Rationality Quotes October 2013

A1987dM

Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

The interesting part of Moore's Law is the fact that it's even possible. If there was a Moore's Law for the speed of motor vehicles it would soon fail regardless of how hard anyone tried to make it true.

It's possible for a while, anyway; we're already reaching certain physical limits, and I suspect Moore's Law in the sense of shrinking silicon transistor sizes will be over in the near-ish future (order ~10 years).

It may just be that we started much further away from the optimum in this case than we did with things like motor vehicles (where there are fairly low limitations based on safety and human reaction times).

12A1987dM13y

That's because we're already at to the limits. There was a Moore's Law for the speed of transatlantic ships for about two centuries, and one for transatlantic flights for about half a century. (And I kind-of doubt Moore's Law will last for much longer.) EDIT: though if you measure them in doubling times rather than in years, I agree that those for vehicles weren't anywhere near as impressive.