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Some of the great developments of th 20th century were proofs of limits, of what cannot be achieved even in principle: for example the incompleteness theorem a

Some of the great developments of th 20th century were proofs of limits, of what cannot be achieved even in principle: for example the incompleteness theorem and halting problem, and the uncertainty principle. IMHO, there is an "abstraction boundary" that limits what humans can ever know even in principle. There are some phenomena that are inherently "unabstractable". We may know that a glass of water has a wave function, but we will never know the particular wave function of any glass of water ever. The phenomena in our universe that we can "understand" are those that can be modeled, those for which abstractions can be created that will fit in our brains. There may well be phenomena in the universe (or elsewhere) that are not amenable to modeling in any way that is compatible with human cognitive machinery.

fluxquanta 10y ago
>There may well be phenomena in the universe (or elsewhere) that are not amenable to modeling in any way that is compatible with human cognitive machinery. Could these phenomena collectively be considered a "higher power"?
- udkl 10y ago
  If by "higher power" you mean things that humans can never comprehend, then yes. But us not ever being able to understand it does not mean there is no reasoning behind it. In the end it depends on perspectives & dictionary. You might call it a "higher power" .... I'm contended to end your sentence at 'phenomena'.
  - fluxquanta 10y ago
    >But us not ever being able to understand it does not mean there is no reasoning behind it. I didn't mean to imply that. But honestly, the idea that there exist physical systems in the universe that are too complex for the human brain to ever fully comprehend or model (dashing physicists hopes of a "theory of everything") sounds a lot like a higher power in the more traditional sense. I'm pretty sure that's close to the definition of the Tao, actually.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      > sounds a lot like a higher power in the more traditional sense. I would say it sounds like a higher power in the more technical sense. From my experience, at least in western philosophy and religion "higher power" traditionally implies intelligence or direction, which is a leap that I don't think is required to believe there are things we just won't be able to figure out.
    - omarchowdhury 10y ago
      The Tao is not a physical system. Totality is a better definition for Tao, and the wonder of the situation is that it is implied in spirituality that the contingent and changing and partial (that is, us) can know the absolute, unchanging, totality.
      - fluxquanta 10y ago
        >The Tao is not a physical system. If these are unmeasurable, non-modelable systems that we can never comprehend, then how can we say that they are "physical systems" that differ from the Tao?
        omarchowdhury 10y ago
        The Tao that can be named is the not eternal Tao.
visarga 10y ago
Not just an abstraction barrier, but also a working memory limit of maximum 7-8 objects at a time. We're limited in more than one way in how much we can understand. If we ever discover AGI, I think we will begin a new discipline, called "AGI studies" where humans try to understand what it discovers, to keep up. But the hard part would be to develop the most efficient concepts in order to understand even what it has to teach us. How do you communicate with an intelligence vastly superior to yours? Maybe the AGI will also develop the concepts and language necessary to communicate its findings to us.
- ori_b 10y ago
  > Maybe the AGI will also develop the concepts and language necessary to communicate its findings to us. It will, because without that, humans will just shut down the "machine that only speaks gibberish". Effectively communication with humans is a survival requirement.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  The question is whether the limits mentioned above are due to constraints in the processing power of the "human CPU", or are limits inherent to any approach based on logic. In other words, does reason itself, no matter how fast or large, have limits? Results such as the incompleteness theorem, Godel's work, etc seem to suggest that logic itself has limits, along with everything derived from it and/or built on top of it. In other words, even an ASI, even if you converted the whole known universe to "computronium" - it would not do better against those limits than evolution-shaped human brains. Reason itself seems to have an event horizon. The fact that the human brain has very clear and obvious processing power limitations is a separate issue.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - internaut 10y ago
    It is possible there is a form of understanding that goes over and above what we'll loosely call reason? I don't mean woo-like supernatural or mysticism. Let's use an analogy. We have instincts and reason. Instincts are quick but flawed, reason is slow but surer. Reason is to X what Instincts are to reason. What if there existed X metacognition and above reason itself? Suppose, for example with the assistance of an AI (capable of seeing larger pattern a human cannot) in conjunction with brain altering drugs to, crudely, give you a hit of comprehension/meaning (as a reward) when you successfully pattern matched with the assistance of the AI. That to me seems like much more than thinking from 1st principals. It would be something closer to seeing than thinking sequentially.
trhway 10y ago
>Some of the great developments of th 20th century were proofs of limits, of what cannot be achieved even in principle: for example the incompleteness theorem and halting problem, and the uncertainty principle. these are internal limits of the models they are confined to - reminds about the Achilles and the tortoise paradox before availability of the limit/differentiation/integration tools. >We may know that a glass of water has a wave function, but we will never know the particular wave function of any glass of water ever. once the model of wave functions gets obsolete, the question itself wouldn't make sense. Such inability to brute force the calculation of such wave functions is one of the reason driving the more deep thinking in science.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Several other limits as well: Extending to the 19th century and you'll find a few more limits to knowledge and capabilities. 1. Einstein, general reletivity, and the speed of light as an absolute limit. 2. Thermodynamics, and the limits imposed by entropy. 3. Rankine and Carnot expressing the limits of efficiency of heat engines. 4. Claude Shannon and the limits of information density over a communications channel. 5. Hubbel's expansion constant and the size of the observable Universe. 6. Moore and Wright with (empirically-derived) principles of production efficiencies. 7. M. King Hubbert, and limits to the total amount of petroleum in the US and world. 8. Meadows, et al, and the potential limits to human growth. Somewhat rough, but clearly finite. 9. Keeling and limits to atmospheric absorption of CO2 without producing significant climate change. (Not all of these limits are fully accepted, though I've strong reasons to believe they're well founded.)
- selestify 10y ago
  Very cool, thanks for the list
- careersuicide 10y ago
  10. The Chandrasekhar limit (and also the TOV limit), you could argue this is a subset of the limits imposed by relativity, but I think it's interesting and important enough to warrant being listed separately.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Fair enough, though it's not one that's likely to be encountered in the course of everyday events (though I listed several of those myself). I found the GP observation that the 20th c. had presented numerous limits to be a rather interesting point, and one not typically dwelled upon. The limits specific to human activities, technologies, and interests especially strike me as significant.

