How Much More Can We Learn About the Universe?
nautil.us
nautil.us
I have tried to talk about it with my family and friends but so many of them just don't seem to have the passion for it. Some times I feel even seriously guilty wasting so much energy thinking/reading about it. Sometimes even wondering if I'm even in right profession (even though I do love technology).
My current theory is that it just my personality type (INTP).
It comforts me in a "the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans" kind of way.
Oh, and another INTP here :)
It's your energy, so if you find it worthwhile then that's all that matters.
I sometimes feel the same way regarding my passion for computer science, when there are so many immediate problems in the world (energy production, food/wealth/opportunity distribution, war, etc.).
The good news is that you're having such guilty thoughts at all; that makes you more conscientious than if you didn't! You're also devoting that energy to a meaningful topic, compared to cultural norms like sports, celebrities, fashion, etc.
If you feel like there's nothing to show for your efforts, maybe you could try writing down some of your thoughts. They wouldn't have to be "correct", as long as they're intellectually honest; that would provide a progression of ideas, offer insight into the learning process, etc. and maybe you can look back over them to either find inspiration in ideas you'd forgotten, or be able to look at your old questions and know that you've found answers to some of them.
And not just that, reading that book will give you the general sense of a man who was quite the eclectic, intentionally creating masterminds with people from a broad swath of occupations.
They're both subjects of thought therefore they are both equally meaningful to think about. false
If thinking about something makes it 'click', that's useful to make a note of, as it may help someone else come to understand it. If something is still unfathomable after lots of thought, that's useful to make a note of, as someone else may be able to help, it may uncover a misunderstanding, or it might give someone else comfort to know they're not alone in their struggle.
Less trivially (and less likely, but worth pursuing) it may lead to original thoughts, new perspectives or analogies, inspiring others, revealing previously ignored aspects of the world, etc.
I don't know if amateur reflection on sports would actually have any impact, and even if it did (e.g. calling the Denver Broncos to tell them about some new strategy/etc. you've come up with), it wouldn't have much impact on the world. The names in Marty McFly's sports almanac might change, but even after just 1000 years those ripples would probably have faded to nothing.
The other sportses.
IMO, no comparison.
Likewise. I sometimes feel bad that what I do doesn't have a more immediate impact on people's lives somehow, in terms of things like poverty, health-care, clean water/food, etc.
OTOH, the skills I have can be put to use in those areas, but the only outlet I really have to do that is to volunteer with non-profits of some sort, which is something I do a bit of (but probably not enough).
Perhaps I will study physics after I retire or if I ever get tired of software.
I don't ever really feel guilty about thinking about physics though. If someone can't feel free to at least think about what they want, then what freedom do you really have at all?
Just recently though, I've kinda had my passion for that stuff renewed (can't say why, though). I've been reading a lot of books on physics and cosmology again and spending a lot of time thinking about things like "what is 'space'" and the like.
The biggest regret I have is that since I did not major in physics after all (and dropped out of school before graduating in c.s. anyway), I never got the level of certain things (especially maths) I would need to really understand physics at the deeper levels. I can read and largely understand books written for lay-people, like your average Brian Greene or Michio Kaku book, but I can't really go to arxiv.org and read the papers in the physics section.
It's frustrating, but at the same time, the field I chose has been good to me and it affords me enough money and free time to sit around reading physics books now and trying to learn/re-learn stuff I always wanted to learn.
I guess this question arise because of my computer science background (algorithms + data = universe?) and because even simple formulas like the Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation deals with data (e.g. the mass of a planet). So, where is that number stored so the universe know how to apply its formulas (laws, algorithms)? I know these laws we have are just models of our reality that are getting more precise over time, but I can't help but think that at the end our universe has to do "some calculations" and has to deal with data (numbers). I know three devices that can store information: our brains, our DNA, and our computers. The color of our eyes are stored in our DNA, but the mass of a planet is not stored anywhere?
As I've said, my limited maths/physics background doesn't let me think about the universe the right way. I'm just a dilettante. And sorry for my English.
If we are living in a nonfictional simulation, mass data are stored in a colossal server farm. If we are living in a fictional simulation, the mass data are stored in a thing we cannot possibly comprehend. If we are living in a real universe, mass data are not "stored" anywhere, in the same sense that consulting a map at 1:1 scale is indistinguishable from actually visiting the landscape it represents. Storing that data elsewhere is neither useful nor necessary.
