What technologies can also be "quantum" in nature?

[Maximum77]

Besides quantum computers?

[Anonymouswizard]

Define 'quantum'. Because IIRC a quantum is technically just an amount or portion.

Assuming related to quantum mechanics, put a big question mark over it. We're only really going to make anything quantum when QM begins interfering and adding limits to what we can do.

[Eldan]

Yeah, define your use of "Quantum". Depending on what you mean by that, the answer is anything between "Most of the tech since about the forties" to "Two or three other things", because quantum mechanics in the widest sense is important for such basic or outdated components of modern tech as transistors and lasers.

Can I give you a free tip? This forum is really not the best place to ask your various tech questions. We are not a tech or science forum and while there's a few genuine scientists around, honestly, I'd rather not spend my free time spent on a nerd forum explaining basic science. Try www.quora.com maybe? It's a platform for asking questions of various experts.

[Tyndmyr]

Asking if a technology can "be quantum" is akin to asking if a technology can "be red".

[Chronos]

Heck, if you get right down to it, a knapped-flint spear or a horse-drawn chariot operates on quantum-mechanical principles, too. It's just that, in those cases, quantum mechanical principles are, in practice, indistinguishable from Newtonian principles.

[Spojaz]

Pretty much anything but ovines.

Any effort made to quantify anything ovine in nature has lead to the incapacitation of the researchers.

[Chen]

I'm pretty sure Maximum77 is some weird bot trying to build new technology buzzwords, or someone constantly doing homework regarding technology.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Asking if a technology can "be quantum" is akin to asking if a technology can "be red".

Which is important, because red wuns go fasta.

[Yora]

Isn't all electricity quantum mechanical? Electrons are fundamental particles after all.

[Maximum77]

No I'm just a guy with OCD lol and my latest looping thought obsession is future tech. But okay. I'll go elsewhere.

[jayem]

Isn't all electricity quantum mechanical? Electrons are fundamental particles after all.

All biology is just* applied chemistry (I think there are a couple of things that make that not quite true, depending on what you count as chemistry)
All chemistry is just* applied quantum mechanics (there might be some exception but I can't think of it at the moment)

*For certain values of 'just' that don't mean a lot outside of cheap comments.

[Anonymouswizard]

All biology is just* applied chemistry (I think there are a couple of things that make that not quite true, depending on what you count as chemistry)
All chemistry is just* applied quantum mechanics (there might be some exception but I can't think of it at the moment)

*For certain values of 'just' that don't mean a lot outside of cheap comments.

Don't forget that quantum mechanics is just* applied maths.

[Eldan]

And maths is just philosophy?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

And philosophy is really just applied neurology, which is biology.





What? It's basically just thinking about stuff, what else could it be?

[AsteriskAmp]

And maths is just philosophy?

Formal Logic, not philosophy. (Anything outside of analytical philosophy has nothing to do with math and Analytical Philosophy doesn't actually become a proper generalization).

And philosophy is really just applied neurology, which is biology.





What? It's basically just thinking about stuff, what else could it be?

Philosophy is not applied neurology, abstract systems do not generalize into concise biological systems.

[Lord Joeltion]

Philosophy is just applied Language. Logic is just applied Game Theory.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Logic is just applied Game Theory.

I'm pretty sure that one is the other way around.

But I'm not going to give arguments for it, because arguments are just applied fights.

Wait...

[Eldan]

Arguments are localized diplomacy. And war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means. War is also hell and hell is other people.

Ergo, whenever we argue, it's other people's fault, not mine.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Arguments are localized diplomacy. And war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means. War is also hell and hell is other people.

Ergo, whenever we argue, it's other people's fault, not mine.

That just makes me think of this oldie:


I just hope that doesn't count as sexism, because sexism is evil, making me a woman and probably causing some world ending paradox among the way.







That last bit is the part I'm trying to avoid by the way.


Speaking of by the way, did Eldan really actually chase off Maximum77?

I'm starting to miss the guy, I might just post a top 25 technologies ever in the next few weeks to help kick the habit.

[Eldan]

I now actually feel kinda bad about it. I just thought he might be happier with the answers on a more educational site...

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I now actually feel kinda bad about it. I just thought he might be happier with the answers on a more educational site...

Maybe he saw SMBC's Soonish, realised it has all the stuff he's been asking for, and bought it instead?

GW

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Maybe he saw SMBC's Soonish, realised it has all the stuff he's been asking for, and bought it instead?

GW

And now he's reordering the chapters alphabetically?






I'm going to feel so bad about this when Maximum reacts that he's reading all of this.

[AsteriskAmp]

I now actually feel kinda bad about it. I just thought he might be happier with the answers on a more educational site...

