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[Rowanas]

If Toady (armok be with him) wants to model this down to the quantum level, will we get dwarves having everything and nothing happening or not happening at once or not once?

P.S. Quantum physicists have almost as much time as Danish researchers. Anyone bothering to work out how many dimensions there are has too much time, and any maths requiring an answer to that question is so unfathomably not useful as to be a scandalous waste of precious brain-space.

[Jimmy]

"There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not someday be applied to the phenomena of the real world." Nikolai Lobachevsky

You do realise that, as a Professor of Mathematics, Toady himself deals with those above mathematical disciplines. Furthermore, that were it not for mathematical concepts which at the time of their discovery would be considered abstract and of no practical value, you could not play Dwarf Fortress.

[Rowanas]

Very true, but a branch of mathematics concerned purely with things that may or may not happen now, in the past or ever seems a little bit strange. I'm no quantum physicist, but I don't see it being useful for a while. Quantum computing doesn't even have to understand how it works, only that it does. The whole idea of a single bit representing 0 and 1 at the same moment in time just pushes my brain out of my head via the nostrils.

[G-Flex]

Very true, but a branch of mathematics concerned purely with things that may or may not happen now, in the past or ever seems a little bit strange. I'm no quantum physicist, but I don't see it being useful for a while.

Quantum mechanics has already had application in describing real-world phenomena, and it winds up being important to know these things when you deal with stuff like chemistry and electronics. I think you're misrepresenting the science.

Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_physics#Applications

[DeathOfRats]

Very true, but a branch of mathematics concerned purely with things that may or may not happen now, in the past or ever seems a little bit strange.

Dunno, statistics has turned out to be kinda useful, and it fits that bill

[Dakk]

Very true, but a branch of mathematics concerned purely with things that may or may not happen now, in the past or ever seems a little bit strange. I'm no quantum physicist, but I don't see it being useful for a while. Quantum computing doesn't even have to understand how it works, only that it does. The whole idea of a single bit representing 0 and 1 at the same moment in time just pushes my brain out of my head via the nostrils.

Isn't that why we study phisics though? To understand how things work, since we already know what they do, and if we don't, finding out how things work so that we can discover what they could do under normal and special conditions?

[Rowanas]

Ok, true, true. it appears to be useful. How then, does it work? THe idea of things existing in multiple states still hurts my tiny thinking pod.

[Scarpa]

Rowanas, go read Anathem. Your brain might explode.

Plus it's fiction so you don't have to worry about real people wasting real time.

[Nexii Malthus]

Well, pathfinding was exactly one of those totally pointless and abstract things when it came around. People don't' need to go through all that complicated maths formulae stuff and memorising the position of all nodes and what not. We just simply walk from A to B as it comes natural to us!

But then computers were introduced...software and now all that labourious work done in the past has come to bearing fruit and being really damn nifty and useful. Pathfinding is one of the really damn hard tasks for an artificial intelligence, a path must be fresh to represent reliable and correct information, so speed of an algorithmn is highly important. Second the quality of the path can affect travel time significantly. As well as a path that doesn't lead to dangerous terrain and suicide for our little dwarves.


Regarding quantum tech in electronics, imagine your standard Bit. 0 and 1. Now imagine your Quantum Bit, imagine being able to store 400,000 bit states in one as a rough example. Imagine lots of those quantum bits, now thats...a ridicolous amount of data.

Now imagine being able to use the smart tech to process the states of one quantum bit, in one fell swoop? Instead of processing a standard bit of information, 1 and 0. You could process a whole lotta of that information in one efficient move. This is as far as my knowledge expands, its still fresh unknown territory. It really is a huge leap that makes useful artificial intelligence seem ever more promising.


Onto more realistic and short term technologies we could see pop up though, is Chaos Computing (Look up on Wikipedia), which I think will bring a very very interesting fresh breath into the industry and really blow our minds with the possibilities of being able to have software dynamically reshape hardware like moulds into whatever is desired for processing or storage in barely even a fraction of a second, or rather more specifically within a single processing cycle of a CPU... anyways going off on a bit of a ramble *looks over to other screen to attend megaproject*

[G-Flex]

Ok, true, true. it appears to be useful. How then, does it work? THe idea of things existing in multiple states still hurts my tiny thinking pod.

Probability of things happening is important even if you don't know exactly what will.

Also, you can think of it less as "this thing literally exists in multiple states" and more "there's no way at all for us to tell which state it exists in without fucking it up first ourselves, so from our perspective let's just say it's both/either".

Of course, that's a really poor explanation coming from someone who's never done a whole lot of study into it, but the point I'm trying to make is that, when dealing with science, you might as well insert "For all intents and purposes, from our perspective" before any claim.

[Rowanas]

Mwhehe. ok, but if it works, then how does it work. I think we need a quantum physicist now to help out

[Sizik]

Mwhehe. ok, but if it works, then how does it work. I think we need a quantum physicist now to help out

How about Richard Feynman?
 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html#data=4|0||||

Lecture #6 is about quantum mechanics. I recommend you watch all seven videos when you have the time, as they're pretty good.

[zarmazarma]

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[Rowanas]

Ok. I'll give them a go. I don't think quantum logic-buggery will ever make sense to me though

[Jimmy]

The Feynman lectures are perfect for this situation. Kudos to Sizik for the link.