Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Guardians of the Truth - Less Wrong

31 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 December 2007 06:44PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 December 2007 06:01:56AM 4 points [-]

If we instantly forgot everything known about gravity, and even forgot calculus, but we kept the existing economic infrastructure of science and math - computers, professional mathematicians of roughly equivalent skill level who happen not to know calculus, billions of dollars a year in R&D funding, etc. - then calculus would be discovered in a month (though it wouldn't be rigorous), Newton's laws a week later, and Einstein's general relativity before the year was out. That's seriously my best estimate for how long it would take.