avevale_intelligencer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2011-02-21 08:44 am
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2011-02-21 08:44 am
Early morning thought before I start in on the housework
Prompted by this quote, relaed by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earth_wizard.
There are two kinds of things we can do, exemplified by washing up and learning a poem. Washing up is always necessary and always there; it doesn't end, it goes on, and even if you use paper plates and plastic cutlery there'll always be something that needs cleaning. Washing up is infinite.
Learning a poem, on the other hand, involves starting at the beginning, memorising each line in its relation to the others, till you get to the end, and there stopping. Once it's done it's done, and as long as you refresh your memory every so often you won't need to do it again. Learning a poem, learning anything, is finite.
But if every time you went back to the book there were a hundred more lines to learn, you'd soon give up in despair.
It's tempting to see this belief (that the task of learning how the universe works is unending) as a desperate grab by some secular scientists at some kind of mysticism. They don't have room in their probably finite universe for an infinite god, so they figure something has to be infinite here. Why not the quest for knowledge? So far it's been a series of Chinese boxes, each one containing a smaller one; why shouldn't that literally go on for ever? Pattern under the chaos, chaos under the pattern, alternating into eternity, and always more to learn. As if, every time you turned up for your driving lesson, there was a new knob or a new pedal or a new lever in the car that you had to learn about before you could take your test, and you knew there always would be, every single time.
I'm quite convinced we haven't cracked the secrets of the universe yet. The task of science is nowhere near complete, and any scientist who says so is mistaken, I think. But that the task is completable--that it is finite--that has to be true, or else there is no point or purpose to learning anything. Understanding must be attainable, or we might as well go and do the dishes. At least they'll be done for a little while.
And speaking of which.
earth_wizard.There are two kinds of things we can do, exemplified by washing up and learning a poem. Washing up is always necessary and always there; it doesn't end, it goes on, and even if you use paper plates and plastic cutlery there'll always be something that needs cleaning. Washing up is infinite.
Learning a poem, on the other hand, involves starting at the beginning, memorising each line in its relation to the others, till you get to the end, and there stopping. Once it's done it's done, and as long as you refresh your memory every so often you won't need to do it again. Learning a poem, learning anything, is finite.
But if every time you went back to the book there were a hundred more lines to learn, you'd soon give up in despair.
It's tempting to see this belief (that the task of learning how the universe works is unending) as a desperate grab by some secular scientists at some kind of mysticism. They don't have room in their probably finite universe for an infinite god, so they figure something has to be infinite here. Why not the quest for knowledge? So far it's been a series of Chinese boxes, each one containing a smaller one; why shouldn't that literally go on for ever? Pattern under the chaos, chaos under the pattern, alternating into eternity, and always more to learn. As if, every time you turned up for your driving lesson, there was a new knob or a new pedal or a new lever in the car that you had to learn about before you could take your test, and you knew there always would be, every single time.
I'm quite convinced we haven't cracked the secrets of the universe yet. The task of science is nowhere near complete, and any scientist who says so is mistaken, I think. But that the task is completable--that it is finite--that has to be true, or else there is no point or purpose to learning anything. Understanding must be attainable, or we might as well go and do the dishes. At least they'll be done for a little while.
And speaking of which.
no subject
A single poem is finite, yes. But If I ever knew that I had read the last poem or the last book because they had all been written then it would be a cause for despair indeed. Some writers have indeed declared that there are "only 6 plots" -- and then gone on to write many times that number of books (Georgette Heyer, for example).
Will 'science' ever totally understand people? I hope not, because if it does then we will have nothing left, no one would every try to write a book or a poem because it will be known exactly why they did it beforehand. A science which included total knowledge of why and how music is appreciated would be like "the ultimate tune", it would come up with the perfect melody and all composers would be out of a job. Indeed, a science that knows everything would no longer have any place for free will or surprises or unpredictability, it would be a monobloc and totally sterile.
