S-Man

4 minutes ago, Strange said:

So, your take is "don't know and can't know"? 

Of course I don't know and can't know. The take is actually that nobody can know, and the more questions you ask the more you realize none of this makes any sense.

Hi everyone,

Now, I know this question is very old and the subject has been discussed loads of times, but personally I've always felt a little bit disappointed by some of the answers - especially scientific ones, believe it or not. I'm not saying I'm looking for a religious or spiritual answer, but rather a more philosophical one. The scientific community will often say that there is something rather than nothing because there can be. Their theory allows for something to come into existence, seen as how nothing is not really nothing at a quantum level. I'm not even trying to dispute that, because they might be right - perhaps a whole Universe can pop into existence from nothing through quantum fluctuations.

My issue with a scientific hypothesis is this: It explains a result by attributing certain conditions to the problem at hand. What it doesn't do is pull the curtain all the way back and answer the question in its truest form. I think the more layers you peel back on this topic, the only answer that rationally makes sense is that existence itself MAKES NO SENSE. Whatever beginning you believe in, one can always ask "Ok, but what came before that?" or "what lies beyond that?" and these types of questions simply DO NOT have answers. Example: "Universe -> Multiverse -> ????" or "Big Bang - Quantum Fluctuations -> ????"

I think it's entirely possible if not probable that even if we become an intergalactic species in the next couple millennia or so and learn everything there is to know about our universe or perhaps even the multiverse, odds are we will never be able to reach back enough to understand the real WHAT or WHY.

9 hours ago, Alex_Krycek said:

Ultimately the question relates to the potential of the human imagination.  Is the imagination fundamentally connected to the universe itself, and so has the ability to conceive of anything that exists within the universe that it is connected to?  Or is the human imagination just an extension of what has been deduced scientifically over time, an extension of established knowledge, and thus it is limited by that knowledge to only imagining certain concepts that it has been preconditioned to understand?

That is very well said. It could be that it's a mixture of both, because to rationalize it we could say that even a civilization that is millions of years more advanced than us, was at some point in their history at our level, and then went on from there to learn and discover more and more, which would indicate that their advances were within their ability to comprehend the greater picture all along. So it wouldn't surprise me if human beings were ultimately capable of conceiving anything the universe has to offer.

19 hours ago, swansont said:

I would like to point out that the Star Trek warp drive is fictional, and you absolutely do not understand how it works. Fictional is pretty close to magical, concept-wise.

I personally don't, but I understand the concept of it and I'm sure there are people a lot smarter than me that actually understand the intricacies too, even though it is fictional. We know how a lot of things work in theory and there is theory about what it would take to warp space, only that we don't have the tech to do it right now - much like with wormholes.

21 hours ago, Ten oz said:

You realize toddlers use cell phones, right?

That's because they can access that technology at a time when their brain is still forming so their world view isn't challenged at any point. The point about the caveman and the smartphone was that it would have to be a caveMAN, an adult who's had time to grasp his reality. Then there's the issue of whether or not our brains are more evolved now than they were tens or hundreds or thousands of years ago. As for Sensei's 'chimpanzees using technology' argument, that's with humans training them to do so and their brains being able to understand cause and effect. So too would a caveman understand that if they press the part of the phone that is the Lock Button, the front of the device will light up. Action A leads to Result A. That doesn't mean they'd understand anything more regarding the device. They would probably use the screen as a flashlight until the battery runs out, and when it shuts down for good they would assume they had angered it somehow and pray to it to someday power back on again

20 hours ago, Strange said:

If the aliens decide to explain the technology, I can imagine several possible results:

1. The scientists / technologists who hear the explanation slap themselves on the forehead, say "of course" and rush out to build their own.
2. The humans would spend months or years trying to understand the advances in science required - mathematicians would struggle to convert the alien notation to something they were familiar with - but after a few years or decades, they would put together their first prototypes.
3. The aliens spend decades providing lectures, explanations, seminars, diagrams, working models, etc. And the human audience just sit there looking blank and going, "Nope. Still not getting it. Can you explain it again from the beginning? Are you sure it isn't magic?"

1 or 2, definitely. I can't fathom a world in which an advanced intelligence would spend decades trying to explain something to us and we still wouldn't get it. We have mastered the language of mathematics and we are logical and rational beings (at least our brightest minds are). So failure to understand after decades of explanations would simply indicate that the aliens explaining things to us aren't advanced enough themselves, because if they were, they would be able to find a way to get their point across.

21 hours ago, Ten oz said:

Are you implying that human (homo sapiens) capacity for imagination is greater today than it was in previous years?

Absolutely. Yes. I firmly believe that we are at a time in our evolution that is more of a transitioning period than ever before. We have only recently begun grasping where we might be headed as a civilization, what we might become, what might become of our planet and so on.

Sorry for the multitude of replies, I had reached my reply limit yesterday

15 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Could you point to some supportive evidence that our intelligence has reached a point where we can't trust this platitude of Clarke's? What is it about us that makes us less able to wonder at things we can't figure out? I'm a big fan of our high intelligence, but I also recognize the limitations of not-knowing, and how our ignorance can leave us with nothing on which to base an analysis. I think you're making the mistake of thinking intelligence gives us more protection from a lack of knowledge than it really does. 

Mostly I think you're taking a personal view of something that was meant as an observation about humanity in general. Do you know how many people believe in the supernatural in the world today?

