The Boundaries of Knowledge.

I had an interesting thought one day and I have decided to spend some time each day thinking about the subject. My first thought was how far ahead of us an advanced civilization would be? I then realized that being that the universe is billions of years old any life could be so much more advanced than us we could not comprehend. After trying to obsorb this thought I realized that at some point you would learn everything there is to know about any given thing.

WHat do you think? Is there a "limit" a brick wall that any advanced civilization will hit? Are we close to that "limit" yet?

If there is a "limit" we may not be so far behind as we think

What is left to master really? Genetics. Soon we will geneticly engineer our cells to never die and we will live forever. Space travel, Weaponry...There is alot left to learn but is there really enough to keep us busy another million years? or even a 1000 years?





[edit on 12-2-2005 by IXRAZORXI321]

[edit on 12-2-2005 by IXRAZORXI321]

I don't think there is a limit. The universe is so big. We have along way to go to unlock all the secrets.
Just think of all the mysteries on Earth never mind whats out there.
We have a huge potential for knowledge but one thing man must keep in mind. Just because we can do something, should we?

Man, we don't know jack-$#*! you can find LIBRARIES ON ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING. Go read all those books, master everything inside, then by the time you've finished, there'll be abut 150 more volumes for you to read on just electrical engineering. Then there's computer engineering. There is computer science. There is artificial intelligence, computer graphics, parallel computing, etc.....of computer science. There is environmental science. There is biology, trying to understand how cells work, how the brain works, why it works the way it does. There is physics. There is applied physics. There is theoretical physics. There is the study of planets. There is the study of this one planet we are on. Then there is the study of tons of other planets. There is the study of black holes, galaxies, etc....

There is the study of philosophy, ways of reasoning, ways of thinking, there is the study of how lifeforms even are created, etc.....point is, most people don't know jack squat. You'd need about 10 x 10 to the tenth (well a big number) to study and master everything, and a more powerful brain. A much more powerful brain.

We humans haven't "mastered" anything. The ONLY thing we have mastered is how to be dumbos

With the advanced computer systems today the growth in knowledge is only going to speed up. Look how much we have learned and accomplished in science alone. Man went from riding a horse to going to the moon in a century.

There is absolutely a limit. First off, I am still tired of hearing about our inferiority. There is no rules that say anything in the universe needs to be more advanced than we are.

Second of all, we store memory in our brains. Our memory is our advancement. If we do not retain the information learned yesterday, we cannot apply it to tomorrow. That has no choice but to be a universal concept throughout the universe.

We store memory in our brains, via means of electric impulses and brain surface area. Our brains are finite in size. Anything that lives within the confines of the universe is also finite. Yet we know of an extraordinary concept. Infinity. Until the day our brain surface area and electric impulese energy in our brains is infinite, we will never be able to fully comprehend this concept. We will only know that we wish we could, like we do today. Trust me on this one. Our brains are not going to be infinite. So we will always have limits on our knowledge.

As a civilization one person does not need to know it all. We have computers that can do things for us and store that information for us. We have millions of people working on different projects. We have really just started to use technology, we have just started to learn and grow.

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I suspect that sometime after you get a really good handle on Universal physics you almost have to start working with exo-Universal physics.

Maybe intelligent species that get that advanced usually decide to remove themselves from the frailties of time and space and observe from some other vantage point.

Seapeople, Don't take it as an insult that there may be other species more advanced then us. There may be other species more advanced than them. It gives each of us something to work towards.

As a rough guess all you can do is guess you/we are in the middle somewhere. If the progression is infininte then the middle of infinity is infinite so as to be an almost meaningless position. Think of us as a somewhere on a continuum. Position is relative.
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I think there are no boundaries. A civilization greater than ours have probably set some standards for contact or non contact. Sort of like how we have our endangered species list, they have theirs. I think one day we will be able to live beyond the physical bodies attaining what some ancient religion term as nirvana or enlightenment. Technologies may bring us to that point, or it may destroy us in the pursuit of that knowledge.

I think we're talking about two different things here. If you people mean is there a limit to how much knowledge one human being can acquire, then you have to view it from two viewpoints. In terms of a normal human lifetime, NO, there is no limit, a person can kep learning new skills and facts and knowledge until the day they die.

If you mean, "does the human brain have a physical limit in terms of how much knowledge it can acquire and hold," then YES, I'd say there is a limit, but the brain can hold a HUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEE amount of knowledge!!

But in terms of the question, "Is there a limit to knowledge itself," then I say NO, there is not, as there are always new things to learn.

I agree Seapeople, I get tired of hearing about our inferiority as well, however, that doesn't mean there aren't aliens out there more advanced then us.

