But where is the divider between higher and lower? If there are 100 atoms where 98 are at energy level 2 and 2 are at energy level 1, the total is 198 and the average is 1.98 so most are above average. However if one is bumped up to 3, then would 3 be the new high?

I we are not financially worse off with a 20 hr work week, that's one way to go.

It would give people more time to pursue their dreams

But what kind of peak? Is it Mt. Everest? or is it just a local maximum?

Bold prediction: with the advent of self-driving cars, the next generation of PC will be portable and massively powerful because they will be in an automobile or Segway form factor. This way, tablets (plural and still easy to carry) can be used for the user interface but the real CPU will be on the same block. You don't want to lug your rack around on a shopping cart, but if it knows how to follow you around or even chauffeur you around, why the heck not?

The point is that the little guy is not going to "invest" in a faster computer until government shows that the faster computer is actually a game changer. The government is the economic guinea pig.

I think the supercomputer race is a very big deal. Even in a land whose people are marginally better at mathematics, they still just want to throw their problems at a faster computer. People who use math more will require quadratically or exponentially more computer speed because they want to solve more difficult problems not now but right now. They're not like, Gee I know math really well so I'm taking the day off, while people who don't know math need to use their electronic brains to do the thinking.

A country with more supercomputing is actually more likely to have the people that offer a greater "solid basis for real strength and prosperity."

Being self sufficient is quite handy if you were trying to run within a spaceship for example, but a setup that merely relies on off-grid power such as solar still requires an external source. Pretty much it means if you need to consume lots of power you end up building your own grid (or else figure out how to use less power to compute the same result).

This month the Top 500 supercomputer list is being updated again, and exaflops is supposed to be just a few years away. This amount of compute speed is projected to burn 1 gigawatt, which is typical for a city of 1 million. To put into perspective, this kind of computer would be possible in a net zero installation so long as it has its own power plant, though a power plant of this magnitude would generally need a crew of people who come to work daily riding fossil fueled vehicles and buy groceries generated from sunlit farms. And yet, the exascale computer is the bare minimum required for simulation of the human brain, a contraption that operates well enough on the caloric content of a chocolate bar. The vast difference in energy consumption between the electronic brain and the organic one shows the potential for improvement in computing efficiency.

A miss is as good as a mile.

It's not really that interesting until we know when and if the big one is going to hit because nature has many other ways to cause catastrophes yet there's no way to prevent them either.

Theory for the Speed of Light

Concurrent computing on a single core PC is nothing but a sequential machine running fast enough to make you think it is computing in parallel.

Hypothesis: the laws of the universe are upheld by a sequential computer that is running at amazing speed but not infinite speed. In order for the activity in the universe to stay predictable, the speed of light is bounded.

I feel better already.

The problem is getting the experience, not just being smart. We live in a world where being intelligent has been rewarded, but the paradox is that it is also punished.

There are different kinds of smart actions

1. Routine or ordinary activities done well. In many cases a person doesn't need to invent a method. Brushing and flossing, folding clothes, changing a tire. These are tasks in order of decreasing frequency. There are already good techniques, but without experience they can be done very stupidly.

2. Problem solving. A trained person can come up with a clever solution given enough time. Being smart or experienced helps a lot.

3. Urgent problem solving in a new situation. Intelligence may be a great asset. Experience also helps a lot.

Current economic conditions let people have good careers in problem solving where some time is available, and people try to avoid problems where they have high risk. For example, most people don't want to test their intelligence where they have to figure out how to escape from a bear when said bear is immediately present. They would rather make a plan and ensure resources are available before approaching the bear.

We have a culture that inhibits us from using our intelligence, largely for our own good, but that can prevent us from advancing to our greatest good. In other words, society is not conducive to arbitrary persons gaining experience in many aspects of life and thus people find it hard to realize their full potential.

On a different tack, rather than money, it may be due to another theory of economics, the law of diminishing returns. As more discoveries are made, it becomes harder to make discoveries, but with the human population growing at least linearly and the population of researchers keeping pace, the rate of good research results is under great pressure to keep up. Add to this the specter of funding cuts and people not wanting to lose their research jobs, and the sheer volume of research results being reported. Human nature completes the syllogism: there will be more falsification.

Speculation sure is fun. If Moore's law doesn't fail us, body parts might be replaceable with synthetics. Eventually our consciousness might all "live" alternate lives in mainframes sent to the stars.