Maybe it's about being a "top-level" universe, which is self-defining and without physical constraints? It seems ours is unlikely that if inflation theory pans out, instead being just a self-contained world in the multiverse, not so different than any other simulation.
Personally, but without much evidence, I suspect there are no top-level universes; perhaps they do cycle around though, so very large scales eventually become the very small.
We store reduced-precision, reduced-accuracy copies of the mass data wherever we keep the logs for our measurement devices. We can't get at the "real" numbers, anyway, so we just go by what our instruments say.
We can, however, "write" to the real data store for mass--by doing things like picking up rocks and throwing them. If we are living in a simulation, and it is imperfect, we could potentially exploit an imperfection by manipulating the simulation in just the right way.
What I think about most, is how awesome it is to be alive right now. Where this video (and others like it) tell me about the universe and what discoveries have been found.
At the end of this video, I am always wondering that if the Universe is as big as they claim. There must be discoveries waiting to be found that we can't even comprehend!
Sometimes I find myself wishing we had probes that could be much faster than they are now. Instead of taking decades to go to the edges of our solar system, it takes months.
Maybe within 50 years, by the end of my lifetime. We'll start to see images from Alpha Centauri and beyond. That I am hoping for!
If it's the latter, I read somewhere a long time ago that these thoughts are caused due to a temporary chemical imbalance (serotonin I think) in the brain. Can't find the source right now, but something worth adding to the conversation.
And, we're not even certain which way round the causality flows. A bit of both, surely.
I've also heard that Myers-Briggs personality types are not very useful or reliable, but for what it's worth, my personality type is INFP.
2. For me, it's more like lingering in the back of my mind, always thinking / imagining in terms of space-time continuum & the math related to it
3. I'm always trying to go to the next step, by learning the math (or the concept anyway), and quantstart[0] seems to be helping
[0] https://www.quantstart.com/articles/How-to-Learn-Advanced-Ma...
IMHO, there is an "abstraction boundary" that limits what humans can ever know even in principle. There are some phenomena that are inherently "unabstractable". We may know that a glass of water has a wave function, but we will never know the particular wave function of any glass of water ever.
The phenomena in our universe that we can "understand" are those that can be modeled, those for which abstractions can be created that will fit in our brains. There may well be phenomena in the universe (or elsewhere) that are not amenable to modeling in any way that is compatible with human cognitive machinery.
Could these phenomena collectively be considered a "higher power"?
But us not ever being able to understand it does not mean there is no reasoning behind it.
In the end it depends on perspectives & dictionary. You might call it a "higher power" .... I'm contended to end your sentence at 'phenomena'.
I didn't mean to imply that. But honestly, the idea that there exist physical systems in the universe that are too complex for the human brain to ever fully comprehend or model (dashing physicists hopes of a "theory of everything") sounds a lot like a higher power in the more traditional sense. I'm pretty sure that's close to the definition of the Tao, actually.
I would say it sounds like a higher power in the more technical sense. From my experience, at least in western philosophy and religion "higher power" traditionally implies intelligence or direction, which is a leap that I don't think is required to believe there are things we just won't be able to figure out.
If these are unmeasurable, non-modelable systems that we can never comprehend, then how can we say that they are "physical systems" that differ from the Tao?
If we ever discover AGI, I think we will begin a new discipline, called "AGI studies" where humans try to understand what it discovers, to keep up. But the hard part would be to develop the most efficient concepts in order to understand even what it has to teach us. How do you communicate with an intelligence vastly superior to yours? Maybe the AGI will also develop the concepts and language necessary to communicate its findings to us.
It will, because without that, humans will just shut down the "machine that only speaks gibberish". Effectively communication with humans is a survival requirement.
Results such as the incompleteness theorem, Godel's work, etc seem to suggest that logic itself has limits, along with everything derived from it and/or built on top of it. In other words, even an ASI, even if you converted the whole known universe to "computronium" - it would not do better against those limits than evolution-shaped human brains. Reason itself seems to have an event horizon.
The fact that the human brain has very clear and obvious processing power limitations is a separate issue.
I don't mean woo-like supernatural or mysticism.
Let's use an analogy.
We have instincts and reason. Instincts are quick but flawed, reason is slow but surer. Reason is to X what Instincts are to reason.
