Out of Your Head

Re:Out of Your Head by moffkalast on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @09:48AM (#41367477)

Well to some degree we actually can know how much we know and don't know, with statistics [0] and our observations so far. So much of modern science was easy pickings in the 19th and 20th centuries, while these days we keep investing ludicrous amounts of effort into ultra specific experiments to figure out some small new thing that often just confirms what we already thought, learning relatively little in comparison to the ye olde polymaths making three new branches of science by themselves. The fact that we're so far into diminishing returns is an indicator by itself. Most new tech these days isn't even new, it's just figuring out how to make the already known practical enough to be cost effective.

Now sure, a person during the roman times or the middle ages could be caught saying the same thing and couldn't be more wrong. And sure it's entirely possible that we'll figure something out that will revolutionize our knowledge of the universe entirely... but every time general relativity predicts yet another observation to an annoying level of perfection that chance becomes smaller and smaller.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

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Re:Out of Your Head by keiferski on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @10:16AM (#41367792)

The history of human knowledge is pretty much a succession of people saying "we know everything, this topic is done" being proved wrong by a new development.

I'll again say that I think it's extremely hubristic to think that human civilization has somehow figured out "most" scientific knowledge in the last couple of centuries. This human-centered attitude is not unique, though, which is kind of my point: it's not a new thing at all to think that the current level of knowledge has nowhere to go. It's just the typical human hubris that has been with us forever.

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Re:Out of Your Head by genghisjahn on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @10:33AM (#41367984)

With the “God of the gaps” things…it’s always hand waved away. Things seem mystical until science comes along a codifies it so to speak. And yet the gap remains, it’s just further out. It’s a gap we didn’t even know was there. It just gives me pause when I try to think about the totality of things. How can I say for sure how it came to be when I’m not even close to sure what it is.

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Re:Out of Your Head by moffkalast on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @10:48AM (#41368163)

Well sure, but at least in comparison with the entire history of life on this planet, we've known close to nothing until the last ~400 years and have since figured out most that practically matters to us on a daily basis. We don't know how to cure cancer, but we know exactly what it is.

We're certainly still wrong about exotic types of matter, gravity, fundamental particles, the ways completely arbitrary things function, like genes in a cell, etc... but we know that cells exist, what they're composed of, and we're definitely not wrong about that, and that is frankly infinitely more knowledge than we've ever had before. What's left to find are mostly increasingly more nitpicky details that are nonetheless very important, but they don't change our understanding anywhere nearly as drastically.

To wrap back around to my original point, in comparison to everything else the amount of knowledge we've gained on paranormal things since tribal shaman times is about zero. It's still all hearsay and speculation and it's not for the lack of trying.

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