This kind of understanding is already available in higher level textbooks, within known energy and space-time scales, as previously mentioned?
If your asking, for example, whether with infinite time and energy some sort of grey goo ‘superorganism’ is possible, assuming some sort of far future technology that goes beyond our current comprehension, then that is obviously not going to have an answer for the aformentioned reasons...
Assuming you already have sufficient knowledge of the fundamental sciences and engineering and mathematics at the graduate level, then finding the textbooks, reading them, comparatively analyzing them, and drawing your own conclusions wouldn’t take more then a few weeks. This sort of exhaustive analysis would presumably satisfy even a very demanding level of certainty (perhaps 99.9% confidence?).
If your asking for literally 100% certainty then that’s impossible. In fact, nothing on LW every written, nor ever can be written, will meet that bar, especially when the Standard Model is known to be incomplete.
If your asking whether someone has already done this and will offer it in easily digestable chunks in the form of LW comments, then it seems exceedingly unlikely.
I’m asking if there is a name and a specific theory of these things. I strongly disagree that just studying thermodynamics or statistical mechanics answers these questions, at least directly—though sure, if there is a theory of it, those are the tools you need to derive it. There are obvious thermodynamic limits of course, but they are usually ridiculously permissive. I’m asking if there’s a theory that tries to study things at a lower level of generality, is all, and sets more narrow bounds than just “any nanomachine could not go above Carnot efficiency” or “any nanomachine would be subject to Brownian motion” or such.
By having a MD in Engineering and a Physics PhD, following the same exact courses you recommend as potentially containing the answer and in fact finding no direct answer to these specific questions in them.
You could argue “the answer can be derived from that knowledge” and sure, if it exists it probably can, but that’s why I’m asking. Lots of theories can be derived from other knowledge. Most of machine learning can be derived from a basic knowledge of Bayes’ theorem and multivariate calculus, but that doesn’t make any math undergrad a ML expert. I was asking so that I could read any previous work on the topic. I might actually spend some more time thinking about approaches myself later, but wouldn’t do it without first knowing if I’m just reinventing the wheel, so I was probing for answers. I don’t think this is particularly weird or controversial.
This kind of understanding is already available in higher level textbooks, within known energy and space-time scales, as previously mentioned?
If your asking, for example, whether with infinite time and energy some sort of grey goo ‘superorganism’ is possible, assuming some sort of far future technology that goes beyond our current comprehension, then that is obviously not going to have an answer for the aformentioned reasons...
Assuming you already have sufficient knowledge of the fundamental sciences and engineering and mathematics at the graduate level, then finding the textbooks, reading them, comparatively analyzing them, and drawing your own conclusions wouldn’t take more then a few weeks. This sort of exhaustive analysis would presumably satisfy even a very demanding level of certainty (perhaps 99.9% confidence?).
If your asking for literally 100% certainty then that’s impossible. In fact, nothing on LW every written, nor ever can be written, will meet that bar, especially when the Standard Model is known to be incomplete.
If your asking whether someone has already done this and will offer it in easily digestable chunks in the form of LW comments, then it seems exceedingly unlikely.
I’m asking if there is a name and a specific theory of these things. I strongly disagree that just studying thermodynamics or statistical mechanics answers these questions, at least directly—though sure, if there is a theory of it, those are the tools you need to derive it. There are obvious thermodynamic limits of course, but they are usually ridiculously permissive. I’m asking if there’s a theory that tries to study things at a lower level of generality, is all, and sets more narrow bounds than just “any nanomachine could not go above Carnot efficiency” or “any nanomachine would be subject to Brownian motion” or such.
Why do you believe there is one?
I don’t? I wondered if there might be one, and asked if anyone else knew any better.
Then on what basis do you “strongly disagree that just studying thermodynamics or statistical mechanics answers these questions, at least directly”?
How did you attain the knowledge for this?
By having a MD in Engineering and a Physics PhD, following the same exact courses you recommend as potentially containing the answer and in fact finding no direct answer to these specific questions in them.
You could argue “the answer can be derived from that knowledge” and sure, if it exists it probably can, but that’s why I’m asking. Lots of theories can be derived from other knowledge. Most of machine learning can be derived from a basic knowledge of Bayes’ theorem and multivariate calculus, but that doesn’t make any math undergrad a ML expert. I was asking so that I could read any previous work on the topic. I might actually spend some more time thinking about approaches myself later, but wouldn’t do it without first knowing if I’m just reinventing the wheel, so I was probing for answers. I don’t think this is particularly weird or controversial.