What if there existed X metacognition and above reason itself?
Suppose, for example with the assistance of an AI (capable of seeing larger pattern a human cannot) in conjunction with brain altering drugs to, crudely, give you a hit of comprehension/meaning (as a reward) when you successfully pattern matched with the assistance of the AI. That to me seems like much more than thinking from 1st principals. It would be something closer to seeing than thinking sequentially.
Provided there's a 4th layer on top of the triad matter/energy/information - then yes, it would be doable.
Our bodies exist in the same way rocks do - just like dead matter.
On top of that, there's the "meta" level of life, which is just matter playing with energy. It can do things that dead matter alone cannot do.
On top of that, there's the "meta" level of mind, which is just matter/energy (i.e. life) playing with information. It can do things that the previous two levels cannot do.
We are organized on 3 successive layers (body / life / mind) because the universe could be thought of as structured on 3 layers: matter / energy / information (we have started to figure out the equivalences between these layers recently).
So mind is what evolution put forward to master the domain of information. Everything that could be done with information, the mind could probably do, it's just a question of how fast.
So if there are any limitations to logic (and therefore to reason), it's likely that these come from the way the information meta-layer of the universe works.
If you want to see these limitations removed, you better hope there's a 4th meta-layer (in philosophy I guess you could call it a 4th principle) of the universe that can do things that the currently known 3 layers cannot do. But then that 4th meta-layer would have to somehow become embodied, either naturally (evolution) or artificially (technology).
However, it's hard to figure out how 3-layer beings like us could even begin to approach building something like that. It would be like a worm trying to understand quantum electrodynamics.
All of the above is just one giant pile of assumptions floating on thin air.
> It would be something closer to seeing than thinking sequentially.
Or closer to being what is called truth (that which is), rather than even "seeing".
Are we getting kicked out of here yet? :)
I know, it is a pain in the butt.
We cannot allow mystics to defend their territory against incursion ;-)
> Provided there's a 4th layer on top of the triad matter/energy/information - then yes, it would be doable.
> We are organized on 3 successive layers (body / life / mind) because the universe could be thought of as structured on 3 layers: matter / energy / information (we have started to figure out the equivalences between these layers recently).
Well put! Your talking is reminding me of the Russian scientist Vernadsky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere
"Basically, Vernadsky reasons that there is a certain succession by which the earth develops. Geosphere or inanimate matter comes first, followed by the biosphere or biological life. Then comes noosphere which comprises human consciousness and mental activity. Each of these relate to each other, with the emergence of biological life transforming the geosphere and the emergence of human consciousness transforming biological life. Both biological life and human cognition are seen as having a large impact on the evolution of the earth, a concept that is somehow parallel to Darwin’s theory of natural selection. "
> So if there are any limitations to logic (and therefore to reason), it's likely that these come from the way the information meta-layer of the universe works.
Mmmm, I think so yes. That should be enough to give us some clues as to how to overthrow the existing order. At least conceptually if not practically.
> But then that 4th meta-layer would have to somehow become embodied, either naturally (evolution) or artificially (technology).
I am open to any ideas you have here. We have to think big, really big, which is exciting but daunting. The danger is, as Dijkstra pointed out, that anything genuinely original is going to be very difficult to conceptualize without utilizing crutches, incorrect mental models.
I know MIRI is attempting to get a handle on AGI, Robin Hanson on EMs, and both of these seem like routes towards what this 4th layer.
Suppose a 3rd route, where AGI is not discovered or discoverable, where EMs are too inefficient but in which our descendants have the following powers:
They can edit their genes in realtime. They can use Drexler's nanobots to accomplish physical changes.
In that world, which is like the noosphere, AI is basically the coordinating mechanism that gives us 'extra digit span'. Presently we use money as a coordinating mechanism to accomplish objectives which involve abstracting away the details, which product, which company, which people, into a simple input/ouput mechanism. I put my hand in my pocket and produce five dollars in exchange for oranges.
Similarly an agent of the Noosphere could coordinate vast bodies of information to produce results that are not strictly speaking comprehendible by the human, but who could serve to offer up value judgments of what is better or worse. Do I even want oranges?
I suppose I'm saying that humans offer Noosphere agency (what do?), while the metacognition (how to?) is handled by experiments, counterfactuals, allowing our society and individuals to iterate through many lifetimes of experience without making the same or as many mistakes.
