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> superintelligent viruses What if some virus evolved to work super intelligently as a hive mind? > My personal view is that our knowledge of the Universe at

> superintelligent viruses What if some virus evolved to work super intelligently as a hive mind? > My personal view is that our knowledge of the Universe at this point isn't perfect but it's closer to correct than not. I think most of the evidence contradicts this. My suspicion is that if we continue to progress at the same rate or accelerate, in 1000 years we (assuming we are still recognizably human) will look back at our understanding of reality right now as nearly completely wrong. So your constraints don't seem to be givens. > My personal view is that there simply aren't any starfaring civilizations to find within a pretty large (1M+ light years) light cone. This makes a lot of assumptions, including that intelligent species don't accelerate quickly into something unrecognizable as they evolve to more advancement, or that our model of spacetime is basically right and there isn't much more to expand into besides our sparse region of reality.

kiba 5y ago
I think most of the evidence contradicts this. My suspicion is that if we continue to progress at the same rate or accelerate, in 1000 years we (assuming we are still recognizably human) will look back at our understanding of reality right now as nearly completely wrong. Most of the evidence? We haven't found any new physics phenomenon from which we can derive new technology. There's no known or theoretical ways for us to traverse to different realities let alone prove or disprove such existence, for example. This makes a lot of assumptions, including that intelligent species don't accelerate quickly into something unrecognizable as they evolve to more advancement, or that our model of spacetime is basically right and there isn't much more to expand into besides our sparse region of reality. Just because we can imagine something doesn't make it possible.
- colordrops 5y ago
  I'm referring to historical evidence. At any point in history other than recent, our understanding of reality has been completely revised since then. And the extrapolation is that the same trend will continue. We've got zero evidence whatsover that we've found core models that can't be overridden by further discovery, and eventually made obsolete in whole by large paradigm shifts.
  - Normal_gaussian 5y ago
    I will happily argue there is pretty strong historical evidence our models are correct. In my amateur trip through philosophy from Plato to Wittgenstein I've seen a lot of acknowledgements by the intelligencia of a generation as to what is presumed, convenient, or constructed fact and what is actual fact. Paradigm shifts in thinking have gotten repeatedly smaller over the written record, and would hardly be considered a paradigm shift by previous generations.
  - Delk 5y ago
    That would be true if the development of our understanding had happened at a linear pace. It hasn't, though. Our understanding of the physical universe has grown so much within the last hundred or couple hundred years that I'm not sure understanding had grown equally much even throughout the entire preceding human history. At least you'd have to go pretty far in history. With accelerating growth of understanding you will, at some point, get to "mostly correct". I don't know if we're there yet but you can't extrapolate linearly from history that we aren't.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      I don't see how the pace of understanding is important. It presumes that we are somehow getting closer to the "truth", the absolute nature of reality. That is not how science works. It says nothing of "truth" - that's the realm of religion and philosophy. It builds models that can be tested empirically, refined and sometimes replaced. The acceleration of the last couple hundred years only says that we are getting better at refining the current model to match current testing capabilities, but it doesn't make the model impervious to some bit of information we could discovery that destroys its entire validity. The Catholic church did great a refining their model of reality and making it more internally self-consistent, but it doesn't mean that it's the same thing as the truth. Neither is a particular scientific model, and it is just as prone to being eventually dismantled or replaced. One pathological example that could overturn our entire understanding of the physical world is finding out that we are in a simulation. You'd think you were "mostly correct" until you are "100% wrong". Not suggesting we are in a simulation, but it's an example that shows that as long as the possibility exists that we can discover something that overturns our current models, there's no way we can say we are "close to the truth". It's pompous and presumptuous.
cletus 5y ago
> What if some virus evolved to work super intelligently as a hive mind? I'd say that this would make that Hive organism look a lot like a macro-organism. > ... in 1000 years we (assuming we are still recognizably human) will look back at our understanding of reality right now as nearly completely wrong. So let's take gravity as an example. Newton proposed his laws ~350 years ago. Newton's laws are a pretty good approximation. Of course, Einstein improved on this with special/general relativity but... Newton's laws are still mostly correct. Classical and relativistic models only really diverge in extreme circumstances. That's a long time to be mostly correct without a massive revision. > This makes a lot of assumptions, including that intelligent species don't accelerate quickly into something unrecognizable as they evolve to more advancement Yeah, there's a whole lot discussion about this as a possible answer to the Fermi Paradox. The idea has a problem though: ultimately civilizations are bound by how much mass and energy they have access to. If they aren't, this breaks thermodynamics. So in a universe where this is limited, it will be an advantage for a civilization to hoard as much as possible for the long term. That sort of thing would tend to be... noticeable. The other is that it isn't limited. If that's the case it really creates more problems than it solves. Basically life in the Universe should be even more prevalent and thus visible.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  In a thousand years, most of what we know will still be right, so far as it goes, but as wholly irrelevant to choices being made as Thomas Aquinas's conclusions are today. We are missing that great ocean of truth, distracted by washed-up seashells.

