-Sir Arthur Eddington, considered to be the second person to understand the Theory of Relativity
Seriously, why can't we understand the Universe?
My daughter volunteers at a school for children that can't manage at regular schools. Many of them have some kind of organic brain disease, or had accidents, or mutations that didn't work out well, or some other problem. They've been learning to count to 3 for 4 years, she told me, and every day it's just as impossible.
We have a lot more in common with those children than we might think.
Let me suggest a Law:
The more we learn as a species, the dumber each of us gets by comparison.
The subset of people who can understand advanced math and theoretical Physics is quite small, possibly on the order of less than 1% of the population.
We're not talking about those who can simply solve the existing equations, but those rare ones who conceptually understand the idea- and can synthesise new math to describe it, the way Newton did with Calculus.
It's completely possible that our brains are simply too small for the task, which may need a bigger working memory, more computational power, or the fact that a 3D brain can't really conceive a multidimensional reality.
Can an ant understand a car?
I'm going to suggest that it simply cannot. Even though recent evidence suggests that bees can count.
A human can understand a car - up to a point. The average mechanic can fix it, the average owner can drive it, but neither can make the plastic, or the integrated circuits, or even describe how to make the fuel or list the ingredients in the transmission fluid. Even a commonplace thing like a car needs a couple hundred people to actually understand it. Maybe 20 just to understand the paint.
An ant cannot even get the concept of the purpose of a car. Imagine if one got driven a distance, and then got out of the vehicle- the entire world it encountered would be inexplicably different, the nest would be unreachable, and death would be assured.
Uppsala university recently proposed a new model that permits string theory to co-exist with dark energy.
Of course, I cannot fathom it.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181228164824.htm
https://www.theweek.in/news/sci-tec...erse-may-be-an-expanding-bubble-in-space.html
:|
Oh well, I can't even actually understand a sandwich.
What's the biochemistry of fermentation? What's the genetic structure of lettuce? Did you know that the chlorophyll molecules that make the lettuce green have each got 4 sites that are Quantum Entangled so that a single photon of incident light is amplified in its effect by 4?
And forget trying to understand something really hard, like mayonnaise.
I'm going to lift weights now.
Because the biochemists, exercise physiologists, cardiology professors, endocrinologists etc, tell me that it will move my body chemistry in the direction I want it to go. Not because I actually know why.
Each of us is perforce compelled to rely upon the accumulated knowledge of centuries.
Your ignorant friend,
~RoS
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