Limits to knowledge?

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Dinosaur, Jul 12, 2015.

  1. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    In many threads, There is speculation relating to what humans will know in a thousand or a million years, assuming we last that long. Sometimes the speculation relates to what some other technological culture might know now or in the distant future.

    These speculations are generally mentioned to support notions such as the possible future existence of Star Trek transporters and/or Star Gate technology.

    In a Thread, I mentioned that I did not expect either technology to be possible. I further stated that the Star trek transporter was magic or fantasy, not SciFi due to there being no equipment at the destination.

    Some one posted a comment similar to the following.
    The implication was that both technologies were likely to be possible in the future. There was an implication that almost imaginable technology would be developed in the future.

    The above POV implies that human knowledge plots like a parabola, with no upper bound.

    I strongly believe that knowledge plots more like an asymptote to some upper bound.
     
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  3. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    At the very least, we have an incomprehensibly large Universe out there....at the most it is probably infinite in extent.
    I see knowledge the same way.
     
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  5. Kristoffer Giant Hyrax Valued Senior Member

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    If you think about what was considered Sci Fi when you were a kid, wouldn't you agree that the tech we have nowadays would seem to be on par or above (if we leave out the more unfeasible stuff) with what the scifi movies had?
     
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  7. Gravage Registered Senior Member

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    Forget it, universe may be absolutely infinite (but if the universe is absolutely infinite than it is also uncreated and there was never any form of Big Bang whatsoever), but human knowledge is not, actually I bet we are close to that limit-quantum physics being the last and final stop.
    Everything what we know will be based on current theories, not the new ones.
    And why all people think math will solve everything-that's our biggest advantage, but also our biggest limitation.
    Just for the record, human civilization will not last long, forget about the lifespan of another million years, the next thousand years maybe, but the next million years-it will never going to happen.
     
  8. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Not necessarily.....see
    http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/infpoint.html
    No evidence to support that, one way or the other.
    Again, you have no evidence one way or the other to support that.
    I don't know how long humanity as a species has......I prefer to remain optimistic though that we will find our way out of any current mess and rise above other human frailties in time.
     
  9. Gravage Registered Senior Member

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    Yes, it is if something has the beginning it has the end as well, in order for the universe to be absolutely infinite it has be uncreated, this link shows contradictions, supposedly there was a Big Bang of the observable universe and yet no Big Bang of the entire unobservable universe-if it's treue than observable universe was created in the infinite unobservable universe.

    What fairy tales are you talking about, we practically don't know anything about anything we have theories and that's it, if you say science never proves anything 100%, you are basically saying we don't know anything about anything.

    Quantum physics is by far the last upper limit of human knowledge, there is nothing behind this, and since we do not understand it-this is the upper limit of human knowledge.

    Also, please take a note that the more we discover the more complex science and technology are and the harder they are understood, also even experts start to fail in understanding the more complex science and technology get.

    Yes, there irrefutable evidences, because math does not answer the most fundamental questions-it failed in these areas horribly.

    Forget it, read the history and look for the long-term effects of science and technology (again I'm not talking about beneficial short-term effects, but destructive long-term effects of science and technology)-it's bad, very bad, and humans do not change, if humans change they only change worse, not better-why do you think all previous civilizations have fallen...
     
  10. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Nah, that is not accurate at all. We don't know everything but that does not mean we don't know anything. The computer you are tapping away on is based on scientific theories. We landed people on the moon based on scientific theories. So saying we don't know anything about anything is just plain wrong, and a bit silly.
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2015
  11. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    11,888
    Well in fact humans have changed quite a bit over the past 1000 years. You are far less likely to die from a violent death than ever before.
    Look at this Scientific American article.
    From the article:
    “Violent deaths of all kinds have declined, from around 500 per 100,000 people per year in prestate societies to around 50 in the Middle Ages, to around six to eight today worldwide, and fewer than one in most of Europe.”
     
  12. Gravage Registered Senior Member

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    Sure it is, but why do you keep saying that nothing is 100% proven-that alone proves that we don't know anything about anything.
     
  13. Gravage Registered Senior Member

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    And I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about those who are rich and rule the world from shadows are not changing their mentality, there is no morality, no humanity and main guilt is on science and technology, because the values have changed-everything is materialsm/money to have more than the other, we also have intelligence, but the most important things like spirituality and wisdom, we do not possess at all.
    This capitalism combined with science and technology, plus those religioues extremists from Africa-do the math, we're heading into chaos where none wants to stop it, because they make money on it.
     
  14. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    11,888
    That statement proves you either do not understand english, math or science; or a combination of those 3.
     
  15. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    11,888
    If only we could return to the middle ages before all of this evil science and technology and simply live our lives in the bliss that was feudalism.
     
