GR was amazing, but it wasn’t well known and accepted until the first measurements confirmed it. Quantum Computing is still very much up in the air, but it’s also weird to bring it up in this context, because QM is one of the most tested theories of all time. QED In particular is tested to the most decimal places of any prediction, ever. It’s also weird to act as though GR and QM started out in a vacuum, instead of what they really were, which was based on centuries of math, theory, and experiment.
Edit: Unrelated, but I see you’re a fellow Greg Egan fan, good to meet you! Planck Dive has to be one of my all time favorites.
Edit: Unrelated, but I see you’re a fellow Greg Egan fan, good to meet you! Planck Dive has to be one of my all time favorites.