And it’s true — you can keep delaying forever. If you look at lithography, for example, we never thought we could pattern geometries below the wavelength of light. Today, however, we routinely pattern at 70 or even 60 nanometers (nm) using light of much higher wavelengths.

Wow… the smart guy says “forever can be delayed” and the writer extrapolates “you can keep delaying forever.” I think this just goes to show that Moore’s law is more like Moore’s trend.

which is sufficient to give us computers with the computational equivalent (or higher) of human intelligence.

I think you underestimate human intelligence.

It should be noted that this in itself is not sufficient, since we have to figure out what sort of programmed connections such a beast might have

Oh, wait, you’re disproving your own point here. If we don’t have an understanding of a problem, how can we say we have the technology with the computational equivalent? There are things that humans can compute that computer probably never will, such as love, fear, happiness, anger, etc.

The core of why Moore’s idea is working in an exponential fashion is that the Moore’s law is about building a tool which lets us build better tools. We use today’s computers to design tommorow’s circuits — through the aid of CAD, predictive tests, and, soon, programs to design the circuits on the board.

If you want a taste of the sort of work Intel is doing to extend Moore’s law for 20-30 years:

http://www.intel.com/labs/features/mi03031.htm

is a great article on the subject.

Instead of arguing, I’d like to know what events, ideas, and conclusions led you from what you were then to what you are now.

I understand that people thinking outside the box is generally a pretty good thing and a benefit to society. I don’t know that that’s what you’re doing, but rather that that’s what you have yourself convinced you’re doing. I make no judgments, only the observation that it may be a feeble, though noble, attempt. “[You] might waste most of [your life] considering fictional things.”

Sounds to me like you buy into the premise that knowledge is power. But knowledge is merely potential power. True power lies only in action.

You sound oftly confident that you’ve got much of the world figured out, and have moved on to “more important” subjects. We do have a fundamental disagreement here… I believe that the way you live your day-to-day life will create a better chance for a better future. You seem to think that theorizing will. There is such a thing as too much theory.

“The more gaps closed in our collective knowledge as humans, the easier it is to work toward common goals.”

While this may be true, it is minute compared to what really keeps us apart: a basic respect, caring, and understanding of one another. The Tao, the fundamental concepts outlined in every major religion around the world. Our culture has it’s head in the clouds, searching for aliens, cloning people, making the rich richer, watching TV, etc. What good is more infotainment? So what if we find great new sources of energy if we can’t hold a normal conversation with our neighbors.

If your reasons are truly altruisic, then so be it. Theory on! I remember a time in my life when this kind of stuff seemed important. I do enjoy verbal sparring and mental challenges, but there’s so much in this world I’d rather do/see/enjoy. People I want to spend more time with… etc.

We barely have circumstancial evidence. We have theories and premises.

No, I’m not making an argument against your ultimate point. I’m saying your argument is based on flimsy premises. You may be able to reach the same conclusion with better ones, but frankly I don’t really care.

“Theorizing about concepts that will never have anything to do with a single day of our lives.”

That’s where we disagree. My mission in life is to figure out as much how and why as possible. I chose that mission. How was I able to do this? Scientists theorized and tested and considered for thousands of years to figure out the truths and facts that exist in the universe. Every time a theory or fact is discovered, a superstition or a dogma or a confusion is squashed by it. If it weren’t for people who wanted to know why and their crackpot ideas that, at the time, would “never have anything to do with a single day of our lives,” my life might be trapped by some bologna like religion or superstition. I might waste most of it considering fictional things.

Every time a how or why is provided or debated, something is added to humanity. Not only is our existence enhanced by knowledge, we help our descendants emotionally and “spiritually” by getting one more minor mystery out of their way and closing one more gap for others to exploit by infecting them with nonsense. It’s pretty easy to argue that most of the suffering in the world involves one person filling the gaps in the minds of others with lies to control them. Fox News, for example.

Now, consider the long run. The more we understand about how and why things are, even if they seem purely theoretical, the more time we have to consider other gaps in our knowledge. My son may spend 10 minutes reading and considering this essay which gives a reasonable, probably explanation for lack of radio communication from other worlds. When he’s outside staring up at the stars, instead of wondering why we seem alone, he may come up with an even more enlightening thought. The more gaps closed in our collective knowledge as humans, the easier it is to work toward common goals.

That, my friend, is how “theorizing about concepts that will never have anything to do with a single day of our lives” will save the world.

If I tell you that statistically, half the electrons in a piece of plastic spin clockwise and half spin counterclockwise, and you say, “Maybe they don’t! You can’t see them! Maybe they all spin the same direction!” you kind of sound like a crank.

When considering ideas like this, we only have circumstantial evidence. There is nothing wrong with this.

Since you’re not proposing any actual arguments against mine, let’s stop pretending you have some beef with the premise of this essay or its individual claims. You’re being hostile. Something more basic about it makes you angry for some reason and it definitely shows when you reply, “Who cares?” to my ideas. Are you angry that I’m musing about the future when the current world is going down the toilet?

Maybe Moore’s law is flawed… not unlike classical physics.

My point is that this creates a small window of curiosity… Curiosity about distant civilizations is a fad that will go away for the stated reasons in a relatively short (hundreds of years) time.

This is at best a guess. Who are you to say where human curiosity might lead? Perhaps technological leaps will only encourage and drive our search for other life in the universe. It’s a flimsy premise, at best, and not one that I really buy into.

If there’s one thing you shouldn’t try to debate, it’s that computers will be unimaginably fast any fraction of galactic time in the future.

Try to debate? I understand that we have made leaps that most people couldn’t have predicted. On the other hand, we don’t have flying cars or x-ray vision yet. Despite being able to very very poorly mimic a 3D environment at the atomic level, the best computer in the world can’t even complete all the possible moves in a chess game. Artificial intelligence is interesting, but the fact remains that computers may never be fast enough to understand the world at a molecular level. You can hardly count your point as a rock-hard premise. Nerf quality at best. :-P

Statistically, we are going to be among the youngest civilizations in the universe.

How would we know? Maybe we’re the most technically advanced race in the universe. Maybe we’re the only advanced race in the universe. I certainly hope not, but I would hardly base a line of reasoning on the statistics of fictional races. The answer is we really don’t know. Our knowledge of extraterrestrial life is limited and shoddy, at best.

Universe has been cool and calm enough to support life for many billions of years.

That doesn’t mean that life exists elsewhere. The conditions for something to happen does not mean that something actually has to happen.

All that being said, who cares? The most important things in our lifetimes have nothing to do with nanotechnology, aliens, or galactic time. What happens when we run out of natural resources and can’t power our super-computers? What happens when biological warfare turns half the planet’s bodies into goo? You can argue that even that this stuff isn’t worth bothering with compared to living life to the fullest, concerning ourselves with things we can make an impact on, rather than theorizing about concepts that will never have anything to do with a single day of our lives.