Comments on: Foreseeing the next paradigm shift http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3215 examining transformative technology Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:23:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: larens http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3215#comment-859623 larens Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:05:37 +0000 http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3215#comment-859623 A "paradigm shift" involves a change much larger than those implied by the items on your list. I think that the shift will be toward belief in a "utilitarian anthropocentric" universe. This is the idea that the universe is not only fine tuned to allow our existence in it, but is also fine tuned to allow us to succeed as a technological civilization in overcoming our current global problems, e.g., resource depletion and climate change. This will be a change comparable to the shift from the belief in a geocentric universe several centuries ago. This will involve a shift in orientation from engineers implementing scientific discoveries to scientists implementing engineering discoveries. Specifically, the metric system of measurement, i.e, numbers from objects, will be augmented by a new universal gauge system, i.e., objects from numbers. This gauge system can be derived from three physical constants, i.e., the atomic mass unit, Planck's constant and the speed of light, rather then using the Earth as the metric system does. The number for the speed of light can be easily calculated using mirror symmetries, which appropriately scales the temperature for ambient conditions. The surprise is that once one specifies diamond as the ideal nanoscale measuring stick, one can select a preferred numerical base, scale up to human size, and get a new second better matching the rotation of the Earth over the next four thousand years! A further surprise is that the difference between the new day (86400 new seconds) and the real Earth day is symmetrical with respect to the epoch of our current calendar! Other highly improbable correlations of convenience bring the overall probbility of this system even existing to about one chance in ten to the thirtieth. The adoption of this gauge system will allow the overall restandardization of our technological infrastructure to best utilize the miniaturization of machinery resulting from automation and robotics, including nanotechnology. The philosophical realists have the task of explaining this as something else than being in a "utilitarian anthropocentric" universe. The difficulty of this task, however, is comparable to resolving Goldbach's conjecture, which states that any even number greater than 4 can be expressed as the sum of two odd primes. Even though its statement is easy enough for an elementary school student, resolution of the conjecture has defined mathematicians for over two centuries and few have any hope of it being resolved in the near future. A “paradigm shift” involves a change much larger than those implied by the items on your list. I think that the shift will be toward belief in a “utilitarian anthropocentric” universe. This is the idea that the universe is not only fine tuned to allow our existence in it, but is also fine tuned to allow us to succeed as a technological civilization in overcoming our current global problems, e.g., resource depletion and climate change.

This will be a change comparable to the shift from the belief in a geocentric universe several centuries ago. This will involve a shift in orientation from engineers implementing scientific discoveries to scientists implementing engineering discoveries. Specifically, the metric system of measurement, i.e, numbers from objects, will be augmented by a new universal gauge system, i.e., objects from numbers. This gauge system can be derived from three physical constants, i.e., the atomic mass unit, Planck’s constant and the speed of light, rather then using the Earth as the metric system does. The number for the speed of light can be easily calculated using mirror symmetries, which appropriately scales the temperature for ambient conditions.

The surprise is that once one specifies diamond as the ideal nanoscale measuring stick, one can select a preferred numerical base, scale up to human size, and get a new second better matching the rotation of the Earth over the next four thousand years! A further surprise is that the difference between the new day (86400 new seconds) and the real Earth day is symmetrical with respect to the epoch of our current calendar! Other highly improbable correlations of convenience bring the overall probbility of this system even existing to about one chance in ten to the thirtieth.

The adoption of this gauge system will allow the overall restandardization of our technological infrastructure to best utilize the miniaturization of machinery resulting from automation and robotics, including nanotechnology. The philosophical realists have the task of explaining this as something else than being in a “utilitarian anthropocentric” universe. The difficulty of this task, however, is comparable to resolving Goldbach’s conjecture, which states that any even number greater than 4 can be expressed as the sum of two odd primes. Even though its statement is easy enough for an elementary school student, resolution of the conjecture has defined mathematicians for over two centuries and few have any hope of it being resolved in the near future.

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