Quora quality is extremely variable, you have legitimate answers from experts to spectacular levels of crankery from people lying about their qualifications. Not that the question wasn't already pretty ill-defined and with little to no research done by the asker on the topic before just throwing it out there.

[Lord Joeltion]

I'm pretty sure that one is the other way around.

Spoiler

Show

Logic is just applied Game Theory.

A game is just Logic applied (in theory).

Game Theory just applies Logic.

Applied Logic is just a game. In theory.

That's why Language is the funniest game of them all
There would be no argument because it was just a lame pun in my head

[rigsmal]

Quora quality is extremely variable, you have legitimate answers from experts to spectacular levels of crankery from people lying about their qualifications. Not that the question wasn't already pretty ill-defined and with little to no research done by the asker on the topic before just throwing it out there.

I've had the best experience with StackExchange. It's not perfect, but it's pretty close to what you'll get in a classroom. In some areas I prefer it to actually asking an expert in person.

Edit: The obvious shining star of StackExchange is MathOverflow. StackOverflow is a close second.

[Eldan]

Eh, Quora was just the first thing I could think of. It's pretty approachable, at least, and usually open to weird questions, unlike a few other places.

[ufo]

FWIW I've learned a lot from lurking these threads and I think you're (general you) being unfairly elitist condescending* toward M77 - or at least coming across that way, text communication is hard. I bring complicated questions here instead of places that are technically better qualified to answer them because understanding a complex issue or technology is easier in an environment that's generally super-friendly and where prior knowledge isn't assumed.

*sry, not my native language, I think this is what I meant.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

FWIW I've learned a lot from lurking these threads and I think you're (general you) being unfairly elitist condescending* toward M77 - or at least coming across that way, text communication is hard. I bring complicated questions here instead of places that are technically better qualified to answer them because understanding a complex issue or technology is easier in an environment that's generally super-friendly and where prior knowledge isn't assumed.

*sry, not my native language, I think this is what I meant.

And that was never the problem. Honestly, I enjoyed his threads. But at some point there were over a dozen of them all asking basically the same questions, most of them not featuring enough input from 77 himself to put those topics on proper useful rails towards an answer.

That said, he was getting better at it, and he was taking the feedback he got seriously. Which is how he ended up leaving here, by using the feedback "you might find better answers elsewhere". If he doesn't return than I suppose it worked for him. Because he did actually appear to get some stuff done. Apparently he actually send a version of that A-Z book for children to a publisher for review. I would have loved to get a look at how finished that actually was. It just wasn't appearing back on this forum, so we all put our input into his project, there is a result, and we don't get to see it. That takes out a lot of the fun.

Yes, I'm making a bit of fun of him in this thread. He has shown some peculiarities, and when you do that people will joke about it (and if they don't they should, I need more people to get on my case). But he wasn't like the typical type of forum-goer who has over a dozen threads open about the one subject they're interested in, because most of those people tend to be stuck in their thing, convinced they know the ultimate truth and everyone else needs to believe it too. Overall the annoyance factor of typing out a complex response to a simple question only to realize that this three days old thread has already been abandoned for a slightly reworded version so that time you just invested was just wasted while you thought you were helping someone was not that bad a trade off for the interesting discussions he did inspire, and as I said he was improving.

Overall he was just kind of in over his head, he wanted to know everything about the future and the breaking edges of science but still lacked much of the basic knowledge to get even halfway there. That's frustrating, I know that, but half the reason we can speculate about future technology is because we have all this basic knowledge to build on. You can't straight out of elementary school buy a good calculator and do advanced biostatistics, because you don't know how to do that.

But the jokes are still too easy. If only someone would list them alphabetically for me.



I agree with Stack Exchange, it's a pretty good place to ask questions, although you do need to know pretty well what it is you want to be asking, it works best on questions where there is some sort of right answer (e.g. "How would an antimatter rocket using the Einstein-Briggs mechanism actually work" rather than "what's the best far future technology we could research right now for a million dollars if your IQ was 170?") and it doesn't allow the same question twice. But there are also several different science and technology forums that could work.

[wumpus]

Asking if a technology can "be quantum" is akin to asking if a technology can "be red".

Weirdly enough, it also is akin to asking "is this technology well suited to be modeled in roleplaying games"? Since "quantum" simply means "finite levels", a quantum technology should be well modeled by die rolls, even for dice with limited faces.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Weirdly enough, it also is akin to asking "is this technology well suited to be modeled in roleplaying games"? Since "quantum" simply means "finite levels", a quantum technology should be well modeled by die rolls, even for dice with limited faces.

I'm not rolling separately for every atom.