When we know everything.

[xelasnave]

The question popped into my head when reading Garys lattest post in the science section and I asked him..what will we do when we know everything..

But I thought better to ask it here.

What will it be like when humans know everything?

We sometimes even now seem to be close to knowing everything but say in another 500 years or even 5000 assuming we happily survive..well take as long as you want...

What will it be like?

alex

[JA]

You can never know what you don't know, so .....

Best
JA

[xelasnave]

but what about went we do know what we dont know we dont know.:P
alex

[AndrewJ]

Gday Alex

Interesting premise but will never happen
ie What (exactly) will the surface of the sun look like tomorrow.
Where (exactly) will rain fall tomorrow.

Andrew

[AstralTraveller]

Lotto will go out of business. :lol:

[RickS]

Gödel, Turing, Chaitin et al have already proven that we* can't know everything.

* everybody except my wife

[gary]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the post.

At the risk of quoting myself when I responded in the thread (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=162766)you mentioned,
when you asked, "what happens when we know everything" ... :)



Turns out that there may be hints of that in the real world already.

For example, this 9 Dec 2015 article in Nature (http://www.nature.com/news/paradox-at-the-heart-of-mathematics-makes-physics-problem-unanswerable-1.18983)by Davide Castelvecchi
discusses that there is a related problem in quantum particle physics
— which has a US$1-million prize attached to it — could be
unsolvable in a way analogous to the types of statements that
Kurt Gödel so disturbingly demonstrated were "undecidable" back in 1931.

See :-
http://www.nature.com/news/paradox-at-the-heart-of-mathematics-makes-physics-problem-unanswerable-1.18983

Since the Austrian mathematician Gödel logically proved that not
all statements of logic or mathematics can be proven to be either true
or false, then it follows we can't ever know everything.

How deeply that may manifest itself in the real material world - the world
of physics - is yet to be seen.

When you say "know everything", for the purposes of current discussion
I would take that to mean "knowing the theory of operation of how
all physical things work".

We've unpeeled many layers of the onion, in areas such as particle physics,
and so far so lucky.

But as in the Nature article I cited above, perhaps we might encounter a
real-world example of the incompleteness theorem.

Then one might argue it is logically impossible to ever know everything
about the laws of physics.

In one sense, that would be very sad.

But if you can retain a sense of humour, it could be pretty funny - the ultimate last laugh.

If I was a God, that is what I would do. Lead you down a wild goose chase
examining smaller and smaller sub-atomic particles but then just when you
are one step away from the final piece of the puzzle, end it in a Gödel
paradox that you can never prove one way or the other.

And then as this hypothetical God, I would hide myself away behind that
paradox laughing a lot. :lol:

Thankfully I am not a God and have no illusions of emulating one.

But we might all need to be prepared to pack our collective sense of
humour if we end up proving we can't know everything about the physical
world.

[xelasnave]

Would it not be possible to make models that could indeed tell us those things...if we could measure and input all the data maybe it could be done..we certainly know, unless we are wrong, how these things work.

Alex

[julianh72]

And don't forget Heisenberg!

Motorcycle Cop: "Do you know how fast you were driving back there?"
Heisenberg: "No, Officer, but I know where I am."

[julianh72]

But how do we know Gödel was right? :question:

My brain hurts!

[xelasnave]

Gary
I thank you for engaging the prospect of the possibility that humans we could know everything.

You correctly sort to refine and move to correctly define what know everything really means.

It is hard to move away from science on this one but perhaps a point could come in our future that notwithstanding our current logic some fundamental is exposed , one which I could not predict or define but perhaps of a nature of apes starting to walk upright event, certainly one unknown now...
But the day arrives and we have it all worked out...
Sortta where I feel I have reached.:)

What humans call Gods must know everything ...

Well the question could be approached from another angle...if we don't know everything what is it that we must know to be able to know everything so the question is simply what is it that we do not know.
Alex

[gary]

Hi Alex,

Say you could keep track of the motions of every particle.

As Julian just alluded to, Heisenberg then gets in the way.

But even if you were to put that aside for one moment and let's say one
could know the position and velocity of every particle in the Universe.

The other day I posted a link to a story in Nature about quantum thermodynamics.

See :-
https://www.nature.com/news/the-new-thermodynamics-how-quantum-physics-is-bending-the-rules-1.22937

That article made mention of the solution to the Maxwell's Daemon paradox.



In a similar vain, to keep track of the positions and velocities of all particles
in the Universe you would need to build a memory store, its size
necessitating it probably be of a similar number of particles to what you
were tracking leading, to a paradox. Such a computer would even need
to track itself.

You might need another alternate Universe in which to store and run the computer.

But even if you were satisfied just to know all the governing laws of the
Universe without keeping track of particles in models, Gödel, Turing
and friends might get in the way first.