If "understanding must be attainable", why does anyone bother? No one at our stage can know everything, so why not just give up? That we don't do that indicates that your "all or nothing" approach is not correct.
no subject
Someone doing the washing up for you doesn't mean the washing up has ended. So that doesn't stand up. It's very probable that after I die there will be dirty dishes; just because somebody else will be stuck with them doesn't mean they don't exist. As long as anyone eats off reusable utensils there will be washing up, so for all practical purposes it's infinite; there will never be a point of clean dishes for everyone, for ever. (Unless some clown invents the self-cleaning plate, but that's a paradigm shift that invalidates the analogy anyway.)
You seem to think that understanding is all there is, that when there is total understanding everything stops, and that doesn't make sense to me. After you've learned the last poem you write another one. Also, "learning" (as I used the term) and "understanding" (as you're using that one) are not congruent. I was just talking about reciting off-book.
And your last question is just a reversal of mine, and I don't see the sense in that either. An attainable goal is worth striving for, even if you can't attain it yourself. An unattainable goal is not. Which is not to say that there are not other benefits to be gained, but I think I've covered that in my reply to
no subject
If you are trying to compare it with poetry, the analogous thing is with poetry in general. Certainly, you can memorise one poem -- but by the time you've done that people will have written several more (much like your washing up). It's effectively infinite[1] (in that there will always -- I hope -- be more poems than any one person could possibly read). Or, it's finite in that once you have memorised one poem (equivalent to the washing up from one meal) you have accomplished that task.
"An attainable goal is worth striving for, even if you can't attain it yourself." Assertion. That may be true for you, but it isn't for most people, who see no point in striving to climb a mountain, for instance. And while attainable goals may be worthwhile as steps, people do seem to see them as only steps on the way to the unattainable goals. No one will ever write the "perfect tune", it doesn't stop composers from trying to get ever better.
Again, /in your view/ there is no point in striving for an unattainable goal. Yes, you make that clear. I don't understand that because I can see lots of goals which are unattainable but people strive for them anyway. People who try to become "the best" at anything are in this category (because someone will always beat their 'record'). Scientists who try to get as close as possible to Absolute Zero (they'll never make it, but it doesn't stop them trying to get that fraction closer).
To me, hoping that the amount of knowledge and understanding is finite is like hoping that people will stop writing books or music. If it ever happened life would be very boring, and at that point there would indeed be no point in striving to to anything, because it would have all been done. Indeed, something like that happened towards the end of the 19th century when several scientists did think that everything was likely to be known very soon and all that would be left would be refining a few more decimal points, and it put a damper on anyone entering the field, who wants to be left with the "washing up" with no meal?
[1] Anything 'infinite' may be restricted by the life span of the universe, if you believe that it has one. But in any practical terms, for an individual, the amount they can know is finite and bounded by their lifespan and so they will always die, like Newton, having played on the beach and picked up a few pebbles with an unknowable amount left to learn.
no subject
Again with perfection. I'm not talking about creation, which is open-ended; I'm talking about the acquisition of knowledge, which you seem to want to be open-ended but which isn't proven to be and doesn't have to be.
"To me, hoping that the amount of knowledge and understanding is finite is like hoping that people will stop writing books or music. If it ever happened life would be very boring..." Assertion. That may be true for you, but it may not be for some people. Apart from the fact that the two things are apples and oranges, there is far, far more to life than the search for knowledge, or even than books or music (and you know how I feel about those). And good gods, what's wrong with re-reading?
There's a whole lot of confusion here between the individual and humanity in general, between finding knowledge and understanding and creative endeavour, between "understanding" and "perfection", between "the universe" and "people," and if I've caused it or contributed to it I'm sorry. What I am trying to say is that I believe it is possible that some day humanity in general will have learned everything about how this universe works. Is that the sum total of possible knowledge? No, I don't think it is, but it's this universe that the quote talked about and it's this universe that I believe is fathomable and this universe that I keep getting told isn't. I think that's not true.
