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Will science ever know everything?
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BaldFriede View Drop Down
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    Posted: May 11 2019 at 11:08
I am currently having a discussion with a YouTube poster who made a video called "4 Gaps Evolution Will Never Explain... EXPLAINED"! Here a link to this video:


In this video the guy utters the statement that science will one day know everything, something which I (and most leading scientists) most definitely don't believe. I posted this comment in reply to his video:

Your belief that one day scientists will know everything is not shared by scientists themselves. The reason is that with every scientific explanation new scientific questions come up. I highly recommend the book "Why Aren't Black Holes Black?" by Robert M. Hazen and Maxine Singer. In this book 14 central questions of current science are being tackled, like for example "Perfect Symmetry: Can We Devise a Theory of Everything?" or "Fate: Will the Universe End"? And yes, one question is "Evolution: How Did Life On Earth Become so Varied"? Mark that this chapter is not questioning evolution at all, it just points out that we are still far from fully understanding evolution.

The book has a foreword by Stephen J. Gould, one of the leading scientists in the field of evolution. He takes his time to explain why science is the endless frontier and brings up an analogy by Blaise Pascal, who compared our knowledge with a sphere. The bigger the sphere (our knowledge) gets the bigger the surface (our contact with the unknown) gets.

Anyone who believes that we are close to knowing everything and reads this book with an open mind will wind up in a much more humbled state.

He answered with this comment:

Well, I may have mislead my position, can you provide the timestamp. There is a point at which everything can be discovered, or at least everything that exists within our reach. Now we(i use we as in the scientific community) will most likely never even know what the body of "everything" even entails. So my stance is more better explained that as we know everything that we think there is a possibility to know, we will find that are just more questions for us to explore and discover. I hope I clarified my position a bit better. Thanks for the insightful comment.

To which I replied this:

No, there is no such time. You really should read the book I recommended.

You seem to think that more and more scientific problems are being solved, probably supported by the press which sometimes comes up with statements like that, and that since there is a finite number of problems one day all will be solved. What you apparently don't understand is that our lack of knowledge is like the mythological Hydra: With every head being chopped off two new heads are being formed (with every scientific problem solved at least two new scientific problems arise).

This goes as far as evolution, which non-scientists who are not creationists believe to be a completely solved issue (and most of the videos published against the stupidity of anti-evolutionists certainly help in forming this false belief). However, while no serious scientist doubts the existence of evolution we are still far from fully understanding it.

I did not even mention the philosophical implications of such a universal knowledge. A world in which we knew everything would be totally boring; I would immediately commit suicide in it. Luckily we will never achieve such universal knowledge.

So what is your opinion? Will we really know everything there is to know one day? Or is science indeed like the mythological Hydra I mentioned?


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Vompatti View Drop Down
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Depends on what you mean by science and what you mean by thing.
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^ LOL.......sounds like you are either a lawyer or politician...or both.

No...imho there will always be something we cannot fathom....since we are finite beings.
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^ Well, what I'm mostly wondering is what would be the conditions for knowing that you know everything.
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Originally posted by Vompatti Vompatti wrote:

Depends on what you mean by science and what you mean by thing.
Science may not know everything, but I do.
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Well, it depends whether it is mathematically possible for us to know everything that there is to know.
 
If it is mathematically possible, then, in a multiverse of infinite universes in which every mathematical possibility is played out somewhere, then there will be a universe where we (or the "we" that exists in that universe) does know everything that there is to know.
 
If it is not mathematically possible then it cannot exist in any universe and so the answer will be "no" it is not possible to know all that there is to know.
 
I suspect that it is not mathematically possible to know everything that there is to know because, to do so, one would have to be outside of everything and, as we are a part of everything, we can never be outside of everything.
 
Incidentally, in a world where everything was known, your suicide would also be known in advance of it happening, and would, therefore, almost certainly be prevented.
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Originally posted by Vompatti Vompatti wrote:

^ Well, what I'm mostly wondering is what would be the conditions for knowing that you know everything.
when you have a new lamborghini and live in the hollywood hills
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Originally posted by Chaser Chaser wrote:

Incidentally, in a world where everything was known, your suicide would also be known in advance of it happening, and would, therefore, almost certainly be prevented.
By whom?
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Oh come on..... the aforementioned sense of knowing everything is such a darn fallacy, since the dualization (everything vs nothing) implies a static state of knowledge that exists only in our imagination. Our world is dynamic, as well as the laws of nature. And as such, our knowledge will always change over time.
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Edited by Tillerman88 - May 11 2019 at 20:19
The overwhelming amount of information on a daily basis restrains people from rewinding the news record archives to refresh their memories...
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Originally posted by Chaser Chaser wrote:

Well, it depends whether it is mathematically possible for us to know everything that there is to know.
 
