A 'no-brainer', er, that's me!

Last night I watched a terrific swot as he explained the latest developments in quantum physics.  When I went to bed, I had to inform the 'Memsahib' that sex was off the menu because I had a headache - and, no, I am not going to tell you her response which was really quite hurtful!  Actually, the swot concerned gave me the impression that detailed knowledge of the crazy world of sub-atomic particles had simply (or perhaps that should be 'complicatedly') not progressed very far from the days, forty-odd years ago, when I first began to try and grasp it.  The impression I gained from the programme was that although hard, proven explanations had rather stalled, imaginative, esoteric ones had increased enormously and I felt rather like poor Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole! 

We can expect huge advances on three frontiers: the very small, the very large, and the very complex. Nonetheless—and I’m sticking my neck out here—my hunch is there’s a limit to what we can understand. Efforts to understand very complex systems, such as our own brains, might well be the first to hit such limits. Perhaps complex aggregates of atoms, whether brains or electronic machines, can never know all there is to know about themselves. And we might encounter another barrier if we try to follow Weinberg’s arrows further down: if this leads to the kind of multidimensional geometry that string theorists envisage. Physicists might never understand the bedrock nature of space and time because the mathematics is just too hard. [My emphasis]

Oh, terrific, I now feel so much better about myself!

 

 

Comments

[Bob]

One way we might better understand ourselves and other complex problems is by building extremely intelligent machines. It's not an idea that's altogether comforting, though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

[Andra]

It's 5.30 a.m on a Sunday morning and you've made my head hurt.
I'm going back to bed!

[Hank]

"math is hard. Barbie

"{B}ecause the mathematics is just too hard. See above

May I suggest the much more modest goal of politicians understanding enough arithmetic to balance a budget?

However I think Barbie will understand string theory first.

[Loz]

It's good news.

Scientists have been a very "up their own arse" sort of people who've needed bringing down a peg or two for a while now. I mean, "carbon causes global warming" my arse, and all that.

Bob might be right that the materialists / mechanists might dodge away from science as the crooked practices ("hide the decline") and mathematical limitations of science defrocks their priestly authority, and swerve into AI. And in there they will meet their doom.

Because deep in the heart of AI lurks the home base of Mr Godel. And he shafts them, good 'n' proper.

SoD

[Peter Whale]

The first rule of physics I learned back in the fifties was that matter cannot be made or destroyed only that you can change its state. That being the case it proves that the universe has always existed so no need for a creator.

[Bob]

SoD,

Another possible way forward is increasing human intelligence:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-genetically-engineer-intelligence-2016-6

It could be that super intelligent mathematicians would exceed Godel's work similarly to the way Einstein surpassed Newton.