[Maursault]

Unless you know it to be physically or logically impossible, you could not really know how likely it is or isn't. Ask anyone in the mid-1970's how likely it is that billions of people would be walking around with a supercomputer in their pockets, and they'd come up with all sorts of reasons why it was extremely unlikely, such as no individual would ever need so much computing power. The practicality of the precision only depends on the ability to measure and the ability to manipulate and simulate large amounts of data, both of which are extremely likely to get better, and better faster and faster, as time and technology progresses.

[adrianN]

A femtometer is a few orders of magnitude smaller than an atom. There are about 2*140 atoms in the atmosphere. You can't even count to that number, let alone do any fluid dynamics to that. I'm confident that we won't have femtometer scale simulations of the atmosphere before the sun becomes a red giant and swallows the earth.

[Maursault]

> A femtometer is a few orders of magnitude smaller than an atom.

Thank you for telling me what a femtometer is, as though my using the word wasn't a pretty good indicator I knew what it was. You mean a femtometer is a real thing? And I just made that up out of thin air to mean a meter stick to give to women. What are the odds?

> There are about 2*140 atoms in the atmosphere. You can't even count to that number, let alone do any fluid dynamics to that.

Would you like me to explain how your argument is a straw man, or can I trust you to figure it out?

> I'm confident that we won't have femtometer scale simulations of the atmosphere before the sun becomes a red giant and swallows the earth.

Very colorful, but all you're really saying is that you are pessimistic about technology and about any staggeringly large advancements in computer design or weather sensor tech, while I, otoh, optimistically say I just don't know, but I bet computers will get faster, smaller and cheaper, and that within only a hundred years there will be weather tech that we are incapable of conceiving of today.

Sure, a femtometer is mind-bogglingly small, but it's only 15 orders of magnitude smaller than a meter. It's way bigger than a zeptometer. How is it even possible femtometers can be described so simply? But of course, there could never be any more advancements in mathematics, physics, computer engineering or our current understanding of weather and climate. We basically know all there is to know right now. Huh.

[adrianN]

Maybe read https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9908043.pdf before you think about computers operating on 2*140 objects and try to be less aggressive in your comments.

[Maursault]

Are numbers not objects? Is scientific notation not a way of expressing numbers that are too large or too small to be conceived or expressed in decimal form? Does a large database keep every object and every bit of data stored in it in RAM? How is it possible a fractal can be rendered in parts of the whole? Even older computers ordinarily can operate on 2^140 objects.

      user@decadeoldcomputer:~$ echo 2^140 |bc
      1393796574908163946345982392040522594123776

Maybe try to ignore who is saying what, and focus only on what was said.

[adrianN]

No computer can operate on 2**140 objects in any meaningful way, because no computer can even remember whether it's already done with one of the objects or not. Your example operates on a single object, a number.

[Maursault]

Your response is a no true scotsman fallacy while also moving the goalposts, though what you've described is either a single-user single-task operating system, or you are conflating the limitations of current conventional single computer technology, which has already been solved with conventional clusters as well as quantum computing, and probably also with modern GPUs. Parallel computing has existed at least since the mid-1960s.

[mturmon]

Uh, that’s 140 objects (the number of bits), not 2^140 objects. Rookie numbers.

[Maursault]

No, they are 1393796574908163946345982392040522594123776 numbers.

      1 is a number. 

      2 are two numbers (1 + 1). 

      3 are three numbers (1 + 1 + 1). 

      ------------------------------>

      ∴2^140 are 1393796574908163946345982392040522594123776 numbers.

quod erat demonstrandum