kiba 5y ago

I think most of the evidence contradicts this. My suspicion is that if we continue to progress at the same rate or accelerate, in 1000 years we (assuming we are still recognizably human) will look back at our understanding of reality right now as nearly completely wrong. Most of the evidence? We haven't found any new physics phenomenon from which we can derive new technology. There's no known or theoretical ways for us to traverse to different realities let alone prove or disprove such existence, for example. This makes a lot of assumptions, including that intelligent species don't accelerate quickly into something unrecognizable as they evolve to more advancement, or that our model of spacetime is basically right and there isn't much more to expand into besides our sparse region of reality. Just because we can imagine something doesn't make it possible.

colordrops 5y ago
I'm referring to historical evidence. At any point in history other than recent, our understanding of reality has been completely revised since then. And the extrapolation is that the same trend will continue. We've got zero evidence whatsover that we've found core models that can't be overridden by further discovery, and eventually made obsolete in whole by large paradigm shifts.
- Normal_gaussian 5y ago
  I will happily argue there is pretty strong historical evidence our models are correct. In my amateur trip through philosophy from Plato to Wittgenstein I've seen a lot of acknowledgements by the intelligencia of a generation as to what is presumed, convenient, or constructed fact and what is actual fact. Paradigm shifts in thinking have gotten repeatedly smaller over the written record, and would hardly be considered a paradigm shift by previous generations.
- Delk 5y ago
  That would be true if the development of our understanding had happened at a linear pace. It hasn't, though. Our understanding of the physical universe has grown so much within the last hundred or couple hundred years that I'm not sure understanding had grown equally much even throughout the entire preceding human history. At least you'd have to go pretty far in history. With accelerating growth of understanding you will, at some point, get to "mostly correct". I don't know if we're there yet but you can't extrapolate linearly from history that we aren't.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    I don't see how the pace of understanding is important. It presumes that we are somehow getting closer to the "truth", the absolute nature of reality. That is not how science works. It says nothing of "truth" - that's the realm of religion and philosophy. It builds models that can be tested empirically, refined and sometimes replaced. The acceleration of the last couple hundred years only says that we are getting better at refining the current model to match current testing capabilities, but it doesn't make the model impervious to some bit of information we could discovery that destroys its entire validity. The Catholic church did great a refining their model of reality and making it more internally self-consistent, but it doesn't mean that it's the same thing as the truth. Neither is a particular scientific model, and it is just as prone to being eventually dismantled or replaced. One pathological example that could overturn our entire understanding of the physical world is finding out that we are in a simulation. You'd think you were "mostly correct" until you are "100% wrong". Not suggesting we are in a simulation, but it's an example that shows that as long as the possibility exists that we can discover something that overturns our current models, there's no way we can say we are "close to the truth". It's pompous and presumptuous.

cletus 5y ago

> What if some virus evolved to work super intelligently as a hive mind? I'd say that this would make that Hive organism look a lot like a macro-organism. > ... in 1000 years we (assuming we are still recognizably human) will look back at our understanding of reality right now as nearly completely wrong. So let's take gravity as an example. Newton proposed his laws ~350 years ago. Newton's laws are a pretty good approximation. Of course, Einstein improved on this with special/general relativity but... Newton's laws are still mostly correct. Classical and relativistic models only really diverge in extreme circumstances. That's a long time to be mostly correct without a massive revision. > This makes a lot of assumptions, including that intelligent species don't accelerate quickly into something unrecognizable as they evolve to more advancement Yeah, there's a whole lot discussion about this as a possible answer to the Fermi Paradox. The idea has a problem though: ultimately civilizations are bound by how much mass and energy they have access to. If they aren't, this breaks thermodynamics. So in a universe where this is limited, it will be an advantage for a civilization to hoard as much as possible for the long term. That sort of thing would tend to be... noticeable. The other is that it isn't limited. If that's the case it really creates more problems than it solves. Basically life in the Universe should be even more prevalent and thus visible.

ncmncm 5y ago
In a thousand years, most of what we know will still be right, so far as it goes, but as wholly irrelevant to choices being made as Thomas Aquinas's conclusions are today. We are missing that great ocean of truth, distracted by washed-up seashells.