[xelasnave]

You could think that any attempt to confine what we could know could not be right.
Alex

[gary]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the post.

That's a tough question!

Hmmm. I might need to brush up on my Donald Rumsfeld before answering with any certainty. :lol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiPe1OiKQuk

[xelasnave]

Thank you for engaging the problem.
As you observe it has been written into science the uncertainty humans currently have in observing particles..the uncertainty comes not from the mechanism that governs the path of a particle but upon our ability to observe all its "being" simultaneously.
So from your input I can conclude one thing that we do not know and that is how to remove the necessity to operate via probability which our limited power of observation enables and be able to say all things about a particle.
And now the problem you point to arises ... Which is one more thing we don't know...how to contain a model of the universe, and the explaination would seem to then require more room than offered by the current universe...so we don't know how to house such a model...

Alex

[xelasnave]

I agree with his observation.

But knowing such is helpful.

Alex

[gary]

Hi Alex,

I use to have a couple of late 80's vintage Apollo DN1000 Personal
Supercomputers in my garage.

See http://jim.rees.org/apollo-archive/marketing/Apollo_Series_10000_Brochure_Jul88. pdf

CERN use to use the same type of computers for particle physics computations alongside their Crays.

They were so large that fitting both the supercomputers and the car into the garage was problematic.

So I've come across this problem of trying to squeeze the car
and the computers into the same finite universe before. :lol:

The car ended up winning. It also consumed less energy than the supercomputers did.

[Visionary]

Enough of all this theology already!

[RickS]

That brings back memories, Gary. I was working for Apollo when the DN10000 was released.

[gary]

Hi Julian,

You just want to make us all try and get our heads around the
Gödel numbering proof again and make all our heads hurt! :lol:

Einstein was quoted by a colleague as wanting to work at the
Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton in order "to have the privilege
of walking home with Gödel".

I wonder if Einstein ever said during one of those walks, "OK ... no, damn,
I wish I was smarter ... Kurt, could you please explain it to me again
one more time ..." :lol:

[gary]

Hi Rick,

Great stuff! :thumbsup: It's a small world.

At the risk of running off topic on the thread for a moment and I
hope Alex does not mind whilst we make a brief excursion into this
blast from the past ...

I'm am trying to think back of the names of the Apollo sales reps that
were here in Sydney .. Carlo or Carlos??

We use to use a lot of Apollo computers in previous working life times -
DN3000's, DN4000's, DN4500's DN-425T's - for both software
and hardware/ASIC development. The hardware platforms ran
Mentor Graphics licenses.

Apollo made some great computers and it took a long time
before personal computers had any of the salient hardware features that
were in any way comparable.

Operating system and network-wise I am still waiting for PC's and Macs
to catch up with what Apollo were already doing back in the early 80's. :lol:

I still have some Apollo computers here as a historical collection.



That was funny! :)

Again apologies to Alex for going off-topic whilst I reminisce.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Alex

Yep, but now you introduce many new variables, not the least being the "observer effect", ie the phenomenon where the act of measuring affects the measurement???
Do we now model the model??????
Andrew ( nearly beer oclock )

[xelasnave]

Yes got me reading again...

I am surprised you did not point out the unlikly hood of knowing for example what is going on right now at some party of possibly inteligent creatures on a planet billions and billions of light years away.

So that is one thing that we can never know.

alex

[xelasnave]

There is no need to appologise but personally I see nothing wrong with off topic as they say conversation.

After all my op was somewhat an attempt to give folk a platform to say something...

and often interesting things, as they have, pop out on an off topic detour.
all good.

alex

[xelasnave]

At some level I feel the universe should reduce to the passing of information... and although we can and do model mostly by giving identity and characterists to the particle we still need to understand this information exchange better than I percieve we currently do... I think I know what it is that we dont know but dont know how to explain what I think I know.
alex

[RickS]

There was a Sydney sales guy called Carmelo San Gil, IIRC.

The integration of the network into the AEGIS O/S was very well done and I liked the software development tools. The token ring networking worked very well too. Unfortunately, the market moved on and Apollo's move to Unix was late and half-hearted.

Those were fun days. My kids were pretty impressed when I brought home a 19" CRT and let them play wire-frame graphics computer games :lol:

Cheers,
Rick.

[gary]

Hi Alex,

Then if we put aside the possibility of a Gödel-like paradox getting in the
way of being able to prove all physical laws of nature, might
we ever still run into some physical limitation like we just aren't
smart enough to get our brains around it all?

Take chimpanzees. I've heard it said that when they look at themselves in
a mirror that experiments have shown that they don't appear to grasp that
it is themselves that they are looking at.

In the whole scheme of things, the human brain is not much bigger
than a chimps but most of us get who it is looking back at them
when we comb our hair. Some human brains are clever enough to
attempt brain surgery but still maybe know one knows how consciousness
or the human brain really works.