Then as a consequence of this aggressive program's feedback we get wiser. Our priors change. Our agency begins to reflect different values from those we had originally. Then we begin to be able to set much more worthwhile goals, such as leaving the planet instead of waiting for all life as we know it to be consumed by an exploding sun.
> All of the above is just one giant pile of assumptions floating on thin air.
With the search for the 4th layer, AGI and EMs are little different.
> Or closer to being what is called truth (that which is), rather than even "seeing".
That is something I don't think even the 4th layer could penetrate. With the 4th layer there still exists a vast search space of possible outcomes, just on a different level to the present world, just as learning to read books is potentially taking advantage of all pre-existing knowledge as opposed to constantly rediscovering the same things time and time again without literacy in the Ancient World.
Another thing that seems universal is that just as literacy created new problems for society while uplifting it, so too getting to a 4th layer would probably have its hazards.
> Are we getting kicked out of here yet? :)
Dawg, everybody's left the bar and the guy behind the counter is ringing the police!
these are internal limits of the models they are confined to - reminds about the Achilles and the tortoise paradox before availability of the limit/differentiation/integration tools.
>We may know that a glass of water has a wave function, but we will never know the particular wave function of any glass of water ever.
once the model of wave functions gets obsolete, the question itself wouldn't make sense. Such inability to brute force the calculation of such wave functions is one of the reason driving the more deep thinking in science.
Extending to the 19th century and you'll find a few more limits to knowledge and capabilities.
1. Einstein, general reletivity, and the speed of light as an absolute limit.
2. Thermodynamics, and the limits imposed by entropy.
3. Rankine and Carnot expressing the limits of efficiency of heat engines.
4. Claude Shannon and the limits of information density over a communications channel.
5. Hubbel's expansion constant and the size of the observable Universe.
6. Moore and Wright with (empirically-derived) principles of production efficiencies.
7. M. King Hubbert, and limits to the total amount of petroleum in the US and world.
8. Meadows, et al, and the potential limits to human growth. Somewhat rough, but clearly finite.
9. Keeling and limits to atmospheric absorption of CO2 without producing significant climate change.
(Not all of these limits are fully accepted, though I've strong reasons to believe they're well founded.)
I found the GP observation that the 20th c. had presented numerous limits to be a rather interesting point, and one not typically dwelled upon. The limits specific to human activities, technologies, and interests especially strike me as significant.
The uncertainty principle hasn’t gotten in the way of learning the rules of quantum mechanics, understanding the behavior of atoms, or discovering that so-called virtual particles, which we can never see directly, nevertheless exist.
After recently getting to grips with QFT it seems there aren't actually any particles, just fields which are excited at certain locations giving the impression of particles.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/pt/where_experience_confuses_physici...
Now throw in the fact that actual physics' best current guess is our universe is in actual fact constantly 'splitting' (although the term is misleading because the process is continuous, not discrete - the universe is constantly diverging from itself, everywhere) - there "really" is a multiverse. This lends a sort of philosophical weight to mathematical universe by rejecting a single, privileged version of events - but it also presents you with some weird dilemmas with subjectivity. To wit - if a quantum, universe-splitting choice is made, and given that both versions of events will be witnessed by some version of you - how does that give rise to the phenomenon of subjective probability i.e. your personal anticipation of witnessing a particular version of events? It seems there is at least some sense in which one universe is more "real" than another - you're more likely to end up there!
Now, that was because they thought they understood everything there was to know, not because they worried that there were limits beyond which they could not know. But, as the article says, trying to guess how much we will learn (or not learn) in the next, say, 100 years, is a very hazardous business.
Otherwise, who is to say that the universe didn't start out as a somewhat lumpy (not too much, not tool little) blob of gas measured with a few K's (thousands of kilometers across and a few thousand/million degrees Kelvin -- k of Km x k of K)? You can run the numbers back to a geometric point, but what would that even mean without observations of some kind to prove or disprove it?
How would you rule out "one day there was a blob"? (which is really a crummy hypothesis, but as something to throw out vs inflation -- "for a while, relativity didn't apply, but then it did, because space itself decided to grow, until it didn't, so there!")
> Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars. Astronomers predict that NGC 2207, the larger galaxy on the left, will eventually incorporate IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the right. In the most recent encounter that peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging around counter-clockwise, and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in them usually do not collide.