieve these levels. For this reason I think our universe is a natural system and not something generated as a "matrix" on an enormous computer system.

        http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2010

        Cheers LC

          A thoughtful and nicely-written essay, Daniel. In contrast to those who think you didn't do enough to identify crucial phenomena, the message I take away is the importance of theoretical guidance as primary to crucial choices. In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, "If you don't know where you're going, you might end up somewhere else."

          To break the grip of pragmatic and whimsical politics over scientific policy, my own preferred framework is a robust and redundant communications and supply network of laterally-linked resources.

          High marks from me, and all best to you in the competition.

          Tom

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            Dear Daniel,

            Your Hamming window seems to have not much overlap to what I selected as my aim: peace. While I appreciate your courage to deal with future AI and its consequences, I am an old engineer who hesitates to measure the result of discoveries, inventions, and other contributions to progress in terms of "the size of humanity's future".

            I agree with you on that Peter Jackson's claims are perhaps far fetched if they are correct at all.

            I am trying to understand your separation between crucial (= important natural if I understood you correctly) phenomena and artificial i.e. man-made facts (e.g. birth control). Does this separation matter much?

            You are also using terms like "biological instability" or "robustness" in possibly mistakable manner. My command of English is shaky. For that reason, I would like you to explain to me how you meant humility in your last sentence:

            °"So much the worse for our collective humility" seems, to me, the only acceptable response." Did you quote something in the first part of this sentence? You gave no reference. What you quoted from Hamming is easily understandable to me.

            Best,

            Eckard

              • [deleted]

              Daniel,

              I appreciate you didn't call my hypothesis "far fetched" as Eckard suggests but asked why would such a; "leap forward in quantum mechanics make a significant difference to humanity's future? Is it more, less, or equally important relative to other major scientific questions, in your opinion?"

              I answered, noting that the unification of classical (relativity) and quantum physics it enabled was far more important than and other major scientific question as it advanced understanding in ALL areas, particularly ecological, as Judy also recognises. I asked for a suggestion of the most unlikely area by someone asking a similar question. I was given the 'expansion of the sun'.

              Firstly; precise ideas of IF and WHEN would emerge (the odds are ~15:1 we'd be accreted to the AGN first) and then also methods to escape the fate(s) earlier, i.e. apparent FTL space travel, via the logical solution to the common apparent superluminal AGN (quasar) jet outflows at up to 46c (in the AGN frame), which is if the mechanism is correct, is all about collimation (flows within flows with shear planes between). Links to the PR papers on that are available if you're interested.

              It really is fundamental to all matter based science. Judy sees the great biological implications but also the failure to RECOGNISE it's importance, and to challenge assumptions and current doctrine. All other hypotheses are judged against the fundamental doctrines, so correct solutions will be rejected until we correct the foundations.

              The solution itself is geometrically self apparent, but again it's dismissed as it's 'different' to current doctrine. I hope you can see the universal relevance. Do pick a topic yourself if you wish, which you think may NOT benefit from the fundamental understanding of classical 'QM' - (but note my prev essays covered many already).

              I'm happy if I've helped the well deserved rise of your own. Now as Judy says we just need specifics!

              Best wishes

              Peter

                Hi Aaron,

                I was glad to! Thanks for taking a look at mine as well. It's been enjoyable getting people's reactions and different viewpoints.

                My best,

                Daniel

                Hi Don,

                Thanks for your comments. I'm glad you raise the chess example--- I think it will be important to see whether human-computer teams continue to dominate in chess, whether they are equally dominant in other tasks, and whether a theoretical basis can be found for explaining that success. Thanks for mentioning it.

                I'll take a look at your essay!

                Best,

                Daniel

                Hi Judith,

                It's clear that you found something unsatisfactory about the essay, but I am having trouble understanding exactly what it is. I'd appreciate your help in figuring it out.

                I have tried to do three things with my essay. In order from most abstract to most concrete: first, I point out that Bostrom and Beckstead's views imply that we should steer the future primarily by trying to achieve Large and avoid Small futures; second, that this is a reason that societies and their governments should support and invest in scientific research on crucial phenomena; and third, that extinction risks from biological engineering and AI are concrete crucial phenomena that ought to be invested in. This does seem to me to "identify key areas" and "give a direction to steer". What element seemed missing, to you? If you wanted proposed solutions, I'm afraid I don't have good ones; it seems to me that we know little enough about the problems that more study is needed before solutions can be found. I have more ideas about what topics can be studied in AI risk here, in case you're interested.

                You say "I needed the commitment of a short list of suggested focuses at the end". I had intended the bio and AI risks to be that short list of suggested focuses. I can't really see the list getting shorter; did you want my recommendations to be more specific?

                Thanks for pointing me back at Peter's question; I see he's posted again, and I'll be going back and trying to explain myself more clearly to him; hopefully you'll find my reply to him useful.

                Thanks for commenting, and I'll go check your essay out; your topic sounds very interesting!

                Best,

                Daniel

                Thanks for the comment, Lawrence! I'll check out your essay.

                Best,

                Daniel

                Hi Tom,

                Thanks! I agree, working with folks like Bostrom and Beckstead has given me a healthy respect for using theory to guide us towards really high-stakes issues.

                Thanks for the link to your essay; I'm quite interested in science policy and governance. I look forward to reading it.

