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Since we were children, we have dreamed of spaceships flying to space. Since we belong to the 21st century, we are witnessing tremendous growth of technology, and its miracles every day. So we are hopeful that one day humanity will do interstellar travel, and we are going to have a lot of adventures. But here is the reality.
Two major hurdles are very difficult to cross fundamentally.
Knowledge Burden
This is the real biggest hurdle. The average age of reaching expertise is getting bigger and bigger. As the knowledge volume increases, the age for reaching the frontier of any field and contribution also increases. Currently, if we are able to be an expert in any field of Physics take 35 years, it might take 45 in ten or twenty years, and it might take 60 by the end of 2100. At that point, we already hit the wall of biological limitation of scient.
Economic Wall
Currently, each innovation takes billions of dollars compared to the 20th century because of sheer complexity alone. For example, if we want to make a breakthrough in particle physics using the improved LHC collider means it might cost us even trillions.
For those who argue that we would be making a breakthrough in biology. It's not as easy as you think. The breakthrough involves cellular-level transformation. As this involves 30 to 40 trillion cells of the human body, to monitor this sheer number alone, we need processing power and energy requirements that are unachievable. Some might argue it can come in the form of a vaccine that could help, but to be honest, the process involves resetting entire cells of the human body, definitely needing unbelievable calculations for monitoring all the changes happening inside the body, and this may never be achievable.
For those who are saying the processing powers would increase and quantum technology would help with this, they would never solve the sheer volume of processing power. Quantum computing solves specific types of problems, but not all. And for silicon chips, we are already reaching the limit of Moore's law. Exponential processing power is not possible without a new breakthrough.
For those who argue that current AI technology might evolve into AGI, that might help resolve this. Even AGI might not resolve this. Because current AI is a black box, we have yet to fully unravel. And for long-horizon contexts, they are noncohesive. Fixing this requires a fundamental understanding of the black-box nature of AI. Even understanding them and effectively building AGI might not guarantee we can overcome the hurdles I mentioned above. Because AGI lacks physical touch. Though it theoretically helps us derive things to test and verify, humans need to spend decades.
So, considering the above thing,s we might face a plateau of innovation by the end of 2100 that might never be overcome by humans.
And my personal suspicion is there might be some other civilizations that would have lived like us, hit a plateau, be stagnant, and eventually be wiped out by natural disasters and ice age cycles. The time might be the biggest screen to hide these things from us.
Since we were children, we have dreamed of spaceships flying to space. Since we belong to the 21st century, we are witnessing tremendous growth of technology, and its miracles every day. So we are hopeful that one day humanity will do interstellar travel, and we are going to have a lot of adventures. But here is the reality.
Two major hurdles are very difficult to cross fundamentally.
Knowledge Burden
This is the real biggest hurdle. The average age of reaching expertise is getting bigger and bigger. As the knowledge volume increases, the age for reaching the frontier of any field and contribution also increases. Currently, if we are able to be an expert in any field of Physics take 35 years, it might take 45 in ten or twenty years, and it might take 60 by the end of 2100. At that point, we already hit the wall of biological limitation of scient.
Economic Wall
Currently, each innovation takes billions of dollars compared to the 20th century because of sheer complexity alone. For example, if we want to make a breakthrough in particle physics using the improved LHC collider means it might cost us even trillions.
For those who argue that we would be making a breakthrough in biology. It's not as easy as you think. The breakthrough involves cellular-level transformation. As this involves 30 to 40 trillion cells of the human body, to monitor this sheer number alone, we need processing power and energy requirements that are unachievable. Some might argue it can come in the form of a vaccine that could help, but to be honest, the process involves resetting entire cells of the human body, definitely needing unbelievable calculations for monitoring all the changes happening inside the body, and this may never be achievable.
For those who are saying the processing powers would increase and quantum technology would help with this, they would never solve the sheer volume of processing power. Quantum computing solves specific types of problems, but not all. And for silicon chips, we are already reaching the limit of Moore's law. Exponential processing power is not possible without a new breakthrough.
For those who argue that current AI technology might evolve into AGI, that might help resolve this. Even AGI might not resolve this. Because current AI is a black box, we have yet to fully unravel. And for long-horizon contexts, they are noncohesive. Fixing this requires a fundamental understanding of the black-box nature of AI. Even understanding them and effectively building AGI might not guarantee we can overcome the hurdles I mentioned above. Because AGI lacks physical touch. Though it theoretically helps us derive things to test and verify, humans need to spend decades.
So, considering the above thing,s we might face a plateau of innovation by the end of 2100 that might never be overcome by humans.
And my personal suspicion is there might be some other civilizations that would have lived like us, hit a plateau, be stagnant, and eventually be wiped out by natural disasters and ice age cycles. The time might be the biggest screen to hide these things from us.