A Case for Eigenweasels - Hijacking Hell away from Good Intentions
Why Emotions are King and Thermal Quantum Quadratic Optimization (tQQO) Satisfies Emotions
It is cliche to say life on Earth is complicated, because it always was and can only become more so. Humanity is bouncing from extreme to extreme, and no amount of science or policy seems to change this rapid swing of the pendulum. Why? For starters, research has shown that decision making is tied to the amygdala, or emotional center of the brain. Damage to this center introduces deficiencies in decision making.1 This deficiency can be as strong as a complete inability to choose anything. Emotional decision making served humans well in our evolutionary past. It kept us alive. But in the modern age, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” This is not just a pithy statement. It is the mantra of the 20th and 21st centuries, where wars, famines, and devastation followed many a good intentioned policy that produced hell on Earth. But what is the solution?
We make the case that more data is necessary but insufficient. Humans are not just emotional decision makers, but also very bad at changing their minds when data is shown, even if interpretations and conclusions are perfect. If we were good at changing our minds, there would be no flat earthers, moon landing deniers, or 'aliens built the pyramids' conspiracy theorists. It all ties back to the emotions. If you admit you were wrong, you feel negative emotions. Convincing the world of anything requires the missing piece. Results.
Results are found by doing or by simulation. Doing is ideal but takes time and money the world doesn't have. We can't very well 'do' climate change to find out if we were right. If we treat our world as the simulator, we will need to wait generations to see the results. If we make a simulator so powerful that it can actually simulate the real world, we only need to wait seconds to minutes to test things and confirm the results.
Enter thermal quantum computing. The 'Eigenweasels' of RequisiteQ are capable of simulating real world situations with the speed required to give results in a time frame that is useful and with a fidelity that is immediately actionable. To continue with the climate model, the most common complaint, including by the author, is that we can't predict the weather for a week, so how can we trust weather in a month, a year, or a century? Now, the author understands that broad climatic predictions are, counterintuitively, easier to make than short term localized phenomenon. But if even a scientist like the author 'feels' annoyed at this, how much more those who aren't aware of the realities of climate science? Data doesn't mean anything when emotions are involved, even to someone who wants to 'trust the science.' If the scientific community wants to convince the public of climate change, they'd better first predict the weather.
Can Eigenweasels succeed at this with tQQO? The short answer is, if we invest in the data collection infrastructure, yes. The quantum supercomputing infrastructure facilitates data analysis that first learns from the past and then predicts the future. If we invest in enough weather instruments, the Eigenweasels can be programmed with neural network machine learning (so called AI) and similar techniques to simulate local environments well enough to predict the weather accurately and at a speed that makes supercomputers feel like an old 80s PC. With low fidelity instrumentation, this may be predictions for an hour. With higher fidelity, a day. With even higher fidelity, a week.
Once the public sees that the 'science' of weather prediction is settled for the next week, they will begin to believe the longer-term science, especially if that science is being studied by the same Eigenweasels that succeeded at making their weather report useful. A man who sees rain in the forecast and then feels rain on his head will believe far more than the man who brings an umbrella under his arm and rolls his eyes at the weather forecast of the night before.
Now expand this to other aspects of life. When scientists apply the Eigenweasels to asteroid detection and the public is shown a dangerous asteroid being deflected, enthusiasm for the space programs of the world will increase. When tornado early warning systems become granular enough to give a home ten minutes of warning that a tornado is likely to hit them and a tearful mother is filmed thanking the scientists who saved her family from an F-4, we have stopped fighting the amygdala and finally satisfied the human need for emotions.
Science has the potential to save lives and make life worth living. But not if it continues to cling to data without acknowledging two powerful human needs - emotions and results. Eigenweasels can take the data, simulate reality, and predict the immediate future, changing hearts and minds and leading us into a future where good intentions don't lead to hell because the end result is already simulated.