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The article mostly argues that some concepts are too complex for humans to understand and that only though computers or post-human intelligence can we discover

The article mostly argues that some concepts are too complex for humans to understand and that only though computers or post-human intelligence can we discover further scientific truths. But, the scientific process is independent of human intelligence. So, more interesting is: given an infinitely intelligent organism, can that organism be use the scientific process to completely understand the universe? Or, does science have a flaw that limits it's ability to explain certain truths?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
aalleavitch 9y ago
Arguably, there are already many concepts that we as a society understand deeply but any individual human is completely incapable of grasping. Certainly, no single human could possibly hope to understand the whole sum of modern human knowledge; collectively we already constitute an intelligence billions of times more complex than a single human. In fact, there's a good argument to be made that the scientific process can't even work on the scale of a single human because it would be destroyed by bias; it's entirely in the notion of how you communicate and provide evidence for your theories to other people that the objectivity in science arises. When it comes to whether any intelligent system could understand the entire universe, I think at some point we start reaching the level where the terms of the question start to break down. What if we required an intelligence that spanned the entire universe in order to understand the universe? Is there maybe a sense in which we can say that the universe taken as a unit necessarily understands itself already? We start to rub up against very fundamental epistemological concepts that might not hold when we're considering a system vastly different from a human being.
- PoachedSausage 9y ago
  In some ways the universe is aware of itself in the form of consciousness, if you believe its real of course.
  - aalleavitch 9y ago
    I mean, consciousness is obviously real. As conscious beings it is fundamentally the only thing we actually know is real. The confusion there comes from the fact that we can't prove our own consciousness to each other and we poorly understand what actually constitutes it.
    - PoachedSausage 9y ago
      I should have clarified, I personally believe consciousness to be real and possibly even an inherent property of the universe. However there is a school of thought that believes consciousness to be an illusion.
- nnd 9y ago
  The fundamental question here is what this understanding would actually entail? Surely describing how things work will always be an approximation, a model in a way.
stupidcar 9y ago
How do you know for certain that the scientific method works? You only know it via anecdotal evidence, because you can't use the method to test itself, since that assumes a priori that it works. So science cannot be used to investigate certain questions about itself. Instead they fall into the topic of philosophy of science, and have no definite answers.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

aalleavitch 9y ago

Arguably, there are already many concepts that we as a society understand deeply but any individual human is completely incapable of grasping. Certainly, no single human could possibly hope to understand the whole sum of modern human knowledge; collectively we already constitute an intelligence billions of times more complex than a single human. In fact, there's a good argument to be made that the scientific process can't even work on the scale of a single human because it would be destroyed by bias; it's entirely in the notion of how you communicate and provide evidence for your theories to other people that the objectivity in science arises. When it comes to whether any intelligent system could understand the entire universe, I think at some point we start reaching the level where the terms of the question start to break down. What if we required an intelligence that spanned the entire universe in order to understand the universe? Is there maybe a sense in which we can say that the universe taken as a unit necessarily understands itself already? We start to rub up against very fundamental epistemological concepts that might not hold when we're considering a system vastly different from a human being.

PoachedSausage 9y ago
In some ways the universe is aware of itself in the form of consciousness, if you believe its real of course.
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  I mean, consciousness is obviously real. As conscious beings it is fundamentally the only thing we actually know is real. The confusion there comes from the fact that we can't prove our own consciousness to each other and we poorly understand what actually constitutes it.
  - PoachedSausage 9y ago
    I should have clarified, I personally believe consciousness to be real and possibly even an inherent property of the universe. However there is a school of thought that believes consciousness to be an illusion.
nnd 9y ago
The fundamental question here is what this understanding would actually entail? Surely describing how things work will always be an approximation, a model in a way.

stupidcar 9y ago

How do you know for certain that the scientific method works? You only know it via anecdotal evidence, because you can't use the method to test itself, since that assumes a priori that it works. So science cannot be used to investigate certain questions about itself. Instead they fall into the topic of philosophy of science, and have no definite answers.