(03-13-2014, 05:23 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Seems pretty clear to me. He's arguing against you. He's saying your prediction was common 2 decades ago. Back then everybody knew that " x86 will die (Intel themselves failed to do that), Apple is doomed, Moore's Law will fail at 100nm" despite all those predictions ending up wrong. You need to read the entire sentence and look at the context to understand that when he said "x86 will die" he's stating it as one of the incorrect predictions of the 90s. He is in no way stating it as a fact. He then goes on to list all the potential competitors to x86 and why they can't/didn't replace it.
Ah ok. I'm not arguing about my point anymore though.
'NaturalViolence Wrote:No it's not. All you've just stated is that as number of days until your death increases the chances of winning decreases exponentially, which is true. But your lifespan isn't infinite. Nor does it keep increasing. Each day you live decreases the number of remaining days and therefore increases your chances of winning on every remaining day. Not the other way around. If you lose well then your chances go straight down to 0% since you've already lost.
What does my lifespan have to do with it? My original question - which was a purely theoretical thought experiment, not an attempt to predict when quantum computing will emerge, IF it will emerge, or anything of the sort - was: "If you play the lottery every day, at which point in time will the chances of quantum computing emerging at that point be equal to the chances of you winning the lottery every day up to that point?"
As I said, this isn't realistic or supposed to model reality. I assumed that the further you go in time, the more likely quantum computing is to emerge - chances are, (IF it ever happens) it will have already happened in 150 years, but it will probably not happen tomorrow. While the chances of having a winning streak of lottery are the opposite - you have a small chance of winning today AND tomorrow, but it's almost impossible that you will win every day for 150 years (regardless of whether you are even alive at that point - maybe your son will continue the "experiment" for you). So I was wondering at which point the chances would be equal.
That said, this is turning into a rather pointless argument that doesn't really have anything to do with the topic, and I don't think it's worth arguing over such a small thing.