it’s not exactly “easy”, but it’s mostly constrained by having accurate approximate models of mesoscopic physics and other condensed matter physics. if alphafold 2 was so easy, why hadn’t humans learned to do it by hand sooner, or thought of a similarly strong model to simplify it enough to work with? to be honest I am a bit confused about that, I really want to see what it is that alphafold 2 knows that we don’t, but even starting on that question is a ways over my head. it seems to me that AF2 is proof that we can exceed human level condensed matter approximations with a lot of effort, but that it’s not trivial.
though, another take is that humans have had some pretty significant success at nanotech, but it’s just really fuckin hard to match biology in warm environments, turns out. we do have reason to expect that atomically precise manufacturing out of chemicals with stronger bonds is going to happen at some point, but finding the paths through mesoscale physics that allow building complex machines out of strong bonds at that scale has been proving itself to be a difficult task.
it’s not exactly “easy”, but it’s mostly constrained by having accurate approximate models of mesoscopic physics and other condensed matter physics. if alphafold 2 was so easy, why hadn’t humans learned to do it by hand sooner, or thought of a similarly strong model to simplify it enough to work with? to be honest I am a bit confused about that, I really want to see what it is that alphafold 2 knows that we don’t, but even starting on that question is a ways over my head. it seems to me that AF2 is proof that we can exceed human level condensed matter approximations with a lot of effort, but that it’s not trivial.
though, another take is that humans have had some pretty significant success at nanotech, but it’s just really fuckin hard to match biology in warm environments, turns out. we do have reason to expect that atomically precise manufacturing out of chemicals with stronger bonds is going to happen at some point, but finding the paths through mesoscale physics that allow building complex machines out of strong bonds at that scale has been proving itself to be a difficult task.