What I get mainly sick of is hearing that we humans are soooo "violent," and that aliens just won't make contact with us because we are violent.

Remember though, humans are a YOUNG form of life. We humans talk about the "evolution of man," and you know how they have that poster showing the "stages of man," from very primitive to almost-modern to modern-day humans. People then assume that is the stopping point. It isn't. We humans have given names to all the different stages of humankind throughout the years. But we ourselves are just one more step in that poster of stages. Eventually, another, even more advanced form of humanoid will probably come about.

Remember, the dinosaurs were around for some 200+ million years (I think). We humans have only been around for about 1 million, and that is excluding modern humans. So I mean we humans have a loooong way to go in our development still. Remember, we only use at most 10% of our brainpower even!

There is the theory that we humans were created by aliens, or you could follow Arthur C. Clarke's idea that aliens speeded up the evolution of the primate-like creatures to form modern-day humans.

But I mean there have been multiple types of humanoids, some co-existing. It is believed that modern humans co-existed with Neanderthals for awhile. Neanderthal died out because it didn't know how to adapt well enough.

If you look at the majority of humans, we are stupid. MOST HUMANS ARE STUPID LAMBS, I mean that is a fact! Look at the masses. So I mean we have a looong ways to go in our development. But one thing that sets modern humans apart is, despite academic intelligence, we can adapt very well. Whether in freezing cold weather or super hot weather, we adapt and live in all areas.

Thus this modern form of humanoid has survived the longest, so far.

Interesting topic. I myself have always thought there is is no limit to knowledge (note my signature). The more we learn, the more we find out how much more there is to learn. But there is no way we can ever know it all, and we don't need to. We use tools like computers and books to store knowledge and use it when we need it. This is why we specialize in various fields and occupations. No one can be both a mechanic and a brain surgeon. In the future, who knows? At some point maybe we will reach a point that remaining knowledge is beyond our comprehension, and we have to rely on AI or something.

You all misunderstood completely. I think the first reply caused this....

I wasn't talking about how much information a human can hold in their brain. I was talking about a civilization itself and the total knowledge it contains. I was asking if anyone thought that at some point no great break throughs would occur anymore and we as a CIVILIZATION will be as advanced as we can be.

My next Question was if this boundary or end exists then how far are we from it? How many other species have reached it? I wanted to explore this idea. If the boundary is real and eventually a species will have no more great breakthroughs or at least those breakthroughs will be very well spaced out. We may not be as far behind our little grey watchers as we think. Or any other species for that matter.

Hmm SINCE WHEN CAN"T you edit an old post...

[edit on 14-2-2005 by IXRAZORXI321]

If you looked back at history and made of graph of all the great discoveries. I would bet that it would make a perfect BELL CURVE. Mainly because each new discovery leads to another untill all possibilities are exhausted.

Basicly what I'm saying is this: We can't discover gravity again. We can't learn that the EARTH is round again. DO you see what I'm saying. Even though the Universe is infinite (It may not be we just can't see far enough to tell) Eventually any Intelligent beings with enough time and data storage capacity would discover everything.

Now after realizing this I asked myself what was left to master that was really Important to any physical being and I came to this. DEATH. We will want to conquer our genes and turn of the time limit on them. We are getting close. DEATH is in your genes. Every cell is designed to die. As we age our bodies stop replacing dead cells with new ones. THIS CAN BE FIXED. Eventually we will grow to a certain age and stop. Our cells will be enginered to keep replacing themselves prolonging life indefinitely. THIS will happen in the near future.

SPACE TRAVEL. After we conquer death earth will get boring and very crowded so we will have to learn to travel beyond here.

In response the the person who said the universe is big and it will take a long time to discover everything. You have missed the point. I'm not talking about dicovering what color the sky is on the some planet in the next galaxy. I'm talking about the basic things that are common anywhere in the universe. Like MATH. 0 +0 is always zero. 1+1 is always 2. There will eventually be an ending to it. At some point a calculator will be able to calculate anything possible for us. AT the moment most just add ,subtract,multiply ,and divide.


I hope this clears up what i wanted to discuss...

I think I understand now what your saying. But I still say there is no limit. We will only be bound by our own imagination.

Originally posted by IXRAZORXI321
If you looked back at history and made of graph of all the great discoveries. I would bet that it would make a perfect BELL CURVE. Mainly because each new discovery leads to another untill all possibilities are exhausted.

I would say that it would be more like an exponetial rise, where discoveries are accelerating. A bell curve has a plateau, then drops. Do you think we have reached a peak and are in regression?

I recall a quote from the late 19th century (can't remember who), but they said "everything important had already been discovered". This is before the airplane, Einstien's theorys, penisilin, atomic energy, TV and computers, and oh yeah the Internet, let alone everything else discovered in the 20th century. Just food for thought.