If it is mathematically possible, then, in a multiverse of infinite universes in which every mathematical possibility is played out somewhere, then there will be a universe where we (or the "we" that exists in that universe) does know everything that there is to know.
 
If it is not mathematically possible then it cannot exist in any universe and so the answer will be "no" it is not possible to know all that there is to know.
 
I suspect that it is not mathematically possible to know everything that there is to know because, to do so, one would have to be outside of everything and, as we are a part of everything, we can never be outside of everything.
 
Incidentally, in a world where everything was known, your suicide would also be known in advance of it happening, and would, therefore, almost certainly be prevented.


You seem to hold that mathematics is the source of demonstrable truth. I've always believed that mathematics can only approximate reality as no two things in the world have exactly identical properties in every quantifiable respect i.e. x ≠ y. The requirement of 'being outside everything' is just another way of saying that complete objectivity is impossible when you cannot separate the knower from the known etc
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Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

You seem to hold that mathematics is the source of demonstrable truth. I've always believed that mathematics can only approximate reality as no two things in the world have exactly identical properties in every quantifiable respect i.e. x ≠ y. The requirement of 'being outside everything' is just another way of saying that complete objectivity is impossible when you cannot separate the knower from the known etc
 
I agree that the physical world contains extreme diversity, but I don't understand how this restricts mathematics or makes that diversity not fully quantifiable.
 
No two snowflakes in nature are exactly alike, but that doesn't stop us creating mathematical algorithms to replicate nature and generate mathematically unique snowflakes each time we generate them on a computer.
 
I think that, in the world that we inhabit, mathematics is the closest thing we have to demonstrable truth.
 
The universe is highly complex and diverse, and yet we can use mathematics to land a tiny space probe on an asteroid billions of miles from earth moving at high velocity, using only mathematical calculations.
 
Everything I do today will be governed by mathematics, with billions of calculations taking place inside my brain, even though I am not aware of them.  Everything in my life is determined by mathematics, from my birth to my eventual death, and this is true for the whole universe and all other possible universes.
 
If there is an ultimate truth then it is mathematics, although, for the reasons I gave, I do not think that humanity will ever be in possession of total knowledge of all things.
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Originally posted by Chaser Chaser wrote:

Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

You seem to hold that mathematics is the source of demonstrable truth. I've always believed that mathematics can only approximate reality as no two things in the world have exactly identical properties in every quantifiable respect i.e. x ≠ y. The requirement of 'being outside everything' is just another way of saying that complete objectivity is impossible when you cannot separate the knower from the known etc
 
I agree that the physical world contains extreme diversity, but I don't understand how this restricts mathematics or makes that diversity not fully quantifiable.
 
No two snowflakes in nature are exactly alike, but that doesn't stop us creating mathematical algorithms to replicate nature and generate mathematically unique snowflakes each time we generate them on a computer.
 
I think that, in the world that we inhabit, mathematics is the closest thing we have to demonstrable truth.
 
The universe is highly complex and diverse, and yet we can use mathematics to land a tiny space probe on an asteroid billions of miles from earth moving at high velocity, using only mathematical calculations.
 
Everything I do today will be governed by mathematics, with billions of calculations taking place inside my brain, even though I am not aware of them.  Everything in my life is determined by mathematics, from my birth to my eventual death, and this is true for the whole universe and all other possible universes.
 
If there is an ultimate truth then it is mathematics, although, for the reasons I gave, I do not think that humanity will ever be in possession of total knowledge of all things.


I don't pretend to know enough about mathematics to flatly contradict any of that (I sucked at math in school)Embarrassed but I would speculate we can only model external reality in this manner e.g. infinite divisibility is a concept compliant with math theory but not replicable in reality where quantisation appears to hold sway. I'm also not entirely convinced that mathematics can handle the very real possibility of random probability/chance i.e. can a mathematical model accurately predict the outcome of a coin toss? (the inference being that we have at best, a 50% computed chance of predicting this latent reality?)
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Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states, "The more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa." 

 Therefore, you can't know everything about a particle. Since, the material world is made up of particles, ergo we can't know everything about the materials populating space.  We attempt to bridge the uncertainty gap with probabilities, which measure the likelihood that an event will occur. 

 Instead of particle position and momentum, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle can also be expressed in terms of energy and time. Again, the more constrained one variable is, the less constrained the other is. The fact that we know, that we can't know everything about everything, is not the same thing, as knowing everything.   