Take that one question. How does the brain work?

Understand it to the point where you could design and build a device with
comparable functionality.

Most of us would agree that the question of "how does the brain work"
to be a tough one.

Or is it that we are just like the chimps. If we were just that little bit cleverer,
problems like that may be as transparent to us as recognizing our own
reflection.

Are the people most of us would label a true genius - such
as Newton and Einstein - many, many times smarter than the majority
of us by some quantitative metric (it feels like they are) or are they
just that little bit smarter and are a bit like the one or two chimps
that understands it is them in the mirror?

We have writing and books and computers and can share information.
The majority of us aren't geniuses so books and the like give us the
luxury of time to try and grasp what the ideas in them mean (the luxury
of time except when we are cramming for tomorrow's exam :) )

But what would happen if we had a seemingly complete theory of physics
but no individual brain could hold it in their heads to make sense of it? :)

We would like to think as a species we could understand everything.
We sense there are no limits. But just like we would see it as futile to try
and teach a goldfish quantum mechanics, would some hypothetical
advanced alien intelligence who had a much bigger grasp of physics
look down on us and say, "Forget it. They won't get it if we explain
it to them. Might as well teach their dogs some new tricks instead"? :lol:

I'd like to think not. I'd like to think that one day there would be at least
one human that gets it. Who could hold it all their heads and the ideas
would be like plastic they could mould in their minds.

Would be interested to hear your thoughts.

[FlashDrive]

Nirvana :D

[julianh72]

Alex,

I think you're mistaken (or else I misunderstood your meaning):

It is not just a "human" limitation; it is in fact deeply ingrained within the laws of quantum mechanics that it is not possible to know both the position and momentum of any particle.

(Or more precisely, both position and momentum together are simultaneously "unknowable" - but in what would no doubt delight Donald Rumsfeld, the extent of their "unknowability" is known quite precisely, and is defined by Planck's Constant.)

[xelasnave]

One needs to proceed with a positive assumption that we will not be hit with a space rock and cut off from a good run as a species.

I made the observation once that extiction is the rule and evolution the exception to that rule in an attempt to factor in the possibility of a future that could be thought upon. The observation has flaws of logic but serves its point.

It is difficult to think about our possible evolvement but we are evolving and right now a simple thing like face book and even this forum and the many others on all sorts of interests, I see as taking our evolution in a direction that I can only speculate upon... but when one speculats at how this almost instant communication must effect the speciecs it would not seem unreasonable to beleive our inteligience is probably going to grow maybe faster than what we can imagine..but I do try to imagine... I believe that there is enough meat in the brain even now to manage a much more inteligent being...

The thing that is missing is what is the human imperative and is this new world driving a stronger species... we could get too smart for our own good.

But lets be positive and imagine how we may become guided by what we would like to become perhaps..and that is not unreasonable as we seem to have some control on environment.

Could we evolve past a need for mathematics, if that makes any sence...for example..I look at something and figure it all out in my head..can be complex house plans designs costing..I am sure most folk can...to communicate it needs math and text etc... but could we get to a stage where we know the answer the math is almost like inbuilt...like throwing a ball ..you know.

alex

[xelasnave]

My point is it is a human limitation because the rule is indeed a human one..it fits the model but all models are not reality they are attempts to model reality..what is the reality of a particle...notwithstanding what our current model says the paricle knows where it is where its going and at what speed...all those things are known by it as they affect its movement...

at some level we should be able to move past the uncertainty principle...in fact they did didnt they??? I mean measured both thru some new approach..anywyas by the way..not important.

I am trying to have one think out side of what we know now ..what happens when someone finds you can side step the uncertainty priciple..

I must retire and think about all the things that I dont know I dont know.
alex

[el_draco]

I had one of those once...:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

YOU ARE A DEAD MAN!!:eyepop::eyepop:

[RickS]

I am protected by SWMBO's complete lack of interest in Astronomy ;)

[el_draco]

The fundamental premise here is that you are assuming that there is a limit to the size of the universe and ignoring all else, including multiverse, there can be no limit to the universe for the simple reasoning that if you could get to the "edge" you could then fire an arrow. If then, the universe has no limit, then knowledge can also have no limit... If it did, we'ed die of boredom I suspect.:question:

[xelasnave]

I see your fundamental premise as yours:) mine has never been to see a limit on the universe:eyepop: it is my belief it is indeed infinite in fact I like the steady state model, although out of favour and support, certainly shows I like the idea that it is infinite...

But even now with our limitations think of what we can do...we can look around out there..see all the electromagnetic spectrum...thats cool.

Its funny we see such a narrow band...so small of what is there...but if we could see it all I guess it would appear as fog...

alex