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We think we have a pretty good idea about physics - just as cats have a pretty good idea about scratching posts and ants have a pretty good idea about scent tra

We think we have a pretty good idea about physics - just as cats have a pretty good idea about scratching posts and ants have a pretty good idea about scent trails. Cats literally can't understand what the Internet is, and ants can't understand what a cat is. It's astoundingly naive to assume we don't have equivalent cognitive limitations.

im3w1l 3y ago
Well it pretty much goes without saying that we don't know what we don't know. But we could actually be getting close to learning everything there is to know about the laws of physics. Finishing them up in the next century or two doesn't seem like a big stretch.
- philistine 3y ago
  I'm not a scientist, just a dumb dude watching Youtube. But there is a problem in physics with tests not being avaialble for stuff they're theorizing about. From my limited understanding, string theory currently has zero path to empirical research to prove or disprove. So it might take a bit longer than a century or two for that reason.
adrianN 3y ago
That is a classic argument that was already addressed "The Relativity of Wrong" by Asimov much more eloquently that what I could attempt. Google finds this copy: https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
- anotherman554 3y ago
  I don't think that article is really addressing the same argument. The argument Asimov is addressing seems to be whether human scientists will always disprove the previous century's human scientists. The argument the poster above is making is that human scientists may be cognitively limited, and our species objectively stupid. You can't really definitively argue against this in an essay, because if you are a stupid person who is a member of a stupid species, your reasoning skills can't be trusted. You might argue it pragmatically makes sense to assume your species is smart enough to understand the universe, but that's a different argument than Asimov is making. Asimov seems to assume humans are objectively an intelligent species so his reasoning skills can be trusted, which of course may not be wrong, but is pretty hard to prove.
  - adrianN 3y ago
    If there were cognitive limitations you'd expect big holes in the theories we come up with unless you believe that for some reason we happen to be limited in a way that we observe a subset of the universe which is strangely internally consistent and shows essentially no signs of interaction with an bigger universe, yet alien species can somehow use the bigger universe to interact with our subset of the universe in a way that appears to be magic. I find that pretty far fetched.
    - ausqb 3y ago
      There are big holes in the theories we come up with. The inability to reconcile QM and relativity is the most famous one. M-theory requires 11-dimensional spacetime, but no one has ever observed most of those dimensions. Recent astronomical measurements, if confirmed, may falsify parts of the standard model. The list is pretty long.

im3w1l 3y ago

Well it pretty much goes without saying that we don't know what we don't know. But we could actually be getting close to learning everything there is to know about the laws of physics. Finishing them up in the next century or two doesn't seem like a big stretch.

philistine 3y ago
I'm not a scientist, just a dumb dude watching Youtube. But there is a problem in physics with tests not being avaialble for stuff they're theorizing about. From my limited understanding, string theory currently has zero path to empirical research to prove or disprove. So it might take a bit longer than a century or two for that reason.

adrianN 3y ago

That is a classic argument that was already addressed "The Relativity of Wrong" by Asimov much more eloquently that what I could attempt. Google finds this copy: https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html

anotherman554 3y ago
I don't think that article is really addressing the same argument. The argument Asimov is addressing seems to be whether human scientists will always disprove the previous century's human scientists. The argument the poster above is making is that human scientists may be cognitively limited, and our species objectively stupid. You can't really definitively argue against this in an essay, because if you are a stupid person who is a member of a stupid species, your reasoning skills can't be trusted. You might argue it pragmatically makes sense to assume your species is smart enough to understand the universe, but that's a different argument than Asimov is making. Asimov seems to assume humans are objectively an intelligent species so his reasoning skills can be trusted, which of course may not be wrong, but is pretty hard to prove.
- adrianN 3y ago
  If there were cognitive limitations you'd expect big holes in the theories we come up with unless you believe that for some reason we happen to be limited in a way that we observe a subset of the universe which is strangely internally consistent and shows essentially no signs of interaction with an bigger universe, yet alien species can somehow use the bigger universe to interact with our subset of the universe in a way that appears to be magic. I find that pretty far fetched.
  - ausqb 3y ago
    There are big holes in the theories we come up with. The inability to reconcile QM and relativity is the most famous one. M-theory requires 11-dimensional spacetime, but no one has ever observed most of those dimensions. Recent astronomical measurements, if confirmed, may falsify parts of the standard model. The list is pretty long.