A popular meme in modern culture is the search for Universal Laws of the cosmos ... for some fundamental, unifying equation.
The possibility can't be denied -- but even if such a thing does exist, it seems extremely likely that we're extremely far away from being smart enough to find or understand it.
As our intelligence increases, and as we create new intelligences with power and scope far beyond that of legacy humans, it seems likely that new aspects of the universe will get discovered, from the perspective of which our current understanding will seem nearly as silly and limited as the ancestor-worship-based world-views of pre-civilized tribes.
By all means, let us seek unified field theories, unified equations and other unified understandings.
But let's not fool ourselves that these understandings are terribly likely to retain their appearance of grand scope after we enhance our intelligences and understand more and more of the world!
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This is my favorite entry so far. The quest for unification is a no mans land. It may very much be that our universe is far more complicated than our minds can currently comprehend, while at the same time I wonder which would come first a human version of unification or an Agi version of unification.
ReplyDeleteOver time I have also grown to believe that the universe may be of infinite complexity, which in turn may provide no cap to what is possible.
Well: whether the universe is of infinite complexity, or just very large finite complexity, is something we can never know ... or so it seems from my present, very finite and limited human vantage!
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