I don't think I have actual evidence, so you're right, this is a personal view, yet I base it on observations withdrawn from some of our brightest and most inventive minds, whether it's in the scientific community or the pop culture community. The things we can picture in our heads now are so much more advanced than those we could picture a century ago, not to mention thousands of years ago, which brings me back to:

4 hours ago, Strange said:

But if you gave a "caveman" (or at last, an early H. sapiens and maybe neandertalis) a smartphone then I'm sure they would be shocked and amazed and not be able to understand how it worked. But in a few days, they would be texting, calling their friends, and be on social media. And taking it all for granted. After all, how many people now actually know how a smartphone works. Maybe it is indistinguishable from magic to many of them.

I disagree with the notion that early man would be able to figure out what a smartphone is. There would be nothing in the caveman's culture to help him reference the different materials, luminescent and touch-sensitive screen, not to mention ANY of its technical functions. They would probably assume it's a very bright rock and the minute they figure out it has an LED flashlight function and can shine a light in the dark, they would probably begin praying to it. I somehow doubt that anybody alive before the early to mid 20th century would be able to figure out a smartphone - they would need the industrial revolution in the back of their minds in order to grasp future tech.

Just now, Intrigued said:

As an, arguably, sophisticated, educated, scientifically inclined society we would tend to interpret alien technology as magical (amazing/wonderwul/awe inspiring), but would doubt that supernatural elements were involved.

I still wouldn't use the term magical, but I agree yes. We would be amazed, at awe and so on, but only because we're seeing it with our own eyes as opposed to seeing it on an episode of Star Trek. I wouldn't be surprised if/when another advanced civilization does make contact, we will be able to attribute certain things about them or their tech with stuff that we've already referenced in pop culture or our TV screens like "Oh look at that, they've got something that reminds us of our concept of warp drive" rather than "Oh look at that, they use space puppies to power their engines, we would have never thought of that".

2 hours ago, Strange said:

Arthur C Clarke's original statement doesn't rule out that possibility. You are inventing a conflict where none exists (ie. a straw man argument).

I'm not trying to invent any conflict, I'm just pointing out that we have reached a stage in our evolution where our minds are able to comprehend more than they are sometimes given credit for. This may very well be a transitioning period for us, as we're also contemplating our future and the possibility of becoming human-machine hybrids at some point. It takes a lot of self-awareness to process that type of possibility, which is something we as a society didn't have until relatively recently.

20 minutes ago, Sensei said:

 Alien would put you in "sleep", create virtual world similar to the one you know (or exactly the same as you know, recreated from memories from the brain), and observe how you are behaving in various situations. Similar like humans are catching wild animals, placing them in zoo or reserve, and observing how they behave. But you would have no idea that you're participating in their experiment..

Even if "Alien" would do that, it still wouldn't befuddle us in terms of our imagination. The simple fact that you had that idea means that it is not beyond our comprehension.

36 minutes ago, swansont said:

I could take you into my lab and hand you some existing technology, and you would likely not know how to use it. (It would be even harder if I changed the labels on the buttons so they weren't in a recognizable language) It doesn't mean you can't learn it, but until you gain the knowledge, it's pretty much incomprehensible.

I'm sure that would be the case, but it doesn't mean it would be indistinguishable from magic to me, or anyone else not familiar with its inner workings. My point is that I doubt there's anything out there in the cosmos that we couldn't come to terms with if presented with the way it works, or if given enough time to analyze it. Even answers to questions like "Why is there something rather than nothing," or "What's beyond our observable universe" ...is something we could probably come to terms on with on a scientific level (socially or personally, maybe not everyone) if ET landed here and began explaining to us how things really are.

I’m pretty tired of the general consensus within the scientific community that ultra-advanced alien tech would look like magic to us and would be  incomprehensible in the same way a caveman would look at a smartphone.

I disagree because as we have evolved in time and space, our imagination has evolved too, at an even higher rate actually. A caveman would have likely been unable to imagine anything beyond his current situation, not knowing what to make of the moon, sun, stars, or even think about future societies.

We on the other hand have been able for decades to entertain notions that practically speaking still escape us, like faster than light travel for example. We dont know how it would be possible, the intricacies of it and all that, but if a craft arrives here tomorrow at FTL speed...we’d be in awe of it, yes, but we wouldn’t bow to it as a caveman would to Siri. Right?

So yeah, i think we’re at that point where it’s no longer fair to say that the universe’s most advanced civilizations would be beyond our comprehension and that their tech, whether it’s mechanical, biological or based on space marshmallows (i donno), would be beyond our wildest imagination. No. It would certainly look awe inspiring, but it shouldn’t make our heads explode. We can imagine just about anything nowadays. I’m not even sure there’s anything out there beyond our imagination. Say the sky opened up tomorrow to reveal a giant alien teenage eyeball looking down on its simulated universe school project. Dumbfounding? Sure. But again, not out of the realm of our imagination.

I actually think we are at a transitional period in terms of our civilization. We can for the first time fully entertain our future and where we’re going and whether or not we will fuse with our tech and go colonize the solar system or maybe even go beyond that. We can imagine all of that right now. So what could be greater than that? A lot more sci-fi? Maybe figuring out how to eventually navigate the multiverse (if that theory proves correct), or how to jump between our dimension and another one?

Honestly now, our imagination can take us to the furthest regions of...existance. What do you guys think?