Why are we wondering (again) what is going to happen if we live twice as long? Presumably it's the economy (follow the money). It goes without saying that if the economic numbers (including the first, second, third, ... nth derivatives) stay the same people will have to work longer, there will be more people and on a finitely sized Earth, people will compete like mad for every scrap of opportunity.

Currently the productivity gains and constant unemployment imply putting more people to work will build up inventories, depress prices, and lead to deflation. Deflation may even make things affordable to the vast numbers of poor people around the world. One laptop per child? Maybe it'll become one laptop + a household with many modern conveniences per child (such as TV, Internet, clean running water). So the real question isn't what happens when everyone lives a lot longer. It's what is going to happen when (as the Earth population closes on 7000000000) another x billion people rise up the food chain within maybe 5 years.

I understand the gist. If fewer than 10% believe, the asymptote of belief stays under 10%. Whatever the percentage is, is not important. And some ideas are more sellable than others.

Blasted by by media and bullshit our cynicism and skepticism antenna have become very active, and we like checking out the wackier ideas. There are many shades of grey, so to speak. Some plausible theories such as evolution have gained our approval in terms of viability but not necessarily full acceptance. A simple test: if someone has proved or disproved evolution but before telling you which it is, you can make a bet based on what you already know or believe. Which way would you bet? Deep down, many of us don't really believe in anything but are willing to make a gamble as long as the stakes are low. We hedge and try to maneuver ideas so that they don't have any effect. Does the Higgs boson exist? Whatever. Life goes on.

Truth is truth, regardless of how many people or what authority wants to fight it. People can start a crusade to spread a belief that is wrong, even win over the masses, but if the masses actually rely on this belief to the nth degree, there will be a day of reckoning and the falsehood will be exposed. In the immediate term the 10% rule indicates willingness to give credence to a large number of agreeing minds. In the longer term, we're all advised to think for ourselves.

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critic, n.: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Did it ever occur to you that fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing? Or that we drive on parkways and park on driveways?

Notice how much fun we would have if citizens reported the locations of all the police cars and speed traps?

That's what happens in Soviet Russia, you track the police.

This tracking is so pointless anyways. Except for a few notorious streets, there's hardly ever a patrol car. Unless you see a car parked near a place "of interest" for more than a few times, what of it?

But at our crazy numbers of files stored we see it (and fix it) daily.

I do a lot of MD5 checks on my files. But I have yet to encounter a file that has gone bad on a hard drive over time while the rest of the drive stays good. If the file was written badly (rare but it happens), then the MD5 will be wrong. I have huge multigigabyte files and of course many smaller.

As a rule I try to buy hard disks with more than one year of warranty. They used to be 5 years but a lot of them are now 1 year and 2 year. The 1 year models tended to be flaky, and the 2 year models tend to be quite reliable even with a lot of usage.

Well put. Definitely a good point. Books have enabled and empowered us all since Gutenberg. And now we turn the page, perhaps, with a possibility to revise the way the media market operates.

The demise of a bookstore is not pleasant. Speculate if you will about technology overpowering print. There is still a long way to go before all books are available digitally. Also, a digital copy anchors you to an Internet account and/or to a fragile device, while not always letting you read on a large screen.

It isn't all about how great digital books are and how cheap it is to buy online. It's about the economy and the applicability of knowledge. When you want to solve a problem, you don't read up from a set of books, you Google.

On the downside is the desire of authors to write. We all need to agree to a system that compensates authors to the point they do not complain about digital copies floating all over the place, basically implying they are being rewarded while consumers are not forced to pay exorbitantly in order to fill a hard disk. A book case is quickly filled with physical books, which deters acquisition, but people are voracious if it comes to filling a little gadget that is even smaller than a book yet can hold a library. Setting up social and political mechanisms, aka culture and legislation, for the economics of media will have profound impacts on the economy in general.

I suggest that the real-time consumption of media be tracked or monitored (anonymously). Authors and artists would be compensated from tax base, with a proportional relationship between payment and popularity. That would take care of the icky problems of copyright, pricing, and incentives to create new works. All at once, people would be free to acquire, though it is their interest in specific items that is used to compute the distribution of funds. This should boost the economy, as people will develop interests and have the knowledge to start initiatives, thus taking care of the tax issue. It's a positive feedback loop, which should be a lot more effective than the negative feedback loops messing up the world.