Ideas
This section is new (as of March 2020)… planning to note some interesting quotes here, as well as some of my own thoughts. I’ll start the list off with one of each:
Why nano? (my thoughts on why nano is more than a buzzword and how to progress beyond digital electronics to more exotic nanotechnology)
Biology’s incredible efficiency and functionality are possible because its fundamental layer of complexity and engineering is at the nano-scale. Evolution more or less dictates that (given the constraints) life will choose the optimal fundamental length scale. Human technology isn’t subject to the same constraints as Biology (it needn’t reproduce, it can depend on a global supply chain of raw materials, etc.), but it’s being proven time and again that the nano length scale is where major gains will be gotten in the 21st century. We know from the incredible success and progress of CMOS that a sufficiently robust business model can drive an entire industry forward at breakneck speeds and transform the world in the process. Computation was well-positioned to benefit from length scale reduction, as the abstract information produced by a series of gates is equivalent, regardless of their physical size, as long as they are functional. Taking other technology to the nanoscale will require new thinking both scientifically and in finding “killer applications.” Almost nothing can stop the forcing function of a good business model.
2. Nietzsche on fatherhood
Happened to stumble on this in The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant recently…about 2 weeks after my son, Isaac, was born. I don’t really agree with the quotes but there must be some truth there because I found them entertaining:
Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman. hath one solution —it is called childbirth…
Better than man doth woman understand children, but
man is more childish than woman.
In the true man there is a child hidden: it wanted to
play. Up then, ye women, and discover the child in man!…
Not sure he’s speaking from experience above…
It seems to me absurd that one who has chosen for his sphere the assessment of existence as a whole should burden himself with the cares of a family, with winning bread, security, and social position for wife and children.” Many a philosopher has died when his child was born. “The wind blew through my key hole, saying, ‘Come !’ My door cunningly opened of itself, saying, ‘Go !’ But I lay fettered by my love unto my children.”
There’s definitely some truth to this.
3. Generalizing Malthus
Globalization = Technical Stagnation Growth
Stagnation Growth = Malthusian Growth
Any exponential growth catastrophically hits, surpasses and then retracts behind some kind of limits, unless those limits are moved out by rapid progress of technology.
I’m going to write a blogpost about this at some point but if there’s anything COVID-19 (as well as climate change and other huge risks facing modern world) proves it’s that you can generate a meta-Malthusian situation by growing exponentially sideways (globalization) without progressing exponentially in terms of technology and social organization.
For every person in Asia to get the 1980s western standard of living (car, globe-trotting vacations, etc.) safely, first world countries need to have already developed and deployed 2020s technology in energy, healthcare, etc. The old technology can’t support exponentially more people without generating new and unacceptable risks (pandemics, global warming, ecosystem collapse for example).
The fact that we still don’t have things like telemedicine and fast trains in America, doesn’t bode well for handling all the scaling issues the world is facing as billions start to live a modern life…. There are still Malthusian limits to growth, even if they are multidimensional problems rather than simply things like calorie supply.
4. Will add my thoughts on https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/gibbs.paradox.pdf
5. MCM (multi-chip module) => MCM (Multi Cell Module)
A foam or gel of generic cells that could be software defined into a specific configuration. Maybe with a versatile genome that allows a lot of different final cell types and secretions. Can probably program using light (2pp?)
6. Lithography using biologically fabricated resist (1nm precision should be doable- 3 nucleotides)
7. It's not farfetched to imagine that silicon chips with biological components, silicon chips partially fabricated with biological machinery and cellular/biological systems with silicon chips inside them will be commonplace. Carbon and silicon have a lot to gain from one another.
8. Seed Round: Welcome to the Machine - Pink Floyd Series A: Have a Cigar - Pink Floyd
9. Can we use microtubules and kinesin to break the sensitivity limits of biosensors set by diffusion? (P. E. Sheehan and L. J. Whitman, “Detection limits for nanoscale biosensors,” Nano Lett., vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 803–807, 2005, doi: 10.1021/nl050298x.)
10. The healthcare system is the gulag archipelago of America. It’s completely intertwined with society, you barely notice it until you are in its hands and then it’s an extractive, deadly nightmare.
11. Humans are shaped by external and internal forces. a little bit like the wacky inflatable tube man balloons. People who don’t experience sufficient external pressure can take very grotesque shapes.
12. The way things are going, everyone will be wearing something like an insulin pump that gets an over-the-air update, manufactures an mRNA vaccine, uploads it to your body and quality controls the antibody response. What we are doing now is like going around w floppy drives updating firmware on 7 Billion machines one by one. Seems like it could be feasible to manufacture mRNA vaccines directly at point of use (no need to stabilize them, store them etc)… they are not more complicated than viruses and those are produced in a very compact format by cells.
13. Reading Stanislav Lem’s His Master’s Voice you really get the feeling of how inevitable physics progress seemed in the 60s. Everyone assumed something as momentous as splitting the atom was coming and went straight to imagining how humanity would deal with it. The assumption was that fast interstellar travel, cold fusion, etc, were logically coming just like the equally impressive physics developments that had come before them.
Is there really no completely new physics with practical applications left to discover? If anything is to be found near room temp and pressure, maybe we can find it in biology (maybe in the brain?). Life doesn’t need to understand a physical effect to make use of it.
Biology aside, why has physics not produced in the last 70 years the kind of breakthroughs it did in the 70 prior? Is it just that our tools are too primitive to continue the exploration or our institutions have lost the muscle memory needed for fundamental research (grant funding going to conservative projects)? Or is there nothing to find? I’m very hopeful that its the former two or some other non-fundamental reason. It would be sad not see fundamental physics achieve new heights in my lifetime.
14. If there is physics we don’t know about at room temperature… wouldn’t biology be taking advantage of it. Biological systems routinely use physics they don’t understand and even humans didn’t understand until recently (e.g. plants use quantum physics in photosynthesis)