Being the best you can be at something is an attainable goal, and that's what most people realistically strive for. Getting the lowest temperature you can get is an attainable goal, and that, I assume, is what the scientists are striving for. Adding something to the sum of human knowledge is an attainable goal...but if there is no way to understand a finite universe completely, then sooner or later we're going to hit a wall far more painful than the one you seem to be postulating, one that says "THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER" when you can see that there is farther to go. Personally, if the choice were between boredom and frustration (I don't think it is), I'll take boredom any day.
Science has to proceed on the basis that everything is eventually knowable, whatever the individual scientist may choose to believe. At least that's the impression I've gathered. And that's why I don't understand this point of view, not only that everything is not knowable but that somehow that's a happy. I don't get it.
no subject
Which is a false analogy, because you aren't comparing like with like. The analogy would be comparing one job of washing up with learning one poem, whether you decide to do some more washing up or learning is irrelevant. OK, you might claim that you have to do the washing up but not learn a poem, in which case the analogy breaks down from the start.
"I'm talking about the acquisition of knowledge, which you seem to want to be open-ended but which isn't proven to be and doesn't have to be."
But neither is it proven to be finite, and it doesn't have to be finite either. Both are assumptions. However, I am stating that the infinite is an assumption (and therefore may not be true -- since it's untestable because by definition something infinite it can only ever be an assumption), whereas you seem to be asserting that it is false (which is indeed testable, all you have to do is find an end to knowledge).
"if there is no way to understand a finite universe completely, then sooner or later we're going to hit a wall far more painful than the one you seem to be postulating, one that says "THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER" when you can see that there is farther to go."
Huh? Where's that wall come from? My visualisation of the Cosmic All has no need for any such wall, because no matter how big we get the universe will always be bigger. The only limitation, in my weltanschauung, is that as mortal beings (and if we become immortal we will no longer be human in any normal sense) we cannot know the infinite.
Er, yes, that's what "to me" means. In My Opinion. I did not assert it as an absolute or about anyone else, and explicitly said so.
Re-reading? I love it. But there are already quite a few books which I don't reread because I know them too well (it's been around 25 years, I guess, since I last reread LotR, and I feel no particular desire to do so. But I keep the books because it's possible I might want to reread them sometime before I die.)
"not only that everything is not knowable but that somehow that's a happy"
Negative in the wrong place. I didn't say that everything is unknowable, I said that not everything is knowable, i.e. there are some things which are not totally knowable. For instance, in order to say that "there is no other intelligent life in the universe" one would have to explore every part of it -- and still while one was looking in one place they could have gone (or evolved) somewhere else. Can we know what came before the Big Bang (if that theory's still current)? Can we even know what is out there beyond the red-shift boundary, if we are limited by the speed of light? (Yes, that's a 'wall', possibly, and I don't like it.)
I don't think that "science has to proceed on the basis that everything is eventually knowable", Certainly it doesn't at the moment, it ignores areas where it can't find repeatable results and where there are no testable theories (from what I've heard that's part of the definition of science, that if it dealt with those other things then it might be philosophy or something).
Which one is "a happy" is a matter of taste (de gustibus And All That). I'm happy knowing that there is more to the universe than I, or anyone I know, will ever know. You aren't. You say "Personally, if the choice were between boredom and frustration (I don't think it is), I'll take boredom any day" -- I can't argue with that, because that's your personal taste (and mine is different). I do argue with an (apparent) assertion that the way you feel is the way everyone else does (or should) feel about it.
no subject
no subject
The reason why there is always more washing up to be done is that there are always people generating more washing up. Assuming that living sentient beings will always generate something that may be called "washing up", then it's an infinite task in so much as the persistence of sentient life is infinite (which I certainly hope it is, but who knows?).
The reason why there is an end to the reading of the poem is that the person who wrote the poem decided to end it at a particular point, and doesn't keep adding new verses.
So the question of whether there is an end to the knowledge that can be acquired boils down to "is there someone, something, or some ongoing process, that causes new potentially knowable (but as yet unknown) things to exist?"