  

  




Edited by omphaloskepsis - May 12 2019 at 08:19
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^ You can know everything about a particle, just not at the same time.
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Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

[/QUOTE]

I'm also not entirely convinced that mathematics can handle the very real possibility of random probability/chance i.e. can a mathematical model accurately predict the outcome of a coin toss? (the inference being that we have at best, a 50% computed chance of predicting this latent reality?)
[/QUOTE]

But this concept of probability or chance is simply an illusion.

If I roll a normal six sided dice then it is obvious that it is impossible for me to know with certainty what the outcome will be on any one throw.

But if there are six parallel universes whereby, in universe #1 the outcome of my roll is 1

In universe #2 the outcome is 2

In universe #3 it is 3, in universe #4 it is 4, in #5 it is 5, and in #6 it is 6.

Then we can see that, in fact, all mathematical possibilities are played out and there is no "randomness" or "chance".

"Chance" is nothing but an illusion of our own space and time.
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We already know everything there is to know. That's why everything's working out so well on planet EARTH :P

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Originally posted by Chaser Chaser wrote:

Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:


I'm also not entirely convinced that mathematics can handle the very real possibility of random probability/chance i.e. can a mathematical model accurately predict the outcome of a coin toss? (the inference being that we have at best, a 50% computed chance of predicting this latent reality?)


But this concept of probability or chance is simply an illusion.

If I roll a normal six sided dice then it is obvious that it is impossible for me to know with certainty what the outcome will be on any one throw.

But if there are six parallel universes whereby, in universe #1 the outcome of my roll is 1

In universe #2 the outcome is 2

In universe #3 it is 3, in universe #4 it is 4, in #5 it is 5, and in #6 it is 6.

Then we can see that, in fact, all mathematical possibilities are played out and there is no "randomness" or "chance".

"Chance" is nothing but an illusion of our own space and time.[/QUOTE]

If we have an infinite number of universes but a finite number of outcomes, it would follow that all outcomes would occur but we could only ever experience the one that occurs in the universe we inhabit. The laws of physics and the principles of mathematics would clearly have to be identical in all of these universes for this to be true. Is it however, beyond the realms of possibility that over sufficient time physical laws would have to be revised to the point where our current mathematical principles would no longer vindicate our understanding of the emergent reality around us? e.g. the constants of gravitation, vacuum energy or speed of light may not always have been so or will be so in the future etc


Edited by ExittheLemming - May 13 2019 at 03:29
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Science will never know everything. Unfortunately, some YouTubers (and others, it's not unique to YouTube) use that as an excuse to denigrate science and what we currently know in an attempt to promote their own unproven, and in some cases, batsh*t crazy theories. I truly want to keep an open mind but it's difficult sometimes.




Edited by Jeffro - May 13 2019 at 06:27
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Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:


If we have an infinite number of universes but a finite number of outcomes, it would follow that all outcomes would occur but we could only ever experience the one that occurs in the universe we inhabit. The laws of physics and the principles of mathematics would clearly have to be identical in all of these universes for this to be true. Is it however, beyond the realms of possibility that over sufficient time physical laws would have to be revised to the point where our current mathematical principles would no longer vindicate our understanding of the emergent reality around us? e.g. the constants of gravitation, vacuum energy or speed of light may not always have been so or will be so in the future etc
 
But logically the laws of mathematics (and thereby of physics) must be identical in all possible universes.
 
When I say that 2 + 2 = 4 I do not mean that two plus two equals four for me, but for someone else in a different universe two plus two might equal something different.
 
Would 2 + 2 = 5 be a concept that has any logical meaning?
 
Mathematics does not require physical reality to be logically true.
 
Even if nothing existed the laws of mathematics would still hold true, and that must therefore apply to all times and spaces.
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I only saw snippets of the video but it seems that the question is whether or not science will ever figure out all the mechanics of the universe; all of its laws and evolution.

Is a type V civilization even possible?  Having the knowledge and capability to manipulate not just planets, stars and galaxies but the entire universe?  This of course poses a somewhat different question, science and technology is not the same thing.

Given enough time I think figuring out all the mechanics of the universe and having god like technologies to manipulate the universe is possible.  How much time is the question; a few thousand years, a few billion years? Current estimates of this universe expiring is about 4 billion years.  Is a couple billion years of advancement in both science and technology enough?   Or perhaps escaping into a much younger universe will give us sufficient time? 

Even if it will become possible to traverse between a multiverse and science figures out all the mechanics of creation, the human intellect will still be incapable of fully understanding a mere pebble.

The sons of man and all his sciences will never be able to create anything nor fully understand a single grain of sand.

So all is lost?  Not at all..

And to truly understand everything would be far from boring, ever-new joy could never get boring.   So what’s necessary for such a state?  - A state of omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence.

Suicide!!  aka loss of ego..   Let’s be clear about one thing now, loss of body doesn’t equate to loss of ego.
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