Maybe when we build robots with a model of our consciousness & knowledge to perform our daily functions and to use abstract thought as we do, then maybe that is the brick wall. When we make machines just like us to perform our duties and do our regular work while creating inventions themselves with their abstract thinking. Hopefully I'll be reincarnated to this era and can drink Long Island iced teas on the beaches of KALUKA-64 UNIT 5-2 with beautiful artifical women devoid of emotional problems that come with remote controls to mute them and various other things.....................................................I can't wait to be reincarnated to that day. The future is gonna be fun.

db pst, sry.

[edit on 01/27/2005 by TheBigD]

I believe there is no way to be certain, as we know to little about our own existance. One could argue that all the matter and phenomena within our universe follows a pattern and that at a point this pattern will start to repeat itself, thus suggesting finite gainable knowledge. Appended, what if -for example- parallel universes with entirely different physical properties exist? If yes, then how many? Should there be an infinite amount of parallel universes and even some of these have different physical properties, then we will probably never be able to answer the question : "Is this all, is there nothing more?" with a yes. (imo)

i suppose the ability to manipulate ones self into light would be the ultimate advancement.

I think what i'm trying to argue is this. I'm sure that all of you have heard something about aliens, ufo's etc. Well lets just say for a moment that these things are true and not try to argue that point. Having said that it appears to me that these visitors are still bound by the same laws that we are. They live and die. They can prolong death but still die if their ship crashes. They use telepathy to communicate.(something we have but can't yet access). They observe ,abduct, and test us. Their ships are made of light weight alloys we can't yet make. They are not perfect. They do crash.
Ok so if we look at this maybe we can see the path we are headed down. We will make better metal every time we make it. Eventually we will unlock telepathy somehow. I suspect we do it now we just don't translate the language the same way as the written spoken word. We will always have crashes. And we will always travel and observe new life.
I don't think we will evolve ourselves into light as someone suggested. I think there are definite limits ahead of us. As I have said already I think in the next 100 years or so we will hit brick walls where no huge advancements are there to be made. These advancements may take another 10000 years to figure out.
I'm not talking about some guy inventing a new car, phone etc. I'm talking about major advances that alter everything. You have to agree that eventually the best possible car will be made ,the best phone etc. I'm basing this on what I have seen and heard about other advanced races and it seems to me that they are clearly more advanced but not that much. Think about it. They still have ships that crash. The ships that are in 500 year old paintings look the same as the pictures takin today. In 500 years they really haven't advanced much. I think they can't. I think they have exhausted their technolgy and can't go any further than where they are now.
This may be the reason they watch us. Maybe they are hoping we can find something they missed as they evolved.

Originally posted by IXRAZORXI321
The ships that are in 500 year old paintings look the same as the pictures takin today. In 500 years they really haven't advanced much. I think they can't. I think they have exhausted their technolgy and can't go any further than where they are now.

Check out this thread if you haven't allready.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

It's a question asking why alien technology hasn't advanced much over the ages. Some good theories. One I like is that they travel back in time, so to us they appear the same today as they do in cave drawings some 10,000 years ago.

I do agree though that it won't be long before we catch up to that level of technology. I would give it 100 years, then we will be the aliens.

i dont think us humans will be around in 1 million years. humans cant evolve naturally now on a large scale, where going against natural selection/survival of the fittest. more than likely we will genetically engineer ourself to suit our environments and maybe go into mass-cloning.


we will be the creators of enhanced artificial Minds, the creation of greater than 'human intelligence'. Once any race gains the ability to technologically increase the level of intelligence, either buy enhancing the prsent intelligence or by constructing new minds, when a race reconfigure their neurons, and restructure the framework of their brains, a fundamental change in the rules will occur.
the race will have control over their brains, they would have absolute control over their perceived external environments, meaning an end to all physical pain... it would mean an end to old age, it would mean an end to death itself. it would mean immortality and possibly with backup copies. It would mean the endless growth of that race, the ability to expand their own minds by adding more neurons, getting smarter as they age. they could experience everything they've ever wanted to experience. they could become everything theyve ever dreamed of becoming. that dream, life without bound, without end.
this future seems very probably to me, just think what will happening when nantechnology is perfected?
humans will be unreconizable to us if we meet some 10,000 year from now.
once we reconstruct our brains and create superhumans, those superhumans will once again create super-superhumans, and so on.


on the subject...
i think there is a end to knowledge, but it would be impossible to know if a society reached it.

you wouldnt know if you reached the limit of knowledge... could you?


[edit on 12/17/2004 by cheeser]