I think we can all agree, none of us have a perfect understanding of life. But it seems all too often that we don’t think about the alternative. If our intelligence was perfect, how boring would that make life be? I mean, perfect intelligence. We’d be able to predict everything. Any thoughts?
There are fundamental limits to knowledge. Heisenburg uncertainty means we cant know the position or velocity of anything with absolute accuracy.
This aside, even with ‘perfect’ intelligence you would still need ‘perfect’ omni-present senses, like, the ability to absorb 100% of the particle interactions within a 300,000 meter radius, and this is just to predict the behaviour of a single particle for one second.
Even then, this ‘perfect’ intelligence could not process its predictions faster than it is actually happening, or else you would need a model of the universe which is faster than the universe itself, so what exactly could your brain be made out of?
I always say this… what are we really striving for? it’s the strive… that is the destination.
Intelligence has the land… but art has the view.
Well now here’s the clue: We’re stuck right where we are.
Okay… I have a few problems with this. Greater intelligence would probably just reveal more complex patterns in math, sociology, science, etc. Then the goal would be to master those patterns.
But for the idea’s sake lets assume we’re infinitely intelligent. Even then, we can only predict everything if we know all information that may affect that situation. This would change the goal from increasing intelligence to focus on two other things:
Knowledge, to predict situations as accurately as possible.
Wisdom, to know when enough knowledge had been accumulated to make a reasonably accurate prediction.
I don’t think perfect intelligence is all that much about PREDICTING. It’s more about KNOWING.
Let’s just place the two words in a category of time…
PREDICTING = The Future
KNOWING = The Past
We could learn everything, but we will never be shure to predict all that much, unless we build some kind of television that sees into the future.
Knowing everything would be boring…
Imagine going to Heaven, and becoming an eternal being…and finally knowing everything… and then still living an eternal life… and wishing you could forget everything that you know …
You might wish you were back on Earth, as a baby with no memories…
Pinchoism.
About everyone being omniscient, I’ll defer comment.
But as for “why we’re stupid”, I’d say that it is simply due to a lack of education.
I think that education is ultimately the answer to any and every problem.
Greed?
Insanity?
The limits of knowledge apply as much to the past as to the future, and the present for that matter (though moving the timeframe to the future or past will compound the innaccuracy).
Even given ‘perfect’ intellect and senses, you still cant have any accurate knowledge, the uncertaincy principle trumps all.
Really, how do you know this, down the ages it has been proved again and again that our knowledge continues to grow. Maybe one day we will know everything.
Jon F
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
I am fairly certain we will one day know all that can be known, but thats far from all the possible information in the universe.
Are you asking how education could be the answer to greed and insanity?
Well, greed seems learned and could probably be unlearned. How else to combat greed? We could create laws that make it illegal to be greedy, but would that really be solving the problem? I’d say no. People either become greedy or don’t become greedy though their education and can probably best be changed through education. If not, I’d like to hear another option.
For insanity, sure, a chemical imbalance in the brain needs to be solved by giving the person other chemicals to fix it. So I would defer to: how did we come to figure out what chemicals to use? Education. It’s not directly used, but indirectly.
I think that mental health is dependent on education when it is not the chemical-type of mental illness.
greed is not learned… greed is not a disease… greed is a natural human drive…
sharing and giving is taught… learned… forced against the natural human desire to control everything…
terrible twos…
-Imp
I’m not exactly sure that anyone is stupid. They may be un-educated, mis-informed, lost in illusory intellect, but stupid? There is a difference in what is intellect and that which is intelligence. While it may take intelligence to develop intellect, intellect cannot be a substitute for intelligence - and yet many either never discern the difference or ignore it for a variety of reasons.
The rain forest “primitive” may know nothing of quantum mechanics, but he knows the forest intimately and brings all of his intelligence to bear in his living. He certainly isn’t stupid. Our ‘education’ is a two-edged sword. It can lead us into greater intelligence (awareness) or it can sidetrack us into intellect. The curse of being civilized.
JT
Wow, everyone takes things so literally. By stupid, I meant, we generally don’t know how the universe functions, or how the hell we’re here right now. Sure, we can describe the process of evolution, and describe the behavior of organisms, and speculate. But we never really KNOW how it’s all working. And that is the point I was trying to make, is that if we did know how everything is going on, then it would take the magic out of it.
I’d rather we didnt assume there was magic in the first place.
In anycase, knowledge doesnt decrease a sense of wonder. I remember reading something like this:
“An artist friend of mine told me how he felt sorry for me. When he looks at a flower he sees how simply beautiful it looks, while all I see is the mechanics of how it works.
I replied, on the contrary, I felt sorry for him as he has no idea at how beautiful flowers are, regardless of how they look”
Well imagine that you are God, and that you know that you are creating all of this, and all of it is mere fantasy, or illusion. Would that not make it a little less magical?
Of course not, but then i am great fan of constructed languages and worlds.
More understanding = deeper appreciation. Always.
What’s more wonderful; owning an ant farm or being an ant?
It’s true that we don’t know everything and we never will even though it is our nature that strives for this. Imagine how boring it would be if we didn’t? We are infinitely changing beings so there could be no ultimate knowledge in an ever changing world. So, this is an ongoing cycle that motivates our knowledge perfectly, that it is not stable and there is always more to discover.
That is exactly my point, that we will never have perfect knowledge, and that is what makes things interesting. If we did have perfect knowledge, everything would be boring. It’s like taking apart a computer, and putting it back together. You can’t honestly tell me that you could just keep taking it apart and putting it back together without getting bored of it. Because eventually you would know all of it. My theory was simply that, knowing how everything works, would be boring. I never said knowing things at all made them boring or pointless. But I would say it’s the discovery that is the most exciting part, because after you’ve mastered the discovery, you usually want to move on to something new.
Ok, but my point was that there is nothing new. It’s a cycle and there’s really nothing that can be completely discovered. You’ll eventually come back to where you began one way or another. The cycle holds it together, being able to predict because of past experiences, therefore, you can’t master anything because it holds your future.