  16. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Obviously, transporter-to-transporter transfer would be easier, quicker, and probably safer. But since we have no idea how such a device would actually operate, we have no way to determine whether transporter-to-random-destination would also be possible, albeit more difficult, slower and less safe.
    And upon what evidence or reasoning is that belief based? The number of people living on this planet is slowly reaching its practical maximum (15-20 billion early in the next century), but once we develop interstellar travel and establish colonies on other planets, the number of human brains in existence will resume increasing. The more people, the more ideas.
    The Hubble Volume that we call our "universe" is most certainly finite, since it has been expanding for a finite time. Nonetheless, the discovery of exoplanets, close enough to us to be able to detect them, implies that there are zillions (pardon my scientific jargon) of planets within this Hubble volume. This suggests that there are zillions of civilizations, perhaps most of them built by creatures who are nothing like us and therefore have a different perspective on things.

    Of course it is possible that there are other Hubble volumes out there, resulting from Big-Bang-style singularities. In this case there will be considerably more civilizations and considerably more knowledge.
    We have a few billion years if we limit ourselves to this planet. That's when the sun will enter its red giant phase and expand to a size that will make Earth uninhabitable. Let's hope that our descendants have figured out interstellar travel long before that happens.
    Huh??? Why are you so certain that this is, indeed the limit of matter and energy? Do you have a textbook on 22nd-century physics?
    You seem to have no faith in your fellow man. I'm so sorry.
    Each Paradigm Shift has created a quantum increase in our knowledge and technology: agriculture, city-building, bronze metallurgy, iron metallurgy, industry, and most recently information technology. Of course there have been setbacks in civilization, but in the long run our technology has made us healthier, safer, and wiser. Would you honestly prefer to live in the Neolithic Era (the development of agriculture and animal husbandry so people no longer had to spend most of their time looking for food), when infant mortality was 80% and more than 50% of adult deaths were at the hands of other humans?
    They were conquered by other civilizations that were more adept at surviving. Next question?
     
  17. Gravage Registered Senior Member

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    I'm not talking about the limit of matter and energy, but the limit of knowledge and understanding on what we discover-that failed miserably with quantum physics.

    Like you do? Just see what happening in the world, don't live in Utopia, like many of you live. There is no faith in man, there is only faith in money and capitalism and materialism, you don't care about anyone else, much like I or anyone else on this forum cares about anyone else-that's the legacy of materialism, science and technology, the more we have the less human/less wise we are, the less we have the more human/wiser we are.

    And you completely ignore all the bad things from science and technology-misuse and abuse, why create something if those who rule the world will abuse everything you create, science and technology back than were not that powerful, today they are, and scientists who create those powerful technologies have no responsibility on how their inventions are used-shame on you, it's not rich people who control this world, its the scientists, and they obviously don't care about the world at all, since they create their inventions and don't care how exactly it will be abused-scientists should go to jail, when it comes to this subject.
    You talk about these achievements, and you forgot about Aboriginal Australians and Indians who were living just fine and peaceful without all that science and high-tech histeria for so many tens of thousands of years in accordance with nature and they respected nature's limits, moderna humans don't respect anything anymore, there is no morality, no humanity, just technology, cell-phones and computers-in a way science and technology has become a new religion, but their shortcomings show us in the long term that science and technology is extremely harmful for all human population, except for those who sell it and want to rule the world.
    Like I said scientists and technologists have intelligence, but they don't possess spirituality, morality and wisdom-these 2 elements are by far the most important.
    If scientists really want to do some good, they should never work for multinational companies, Pentagon and similar, they should work for small, sustainable communities and towns, not for companies who can just buy every single piece of the planet and are economically and financially far more powerful than any single country on this planet.
    People should live and advance in science and technology, but not to the point where the environment and planet itself is getting destroyed-I'm not worried about the planet, it has survive so much worse and so many natural catastrophies, that this what we do to this planet, is truly nothing, it's humans that I'm worried about.

    The same as we are doing today, but also it was the complexity of their society and civilizations, just look how complex our planet-wide human civilization is-much more complex than anything we had so far in the history, and the more complex society/civilization is, the more vulnerable it is, plus science and technology are also destroying everything on this planet-because of never-ending scientific/technological advancements which is totally impossible, because there is an upper limit on how much we can learn (quantum physics, mind you)-which is impossible on this small and very much limited planet.
    Plus, artificial intelligence will take all of our jobs and destroy humans or enslave them.
     
  18. Gravage Registered Senior Member

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    No you are 100% wrong, my statements are based on reality/real world facts, not some fantasy-utopia.
     
  19. Kristoffer Giant Hyrax Valued Senior Member

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    I've come to the conclusion that it's a waste of time to read Gravage's posts.
     
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  20. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    And you blame science for all this. I blame intellectual dishonesty and the sociopathy that's us as a species. Science is where we decided to choose intellectual honesty.
     
  21. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Knowledge is eternal, not infinite. You can't remember forever les you lose count, and have a finite number of things.
     
  22. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    This universe is infinite in extent. It's flat. Omega=1. It has a beginning and will expand forever. That's the prediction for Guths inflation and that is the measurement confirmed by the WMAP and Planck Experiments to some very small error bar.
     
  23. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    Yoru're just a bit confused when you try to blame ills of the human condition on something like the scientific literature rather than 'us' the perpetrators of said ill gained bullshit. Science was designed to have a chance to remain above such bullshit. So science is a plus not a negative.
     

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