fluxquanta 10y ago

>There may well be phenomena in the universe (or elsewhere) that are not amenable to modeling in any way that is compatible with human cognitive machinery. Could these phenomena collectively be considered a "higher power"?

udkl 10y ago
If by "higher power" you mean things that humans can never comprehend, then yes. But us not ever being able to understand it does not mean there is no reasoning behind it. In the end it depends on perspectives & dictionary. You might call it a "higher power" .... I'm contended to end your sentence at 'phenomena'.
- fluxquanta 10y ago
  >But us not ever being able to understand it does not mean there is no reasoning behind it. I didn't mean to imply that. But honestly, the idea that there exist physical systems in the universe that are too complex for the human brain to ever fully comprehend or model (dashing physicists hopes of a "theory of everything") sounds a lot like a higher power in the more traditional sense. I'm pretty sure that's close to the definition of the Tao, actually.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    > sounds a lot like a higher power in the more traditional sense. I would say it sounds like a higher power in the more technical sense. From my experience, at least in western philosophy and religion "higher power" traditionally implies intelligence or direction, which is a leap that I don't think is required to believe there are things we just won't be able to figure out.
  - omarchowdhury 10y ago
    The Tao is not a physical system. Totality is a better definition for Tao, and the wonder of the situation is that it is implied in spirituality that the contingent and changing and partial (that is, us) can know the absolute, unchanging, totality.
    - fluxquanta 10y ago
      >The Tao is not a physical system. If these are unmeasurable, non-modelable systems that we can never comprehend, then how can we say that they are "physical systems" that differ from the Tao?
      - omarchowdhury 10y ago
        The Tao that can be named is the not eternal Tao.

