I think you meant to say that humans can operate machinery which can do those things. The crane must be taller than the skyscraper, but we can’t design a crane large enough to lift the counterbalance for a space elevator, much less actual stellar-scale engineering. There’s a qualitative difference somewhere between a skyscraper and the altitudes of stable orbits.
Intelligence and creativity can replace brute force. You don’t need a crane taller than a skyscraper, you just need to get taller than the skyscraper somehow—a skycrane, a ladder made of constructor robots, a collapsible crane taller than a single floor that you carry from floor to floor, so on. You definitely don’t need a crane for a space elevator, you use a rocket.
Now build a skyscraper with a rocket; the two are qualitatively different. Making a person is qualitatively different from making a planet, which is qualitatively different from making a galaxy, which is qualitatively different from making a universe.
Two things are qualitatively different if no amount of either one can serve as a viable substitute for the other; TNT and U-235 are qualitatively different explosives mostly because TNT does not generate neutrons.
The construction project that makes a planet be scaled down to make one person, and the project which makes a galaxy cannot be scaled down to make a planet even though creating galaxies involves creating planets: The process by which a galaxy is created cannot be scaled down to make a single planet.
When I say that two processes are identical, I’m talking about a theoretical or mathematical identity, not a practical identity. If you can reverse information-theoretical death, then, at least in theory, time travel is possible; he same device may not be able to do both, but the one implies the other.
Not at all. Humans are much smaller than skyscrapers, but we can design, simulate, and build skyscrapers.
I think you meant to say that humans can operate machinery which can do those things. The crane must be taller than the skyscraper, but we can’t design a crane large enough to lift the counterbalance for a space elevator, much less actual stellar-scale engineering. There’s a qualitative difference somewhere between a skyscraper and the altitudes of stable orbits.
… No?
Intelligence and creativity can replace brute force. You don’t need a crane taller than a skyscraper, you just need to get taller than the skyscraper somehow—a skycrane, a ladder made of constructor robots, a collapsible crane taller than a single floor that you carry from floor to floor, so on. You definitely don’t need a crane for a space elevator, you use a rocket.
Now build a skyscraper with a rocket; the two are qualitatively different. Making a person is qualitatively different from making a planet, which is qualitatively different from making a galaxy, which is qualitatively different from making a universe.
… Okay, so we’re talking past each other. Define “qualitatively different,” please.
Two things are qualitatively different if no amount of either one can serve as a viable substitute for the other; TNT and U-235 are qualitatively different explosives mostly because TNT does not generate neutrons.
The construction project that makes a planet be scaled down to make one person, and the project which makes a galaxy cannot be scaled down to make a planet even though creating galaxies involves creating planets: The process by which a galaxy is created cannot be scaled down to make a single planet.
Oh, I see. Fair enough.
When I say that two processes are identical, I’m talking about a theoretical or mathematical identity, not a practical identity. If you can reverse information-theoretical death, then, at least in theory, time travel is possible; he same device may not be able to do both, but the one implies the other.