And scientifically speaking, we don't have an answer to that question, nor can I imagine any way we could detect the existence of such a thing. (But that doesn't mean no one will ever manage to imagine such a detector, or indeed get around to building it. I just can't get my head around what that would involve... But then, that's one of the things science has done for us: Given us the tools and the language to get our heads around various things we could never even conceive of before. Long may that continue!)
But here's a philosphical issue: it's been postulated that in our quest to know everything, we ourselves might actually be *generating* new unknowables. That maybe quarks didn't "really" exist until we strted trying to figure out what atoms electrons were made of, and electrons didn't exist till we started investigating what made the various phenomena we now ascribe to "electricity" tick. Maybe there's some deom out there, or some power within our own minds, thyat creates new mysteries so long as we have the hunger to solve them. In that case, the washing up analogy is spot on: We create the new washing up as a by-product of enjoying our food served on the plates we washed yesterday.
I hope that isn't the case, as it would seem as though we've just been fooling ourselves all along.. and yet, at the same time, wouldn't that be a really neat way of making humans be creative? Causing us, by dint of our own acts of wonder and investigation and discovery, to create the very unknowns that we are then driven to investigate, as a consequence of which we are able to invent new tools to do stuff with, and new ideas to speculate and write about in things called SF novels... How much more "made in the image of the creator" could you get?
no subject
That also ties into the fractal idea, that we create the infinitely small detail by looking at it closely.
But even without that, if free will is postulated we create more information just by existing, which we then don't fully understand and in trying to understand it that generates still more.
I don't think of it as fooling ourselves, though, or at least no more so than our tendency to tell each other (and ourselves) fiction. We seem to be a creature which delights in inventing something 'false' if we haven't got enough 'real' stuff coming in (indeed, in sensory deprivation our brains generate illusions all by themselves).
no subject
Ah! There I think we have the crux of the matter, and of my disagreement.
Option 1: "Aim for a height of 5 metres. We know from past experience that you'll achieve something in the range of 4.5 to 5.5 metres"
Option 2: "Aim for a height of 9 metres. We know from past experience that you'll probably achieve around 6 to 7 metres".
Option 3: "Aim for a height of infinity! It's impossible to reach it, of course, but experience has shown this is the only way anyone has ever achieved a height greater than 10 metres... and who knows, you might be the first person in the world to achieve 11!"
Which option would you choose?
And as ever, back to the gospel: It's a switch from the old way of judging moral rectitude - "As long as I meet the minimum standard of behaviour, as specified by the law, I'm OK (Corollary: But if I fail, I'm buggered!)" - to the new way - "forget about the minimum standard, it's a total red herring; I want (and God wants me) to achieve the highest level of goodness I'm capable of! Therefore I will take as a role model no less a person than Jesus Christ, the human incarnation of God, because even though a sin-infected mortal like me can't possibly ever attain his standard of goodness - can never *be* Jesus - I know that only by setting my sights on the target of his perfection (and failing, and then learning from my failure, and trying again, repeatedly) will I ever become the best *me* that I can be."
no subject
no subject
"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?"
no subject
I am reasonably convinced (but have not tried to mathematically prove/disprove) that there will always be more left to learn, in science, even if it comes down to counting turtles[*].
But if the goal is, "I want to understand as much as I can about X," or "I want to help all of understand as much as we can about the universe," then the goal is by definition possible: it's to find out just how much "as much as we can" is.
Note that (in the case of "we") it is never completable[**], but for each generation, that generation's version of it is attainable -- do our best, keep probing, and find out how much we can understand in our span.
[*] Recasting "what came before the Big Bang ... okay, what was the origin of that ... fine, what caused that?" as a "turtles all the way down" for the moment, even if it turns out not to be.
[**] Unless of course you are right and I am wrong about total knowledge being finite.
Hmm. How is knowledge about the universe stored? At some point, don't we run out of electrons with which to store the data about (among other things) the states of the electrons ... thus making the universe itself our only complete representation of the universe, with no entity within it able to know everything about it?