It was only a matter of time that we saw a TechTake from this guy. I’m sorry to inflict Peterson on y’all, but this was too funny not to post.

  • dmention7@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    I’m not going to inflict a JP video on myself, so maybe someone else can help me with the math. Moore’s law says the number of transistors in an IC doubles every 2 years. Earth is roughly 5 billion years old, so there have been roughly 5 billion doublings since his proposed time that life emerged. 2^5,000,000,000 is an absolutely unfathomable number compared to… anything really! So what am I missing here?

    And looking at it the other way, if a “law” that has existed for only a matter of decades is being extrapolated back for billions of years, and is only off by a factor of 3-ish… that’s pretty fucking solid endorsement of said law!

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      The authors did not use Moore’s law or transistors at all. They just thought it was a nifty idea so mentioned it bunches when talking about exponential growth or something.

      Also I’m not sure I totally trust these authors after glancing over the paper, they seem a little too enthralled with the idea of alien DNA versus other possibilities like “Moore’s law” not applying in the first place.

      Also the paper is a decade old.

      • jonhendry@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        11 months ago

        Also the paper is a decade old.

        And redolent of ‘emerita disease’ although I don’t think the authors have technically achieved that honor.