this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Chill out, I'm an atheist. I just think it's a pretty good quote. The argument is what follows.
It's not really a very good quote. Advanced electronics, genetic engineering, quantum computing... there are a lot of things that are actually new.
I respect your opinion.
Clearly an advancement from simple electromagnetism, which was the unification of the previous studies of electricity and magnetism. Not fully original.
Based on prior analysis of genetics, which itself descended from simple breeding, and chemistry. Not fully original.
Hybrid of computing with quantum principles. Not fully original.
Like I get it, we do discover new stuff and create new techniques, but (1) these physics still existed before we discovered them and (2) (much more importantly) these things are not new in the sense that they're not totally unique, that we can compare them to things that exist because they are inspired by things that already exist.
I mulled over whether or not to quote the Bible directly once I figured out where that quote came from, and I ultimately decided to do so because of the Bible's reputation for needing to be "read into". I think that particular passage says something really interesting about how, in some sense, nothing really new happens, that what we're doing can be seen as a version of something else. This is particularly interesting as a piece of a Christian document; Christianity generally doesn't posit a cyclical view of the world. You live, you die, you go into the afterlife, judgement day happens, and God's chosen few spend eternity in heaven; e.g., the plot is linear. Therefore, there clearly must be some deeper context to the text.
Regardless, it was a minor part of my original argument. The rest should stand on its own.
Also, I went to Catholic school. I'd like to use my religion classes for something; I'm most certainly not using them for praying ๐
Ok so I suppose you'll be using raw electromagnetism instead of anything that uses advanced electronics? Just because something has a history doesn't mean it's not new, and even if that were the case, just because something's not new that doesn't mean it's not a useful improvement.
What I meant in the original argument is that nothing can be so new and original that we cannot talk about it without referencing previous concepts and those forums. For example, results in advanced electronics were initially presented in early electrical engineering theses presented to engineers and physicists interested in electrical [1] phenomena.
We would not need to show advertisements to promote advanced electronics. There are already forums of people interested in electrical engineering. We can promote advanced electronics to our heart's content in those forums.
So this is a bit of a non-sequitur, but at some point in a complex design I might actually have to go back to "raw electromagnetism", e.g. numerically solving Poisson's equation or Maxwell's equations for crucial parts of the circuit, depending on how small things are. What you learn in a typical electronics class is a behavioral approximation that's good for describing the general expected behavior of a circuit, but not always precise enough to finish a design.
[1] Loosely, an electrical device is any device that uses electricity. An electronic device is a device that does "something" "smart". For example, an amplifier is an electronic device as is a digital timer, whereas a light bulb is electrical but not electronic. Modern "Electrical engineering" is more precisely "Electronics engineering".
Why?
That's like saying "I was poisoned for years, I should use this poison for something good".
It was a joke to lighten the mood. That second quote is definitely something I'd say if I were literally poisoned.