visarga 10y ago

Not just an abstraction barrier, but also a working memory limit of maximum 7-8 objects at a time. We're limited in more than one way in how much we can understand. If we ever discover AGI, I think we will begin a new discipline, called "AGI studies" where humans try to understand what it discovers, to keep up. But the hard part would be to develop the most efficient concepts in order to understand even what it has to teach us. How do you communicate with an intelligence vastly superior to yours? Maybe the AGI will also develop the concepts and language necessary to communicate its findings to us.

ori_b 10y ago
> Maybe the AGI will also develop the concepts and language necessary to communicate its findings to us. It will, because without that, humans will just shut down the "machine that only speaks gibberish". Effectively communication with humans is a survival requirement.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
The question is whether the limits mentioned above are due to constraints in the processing power of the "human CPU", or are limits inherent to any approach based on logic. In other words, does reason itself, no matter how fast or large, have limits? Results such as the incompleteness theorem, Godel's work, etc seem to suggest that logic itself has limits, along with everything derived from it and/or built on top of it. In other words, even an ASI, even if you converted the whole known universe to "computronium" - it would not do better against those limits than evolution-shaped human brains. Reason itself seems to have an event horizon. The fact that the human brain has very clear and obvious processing power limitations is a separate issue.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- internaut 10y ago
  It is possible there is a form of understanding that goes over and above what we'll loosely call reason? I don't mean woo-like supernatural or mysticism. Let's use an analogy. We have instincts and reason. Instincts are quick but flawed, reason is slow but surer. Reason is to X what Instincts are to reason. What if there existed X metacognition and above reason itself? Suppose, for example with the assistance of an AI (capable of seeing larger pattern a human cannot) in conjunction with brain altering drugs to, crudely, give you a hit of comprehension/meaning (as a reward) when you successfully pattern matched with the assistance of the AI. That to me seems like much more than thinking from 1st principals. It would be something closer to seeing than thinking sequentially.

trhway 10y ago

>Some of the great developments of th 20th century were proofs of limits, of what cannot be achieved even in principle: for example the incompleteness theorem and halting problem, and the uncertainty principle. these are internal limits of the models they are confined to - reminds about the Achilles and the tortoise paradox before availability of the limit/differentiation/integration tools. >We may know that a glass of water has a wave function, but we will never know the particular wave function of any glass of water ever. once the model of wave functions gets obsolete, the question itself wouldn't make sense. Such inability to brute force the calculation of such wave functions is one of the reason driving the more deep thinking in science.

dredmorbius 10y ago

Several other limits as well: Extending to the 19th century and you'll find a few more limits to knowledge and capabilities. 1. Einstein, general reletivity, and the speed of light as an absolute limit. 2. Thermodynamics, and the limits imposed by entropy. 3. Rankine and Carnot expressing the limits of efficiency of heat engines. 4. Claude Shannon and the limits of information density over a communications channel. 5. Hubbel's expansion constant and the size of the observable Universe. 6. Moore and Wright with (empirically-derived) principles of production efficiencies. 7. M. King Hubbert, and limits to the total amount of petroleum in the US and world. 8. Meadows, et al, and the potential limits to human growth. Somewhat rough, but clearly finite. 9. Keeling and limits to atmospheric absorption of CO2 without producing significant climate change. (Not all of these limits are fully accepted, though I've strong reasons to believe they're well founded.)

selestify 10y ago
Very cool, thanks for the list
careersuicide 10y ago
10. The Chandrasekhar limit (and also the TOV limit), you could argue this is a subset of the limits imposed by relativity, but I think it's interesting and important enough to warrant being listed separately.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Fair enough, though it's not one that's likely to be encountered in the course of everyday events (though I listed several of those myself). I found the GP observation that the 20th c. had presented numerous limits to be a rather interesting point, and one not typically dwelled upon. The limits specific to human activities, technologies, and interests especially strike me as significant.