Oh dear, your prime number oversupply crashed the crypto Ponzi scheme market. Will you accept $10e2 proposals now?
Sent from tiny silly touch screen ________________________________ From: James Holton <jmhol...@lbl.gov> Sent: Monday, 1 April 2024 08:01 To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: [ccp4bb] request for applications Hey Everyone, It may sound like an incredibly boring thing that there has never been a formal mathematical proof that finding the prime factors of very large numbers doesn't have a more efficient algorithm than simply trying every single one of them. Nevertheless, to this day, encryption keys and indeed blockchain-based cryptocurrencies hinge upon how computationally hard it is to find these large prime factors. And yet, no one has ever proven that there is not a more efficient way. It occurred to me recently that cryptocurrencies (blockchains) are nothing more than a sequence of numbers, and Large Language Models fundamentally take a sequence of "words" and predict the next one in the series. So, they seem naturally suited to the task of finding a more efficient way. I spent some of my free time trying my hand at this. There were some twists and turns along the way, but as of today it seems to be working. Predictions are now coming pretty fast. By the end of April 1, I expect to have ~ $1e12 USD on current ledgers. This may have certain socioeconomic ramifications, but that is not what I want to discuss here. What I want to discuss is how to use this new source of scientific funding! My question for the BB is: what would YOU do if you had $1e12 USD for your science? No non-scientific proposals please. There are plenty of other forums for those. This BB is about biological structural science, so please stay on-topic. OK? And now: suggestions! I am particularly interested in projects that can only be done with a large, cooperative $1e12 USD, but not by 10e6 independent and unrelated $100e3 projects. The Apollo moon missions, for example cost $300e9 (adjusted USD). On a smaller scale, re-doing the whole PDB from cloning and expression to crystallization and structure solution would only cost about $500e6 USD. That would finally give us a good database of crystallization conditions for training an AI to tell you, given a sequence, what the crystallization conditions (if any) will be. That might take a lot of computing power, but there is plenty left over to buy 10 zettaflops of computing power (and the solar panels needed to power it). Or, if we really want to just divide it up, that would be $10e6 for each of the ~1e5 people on this planet who fit into the category of "biological scientist". That's not just PIs, but postdocs, grad students, techs. Everybody. I'm sure this will solve a lot of problems, but not all of them. And, I like to get ahead of things. So, what are the non-financial problems that will remain? I think these are the most important problems in science: the intellectual and technological hurdles that money can't overcome. I'm hoping this will be an opportunity for all of us to focus on those. I know we're all not used to thinking on this scale, but, at least for today, let's give it a try! Looking forward to your applications, -James Holton MAD Scientist ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CCP4BB, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk, terms & conditions are available at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ ________________________________ From: James Holton <jmhol...@lbl.gov> Sent: Monday, 1 April 2024 08:01 To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: [ccp4bb] request for applications Hey Everyone, It may sound like an incredibly boring thing that there has never been a formal mathematical proof that finding the prime factors of very large numbers doesn't have a more efficient algorithm than simply trying every single one of them. Nevertheless, to this day, encryption keys and indeed blockchain-based cryptocurrencies hinge upon how computationally hard it is to find these large prime factors. And yet, no one has ever proven that there is not a more efficient way. It occurred to me recently that cryptocurrencies (blockchains) are nothing more than a sequence of numbers, and Large Language Models fundamentally take a sequence of "words" and predict the next one in the series. So, they seem naturally suited to the task of finding a more efficient way. I spent some of my free time trying my hand at this. There were some twists and turns along the way, but as of today it seems to be working. Predictions are now coming pretty fast. By the end of April 1, I expect to have ~ $1e12 USD on current ledgers. This may have certain socioeconomic ramifications, but that is not what I want to discuss here. What I want to discuss is how to use this new source of scientific funding! My question for the BB is: what would YOU do if you had $1e12 USD for your science? No non-scientific proposals please. There are plenty of other forums for those. This BB is about biological structural science, so please stay on-topic. OK? And now: suggestions! I am particularly interested in projects that can only be done with a large, cooperative $1e12 USD, but not by 10e6 independent and unrelated $100e3 projects. The Apollo moon missions, for example cost $300e9 (adjusted USD). On a smaller scale, re-doing the whole PDB from cloning and expression to crystallization and structure solution would only cost about $500e6 USD. That would finally give us a good database of crystallization conditions for training an AI to tell you, given a sequence, what the crystallization conditions (if any) will be. That might take a lot of computing power, but there is plenty left over to buy 10 zettaflops of computing power (and the solar panels needed to power it). Or, if we really want to just divide it up, that would be $10e6 for each of the ~1e5 people on this planet who fit into the category of "biological scientist". That's not just PIs, but postdocs, grad students, techs. Everybody. I'm sure this will solve a lot of problems, but not all of them. And, I like to get ahead of things. So, what are the non-financial problems that will remain? I think these are the most important problems in science: the intellectual and technological hurdles that money can't overcome. I'm hoping this will be an opportunity for all of us to focus on those. I know we're all not used to thinking on this scale, but, at least for today, let's give it a try! Looking forward to your applications, -James Holton MAD Scientist ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CCP4BB<http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CCP4BB>, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk<http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk>, terms & conditions are available at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CCP4BB, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk, terms & conditions are available at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/
