Annual revival of my thread explaining the inevitability of a sub-4 3^3 average and a sub-minute 7^3 single.
When I started this, people all over YouTube and even a bit
here sometimes actually expressed their belief that a sub-4 outright
average was likely still decades away if not impossible. Then when Yiheng got the 4.36 average, Jperm made a detailed analysis of all of his recorded official solves, seemingly reasonably arguing it was an anomaly even for
him, and with a chuckle and complete confidence concluded (very slightly paraphrased as I didn't literally just watch it), "Yeah, so I think it's safe to say no one is gonna be breaking this record for a loooong time!"
He seemed to almost treat it like Du's outlier sub-4 single. Well, Yiheng smashed it in a matter of months, exactly as I predicted to Jperm. People less familiar with Yiheng don't understand he isn't stone cold; he's a very animated kid and jumps up in down in response to successes that excite him. His relative lack of reaction, compared to other events and just him in general, to low 3 singles and low 4 averages is very telling. It's clear his inner thought process is like, "Seriously? I really missed the barrier this narrowly again? Why are comps so different from home? Oh well, remember to smile like Mom says. People are watching me right now who would love this result. I need to be grateful and represent myself, my country, and the cubing community well."
If he were still 8 I could almost imagine him choking back tears in response to a flat 4.00 average for being so close, a horrible look for him, but from people who don't know what it must feel like, especially at his age, to still feel cheated by RNG and nerves and be upset by that like anyone else. In a way, this is noble actually. It demonstrates truly competing with oneself, losing to one's potential self, feeling a certain way about that, and not having the slightest arrogant thought about how clearly you're stomping literally everyone else, though, to fall back on and just be instantly gratified by. That type always makes for a superb boundary breaker.
It's difficult to imagine it from his perspective. Even if being praised, it would be extremely annoying to know we're actually being incorrectly appraised and that we're capable of much more, especially to impatient children. And if Yiheng does have any competitiveness with others as well, it might be scary to imagine that nerves and RNG could actually prevent you from doing something you're already capable of for long enough for someone else to gain the same ability and have a little better luck.
I predicted that at some point full ZBLL will just be considered standard for top solvers, full OLL and PLL gradually considered more of a beginner's method. We're seeing this now with several of the Chinese cubers younger than Yiheng. I predicted in response to a video Feliks posted of Yiheng when he was 6 that he would take the WR average. He wasn't on the radar yet but he was just so young to be as fast as he was.
Enter Xaunyi. He's way faster than Yiheng was when I discovered him at 6, and at only a slightly older age. He's on the radar RIGHT NOW. Can we expect him to also improve dramatically the entire time he approaches a double digit age? Is
Yiheng even finished with his own rapid improvement phase? Xaunyi can plan the entirety of F2L on AVERAGE. And he can ensure a top layer cross as well, a very non-negligible portion of the time. I do mean in inspection, not any form of edge control as it's seen in real time with lookahead. As he uses ZBLL, that's 2-look cube when this happens, completely removing guesswork. How insane is it that he has both necessary powers to make this happen frequently? This isn't even considering how much his TPS is likely to increase as he grows.
Does anyone at this point seriously still think it's impossible? Seems to me the rhetoric has changed to inevitable, just as I've watched so many times before, and about as quickly as I suggested.
What about 2x2? I don't think the wr average will get below 0.7 anytime soon though
You had asked for my thoughts on 2^3 (2x2x2). I said that it was a bit different and that for this event to improve much, people needed to better optimize their starts and stops themselves, the art of picking up the cube economically even with the nerves of knowing a fast time is possible. This is
exactly what Yiheng then did, infamously actually; sliding is the new meta. And to my understanding, Zayn, having started working on it as well, does have a filmed sub 0.7 average.
Despite having historically gotten so many things right about barriers, and then making further predictions here which have turned out to be correct as well, I doubt this year's update will do much to sway the doubters toward my opinion that a sub-minute 7^3 single is as inevitable as the sub-minute conquests of its predecessors were, just not right around the corner. That probably won't change until the time goes low enough to cue the typically somewhat sudden 180 to, "The sub-minute is real!"
We're yet to see what happens when minds capable of things like planning in inspection from a scramble to the point that only a single alg is needed are repurposed toward using that spatial awareness to build big cubes in ways that look indistinguishable from lucky, particularly fluid solves to anyone who doesn't understand their setup processes. There's so much time to save on 7^3 in optimizing piece selection. But then there's just as much work to do with the hardware. It's not even close to the limit.
It is possible to move objects just by thinking about them
Yes. This all leads to me unveiling a secret simultaneous sweep of unofficial WRs in all events, using my mind alone. But in seriousness, the only things that can move things or influence things at all are the fundamental forces of physics: Electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and gravity. Mind over matter itself isn't implausible but requires a physical mechanism by which a thought influences the matter via those available forces. We do it all the time when we move our bodies at will, as we are our brains. It doesn't appear, however, that human biology has produced a way for matter outside the body to be manipulated by the brain. It has to interface with it using the body, which it CAN control, via connective tissue that transmits signals. Thoughts born of human biology don't seem to have any "wireless" influence on external matter via fields, but the possibility of putting this concept in action via biological and technological augmentation isn't actually totally off the table in the distant future.
