Happy Atheist Forum

Ok, here's one of my favorite questions.  A science question, and a atheism/religion question too.

For the last 500 years or so science has been learning about reality in earnest, at an ever accelerating rate.    

When will this process reach it's conclusion?   When will science run out of significant new things to learn?

There will never be a point at which there are no more questions to answer since every answer just produces more questions.

Thanks Squid, that surely does seem to be the pattern so far.

The accelerating rate of knowledge seems a factor worth considering.  Let's say we're learning at 20 miles per hour now.  In a hundred years we might be learning at 100 miles an hour.   In 500 years, 7,000 miles per hour.  

Will the accelerating rate of knowledge development continue?   What does it mean if the rate of learning continues to accelerate, and like Squid says, we never reach the end of it??

While new information always seems to create new questions I think we'll eventually hit a brick wall where there are more questions but no actual way to investigate them.  However, I don't think we would know we hit it and would just keep trying forever to figure out a way to find the answer.

But, I don't think it would be right to say that "science" would end...people (or at least robot helpers) would still need to practice it in their everyday lives to make products, repair machinery etc.

At the heat death of the Universe mabye.

Suggest comparing science to scientism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism) and positivism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism).

I don't think the science will ever end as science is related to each and everything.I think our end will be the science end as we are the only researchers.

Quote from: "Whitney"But, I don't think it would be right to say that "science" would end...people (or at least robot helpers) would still need to practice it in their everyday lives to make products, repair machinery etc.

Yes, good point.  Thanks for that clarification.  The question should be rephrased to "when will scientific discovery end."

The question might be worded this way too.    What is the relationship between the known and the unknown?  

If we propose that knowledge development will 1) continue to expand at 2) an ever increasing rate for 3) a long time, then it would seem to follow that the set of things that can be known is extremely large.  

And as Whitney suggests, there may be another set of reality data that is beyond what can be known by humans.  This makes sense as every species has it's limits.

Under this theory, the known would seem to be a very small fraction of the unknown.    If the unknown were assigned a value of one billion, the known might be assigned a value of 221, or something like that.

If this theory is judged to be reasonably plausible, what is our relationship to this data environment?   If it's true that the overwhelming majority of data is not yet in, how do I insist that ABC is true, or that XYZ is false?

Even if we did finally learn everything there is to know now, things change. Everytime something changes, we'll get to learn something new.

For some of us, it's high school.

Quote from: "Ellainix"For some of us, it's high school.

Which in some parts of the world is optimistic at best.

Quote from: "Ellainix"For some of us, it's high school.

Ha, ha!  

Quote from: "Ellainix"For some of us, it's high school.

lol  

The idea that science can and will solve every problem in the universe is called scientific determinism, at some pooint it was believed that math would also reach a perfected climax. That was disproved a while ago so it would not bge unreasonable to think that science may not be able to explain every last detail of our universe. Don't get me wrong I still think science is the best thing since sliced bread but we will never truly know everything.

What interests me is our relationship to knowledge.

If it's true that science will continue to learn, at an accelerating pace, for a very long time, then...

It seems to follow that we currently know a very small fraction of what can be known.  Probably a very very very small fraction.   That seems fascinating.    

What's more fascinating, to me anyway, is that lots and lots of people are running around proclaiming all kinds of certainties in this environment.   We just can't help ourselves.  Our desire to KNOW, and be superior to somebody else, overwhelms the simple logic of the factual situation.

And what gets lost in all these declarations can be ...

You know that feeling we have when we first arrive at a national park that we've never been to before, and we are filled with the enthusiastic excitement of discovery?

What a shame it would be if we instead chose to pretend we already know everything about the park, just so we can position our ego above that of our friends.    Bummer...

New scientific discoveries will probably come to an end if and when we are able to time travel.  Then the paradoxes will probably screw things up completely. Hmmm... maybe it's already happened.  