                Best of luck,

                Daniel

                Hi Eckard,

                Hamming window, nice :)

                As to your questions: by crucial phenomenon, I mean an empirical regularity or relationship that holds between sets of real-world conditions, that is especially important in determining how our choices affect the size of humanity's long-term future. Crucial phenomena could be properties of natural systems, like cells or black holes, or they could be properties of man-made systems, like the LHC or computers with particular programs on them. Does that help?

                I do think that biological "instability" or "robustness" might not be the ideal phrases, and I'll be on the lookout for better ones.

                The closing quote was questionable to a friend of mine who proofread the essay, so you're not alone there :) "Humility" means "having a modest or low view of one's own importance", thinking that we can't do much of significance. The quote isn't from anything; I put it in quotation marks to figuratively indicate that when we encounter the conflict between our modesty and our duty to humanity's future, humanity ought to "respond" by denying its humility and embracing its duty. Thanks for the feedback, that'll need some work for a future draft.

                I look forward to reading your essay!

                Best,

                Daniel

                Hi Peter,

                If I understand right, you're saying that your proposed unification of quantum mechanics and relativity will also advance understanding in ecology? That's pretty unintuitive to me. Would you like to explain more?

                In response to your previous post: "Most eminent physicists seem to agree unification is the key. Do you not?" I assume that they think it's key to the mission of physics, that is, to a mathematical understanding of the fundamental laws that govern the universe. I was just asking whether you had a concrete idea of how that affects humanity's future, and how you'd rank it against other kinds of science we could do if our priority was to steer humanity's future. For example, given the choice between accelerating progress in theoretical physics and accelerating progress in epidemiology, I would choose epidemiology, on the grounds that pandemics are becoming an increasingly large risk, whereas theoretical physics seems to have little to no urgency. Given the choice, how would you prioritize theoretical physics like the kind you propose relative to the other investments available?

                Side note: I would never advocate cutting off one field of inquiry entirely in favour of another (except in the most dire of emergencies), so I hope I'm not coming across as disliking physics. I love physics, and it's a very deep, beautiful, and significant field; however, that doesn't mean that I think it's particularly relevant to how humanity should steer the future.

                "I thought your essay showed you understood the importance of identifying and focussing on the right things. Was I wrong?" Well, I hope not, but I have been known to make mistakes! ;)

                Best,

                Daniel

                I've replied to your later post, just to keep things tidy.

                Best,

                Daniel

                Hi Daniel,

                Thank you for your comments on my essay. I appreciate also this opportunity to read and think about what you have to say. I think you have succeeded in identifying crucial phenomena, and your approach seems sensible and insightful. I also like the fact that you connect your proposals to significant recent work. Where my outlook might differ from yours is that I would judge the next few decades to be a time of serious existential risk (in Bostrom's sense). It might be hard enough just to avoid the dangers, so maybe we can't be guided by much more than Bostrom's maxipok. Aim for Large might be too ambitious for the rest of this century. In other words, if disaster is avoided, then there will be time to work on maximizing the probability of a large future. At present, though, steering past the dangers will take the resources available. However that may be, your long-range vision can motivate people to face the tasks immediately before us.

                I have looked at your Web site. I intend to keep in touch with your future research and writing.

                Laurence Hitterdale

                  Dear Daniel,

                  I read your essay with interest, and I agree with the essence of your proposal. In particular, I fully subscribe to the idea that producing and disseminating technical, publicly understandable knowledge of critical phenomena is . . . critical.

                  I only have a minor remark about your style of presentation.

                  In Section 2 the exposition is kept to a high level of abstraction, with advantages in terms of elegance and conciseness; but I feel it would have benefitted from some concrete, coloured examples of the future scenarios that you classify, just to please the reader`s imagination, and perhaps to better match the nature of this contest. (It is clear from your bio that you work full time on these topics: you probably take for granted a number of ideas that normal readers would need to see expanded, and you prefer to focus on the overall logical architecture of your exposition.)

                  In presenting the four categories of crucial phenomena in Section 3 you do provide some more examples - but again I had the impression that the exposition is a bit more concerned with the logical symmetry and elegance of the classification than to the effectiveness (and appropriateness) of the examples.

                  The notion of `breadth` of humanity`s future, measured by the controlled resources, also sounds a bit vague (to this reader).

                  In some cases it may be hard to quantify the duration of humanity, i.e. to decide where to place the mark of termination, in light of the hybrid solutions (cyborgs etc.) mentioned in several other essays in this contest.

                  Talking about abstraction, this is another passage which I would have loved to see expanded: `humanity`s future size could be dramatically impacted by the cosmological rate of expansion, which determines how much matter is ultimately reachable by humans.` This sounds abstractly reasonable, but, to some reader, it may be hard to attach some definite meaning to the concept.

                  Ah! The ending of your text (on collective humility) is cute!

                  Good luck for your important work, and best regards.

                  Tommaso

                    • [deleted]

                    Hi Daniel,

                    Thank you for the explanations. Peter Jackson has perhaps anything but a modest view of his own importance. I don't deny, I have to humbly admit being not in position to understand and embrace what he claims.

                    You wrote: "phenomena could be properties of natural systems". A phenomenon is something that is observed to happen or exist. The properties of a substance or an object are the ways in which it behaves in particular conditions.

                    Still trying to understand what you meant with "the size of humanity's future", I think you meant the desired property of future being a bright alias great one. I know that great means only in German nearly the same as does big. A big woman is a fat one.

                    I hope my current essay does not contain too much of such embarrassing mistakes. Please don't hesitate asking me if something seems to be strange.

                    Your topic susceptibility to misuse is the same that motivated Alfred Nobel.

                    Best,

                    Eckard