There's an argument that there is an upper limit to the amount of knowledge it is possible for a society to accumulate until a sufficiently massive intellect is invented with the ability to cogetate such vast amounts of data. It would get to a point where it'd be pointless trying to grasp any concept unless the person/entity/society has the necessarry equipment or modifications to make sense of such advanced theories.

I guess if we could know everything, we'd be indistinguishable from god (minus all the jealousy and barbarism, of course)..

I think science will continue until intelligent life dies out.  Or until civilization completely collapses but then we'll just start over again.

Quote from: "kenh"New scientific discoveries will probably come to an end if and when we are able to time travel.

We can time travel now.   Just go outside at night, and look up.  

Do you ever lay in the grass being basked by the sun, and think to yourself, "Only 8 minutes ago this sunlight was on the Sun, 93 million miles away".  

Trippy!   Ah man, the colors!

Quote from: "Typist"Do you ever lay in the grass being basked by the sun, and think to yourself, "Only 8 minutes ago this sunlight was on the Sun, 93 million miles away".

Yes, all the time.  Well, not in January, though.

I just found this interesting piece on the Orion's Arm Project:


The quest for knowledge is a basic human trait, existing in nearly every human-descended species, including most of those created by humans such as vecs, AIs and provolves. However, the means to do it have changed over time. The scientific method of systematic empirical hypothesis-testing has been one of the most successful so far, but over time it has changed far beyond anything recognizable to a pre-singularity era scientist

One part of the change has been philosophical: new ways of viewing the universe, new ways of thinking, and new ideas about the nature of reality have caused the systematic search for knowledge to develop in unexpected directions. Another part is social: over the millennia the diverging Terragen clades have had utterly different needs, wants, and goals, which in turn has led to science developing in different directions.

Furthermore, the success of science itself can be counterproductive. One of the problems is the sheer amount of information that is available. Even artificially extended beings have to be selective in what they learn; there is simply not time and attention enough to learn everything (though some believe the higher level Archailects may accomplish this). This encourages specialisation, which in turn leads to different disciplines losing touch with each other and becoming mutually incomprehensible. Also, the advance of science can be hampered because new data can only be gathered under extreme conditions. This was one reason even advanced nanotech AIs had a hard time developing what is now known as transapientech. For some aspects they needed sizeable amounts of matter at nuclear densities, artificial black holes, and other exotica.

One problem is that science may go so far beyond the realms of ordinary experience that it becomes nearly incomprehensible to most people. One possible side effect of this phenomenon is the emergence of a specialised expert priesthood. Another is that science begins to appear irrelevant, or is misunderstood. Many cultures have crashed due to these pitfalls

The fact that there exist immensely knowledgeable entities such as the Archailects, and entire ancient alien civilisations that may have surpassed Terragen knowledge, has made many people less inclined towards research. After all, somebody already knows it in all likelihood. On many worlds the easy availability of household AIs and contact with the Known Net also means that curiosity is easily sated just by asking.

One way of dealing with this which has become widely used is Hermeneutic Science. HerSci as it is usually called does not attempt to discover new knowledge, but figure out what more advanced beings or civilisations have discovered. Even if the more advanced beings are friendly, it is often extremely hard to exploit their knowledge, as their explanations might be incomprehensible, clouded by intelligence barriers or otherwise garbled. The researchers study what the advanced researchers say and do, attempting to understand what it means and test their theories about this meaning empirically. In some cases whole chains of HerSci research occur, such as the famed transcendence institutes of Ain Soph Aur where ordinary sophonts study first singularity transapients, who in turn study the work of higher level transapients.

Another approach is the archive hunt. In many central systems or ancient universities there is bound to be everything worthwhile somewhere on the Known Net. Finding it can be nearly as hard as discovering it in the first place.

Some cultures have instead gone for "fundamentalist science" or "rebooting". They start from scratch, and researchers (sometimes simulated virtual researchers, sometimes real) work in isolation from earlier knowledge to discover the laws of nature and their applications. The drawback is the extreme expense, slowness and the many elementary rediscoveries, but in a few cases the new research tree bears fruit and produces a marvel.