Are humans limiting progress in science?

[ralfy]

In a way, but not due to lack of intelligence. For example, the use of oil and various technologies contributed to industrialization and the Green Revolution, which in turn led to lower infant mortality rates and higher life expectancy rates, which also contributed to a population boom. With better technology, we have more resource-hungry goods and greater demand from a growing global middle class and resources that can barely catch up with demand.

[cladking]

As for the idea that AI machines may take over from physicists, I doubt this is anything to panic about. No instance of AI has ever been observed or even proved possible in principle.

 

This is an issue I've given significant thought for a long time. I can imagine several ways that AI could be developed in the immediate future.

 

I believe the biggest stumbling block to AI is simply we wholly misapprehend the nature of intelligence itself. We interpret it largely as the ability to learn and manipulate language and logic. We are blind to the fact that language can imply no intelligence because it can be deconstructed. Rather than trying to program the machines to iniate random progresssions of previous programs in logical sequence we are trying to teach the poor things to fetch like a dog or translate things into a language with no real meaning other than the flavor of the day.

 

I wonder if the metaphysics of Pyramid Texts might be a framework for machine intelligence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Progress in general science, as in so many other things, is bound heavily to political conditions. The currently dominant economic order of human society (global capitalism) artificially limits the actual performance of most people on earth for the sake of a tiny few. Ethical judgments about this aside, from a research standpoint this is -- to put it mildly -- an atrociously inefficient way to arrange things. This is common to any coercive system or entrenched hierarchy...the comfort and privilege of elites is placed as a higher priority than the massive general gains which could be had through reduction or elimination of arbitrary force.

 

As things currently stand, just by raw numbers, we currently have more potential scientists (and potential advancements and breakthroughs) lying in wait for us but left unexamined NOT because those who might help find them are running up against bureaucratic obstacles (though that does occur), but because they never got so much as a high-school level education, or they have to spend 80% of their waking hours scraping up rent for a landlord, or they were born the "wrong" sex / "race" / raised into the wrong culture or religion for intellectual pursuits, etc.

 

Most people alive today will live out most (maybe even all) their lives never having any substantive opportunity to really explore their own potential, and that's just at the individual scale. At the group and institutional level the obstacles to exploring our potentials are even more arbitrary and entrenched, as those who stand to benefit from preserving our current hierarchies have rigged the game to keep things as they are.

 

We've barely scratched the surface of what we can do, and this will remain the case until and unless we manage to throw off the shackles of not just personal limitations, but major institutional ones as well.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm in close agreement and would even use many of the same words. I'm in less agreement here;

 

 

 

Most people alive today will live out most (maybe even all) their lives never having any substantive opportunity to really explore their own potential, and that's just at the individual scale.

 

 

I think this is a gross underestimation of the challenges facing us. It's not only that people aren't given an opportunity to excell but that people are not even able to be effective on their jobs. Most real work is being done by people the government calls illegal aliens so they work for very little and most other people aren't more than a few percent effective on their jobs. It's not just resources, human potential, and time being wasted it's much of humanity itself. Some will lay the blame at the failure of the schools resulting in too many individuals who will destroy tools and infrastructure if allowed think for themselves. But the real fault is the impossibility of laying blame for individual weakness and bad results. Of course this is a necessity when the ones at the top are culpable in many instances for causing economic and infrastructural catastrophies. Rather than being held accountable criminally or through reprimand and demotion they continue to get bonuses.

 

We have what must be the most highly inefficient system ever devised. It depends on vast amounts of energy and rather than taking steps to stop the experiment on our planet we find ways to make the system increasingly inefficient and wasteful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

... This is because scientific advances makes it possible to overcome natural checks and balances and allows the population to run riot. I sometime think that scientific advances are entirely the result of selfish genes.

 

I'm not knocking science, by the way, just the short-sightedness of the way we use it, and questioning the idea that we can measure human progress by how clever our gadgets are.

 

 

 

I've long toyed with the concept the race would still live in caves if it weren't for the necessity of impressing women (the opposite sex).

 

People seem to believe that in aggregate we know everything. I agree it is largely caused by mistaking technology for knowledge.

Edited January 15, 2013 by cladking

[SamBridge]

'Obviously'? There is nothing obvious about it.

Either you're trolling or misinterpreting me. It is obvious, Carbon on it's own is just an inanimate object, so is iron, phosphorous, and a number of other components that make up the life we see today. They are objects they we determine have no consciousness or intelligence, yet somehow consciousness arises from them. We don't know exactly how non-intelligent objects can make intelligent life, so we can't rule out what possibly can make intelligent life.

[moreinput]

A lot of times things may seem impossible. In fact, they may even be at present, unable to move ahead. But then one person looks at something that we have all seen. Except the perspective that they see it with, is incomprehensible to anyone else up to that point. At this moment the veil is lifted, and with the new revelation branches sprout out until yet again, someone is asking this very question. How could we possibly move ahead? It is not ignorance that brings you to this sentiment. Having the ability to imagine at the level these innovative peoples do, would be like me asking you to imagine a new primary color. But also try to bear in mind, that several great and innovative discoveries not only happened by chance through constant experimentation. But others where 100% genuine mistakes and nothing more. And I do not mean innovative like the Iphone 3 to the 4 model. I mean like Lavoisier,Newton,Einstien,Bohr,Mandlaive,Hubble,Galileo,Rutherford,Vesalius,Euclid,Darwin,Mendeleev,Turing, and so on innovative.

 

I wanted to keep typing names of scientist, so many who deserve so much respect.

[Consistency]

From my personal experience. People let their ego(mental inadequacies/jealousy) get in the way and by doing so, limit themselves and other people. Plus come up with excuses for their mental inadequacies.

 

Everyone wants to be a Genius.

[moreinput]

 

I think this is a gross underestimation of the challenges facing us. It's not only that people aren't given an opportunity to excell but that people are not even able to be effective on their jobs. Most real work is being done by people the government calls illegal aliens so they work for very little and most other people aren't more than a few percent effective on their jobs. It's not just resources, human potential, and time being wasted it's much of humanity itself. Some will lay the blame at the failure of the schools resulting in too many individuals who will destroy tools and infrastructure if allowed think for themselves. But the real fault is the impossibility of laying blame for individual weakness and bad results. Of course this is a necessity when the ones at the top are culpable in many instances for causing economic and infrastructural catastrophies. Rather than being held accountable criminally or through reprimand and demotion they continue to get bonuses.

 

We have what must be the most highly inefficient system ever devised. It depends on vast amounts of energy and rather than taking steps to stop the experiment on our planet we find ways to make the system increasingly inefficient and wasteful.

 

 

 

This sounds like some Micheal Moore crap here. I agree with you on the fact that no one wants to take the blame, probably in part because someones trying to blame them for EVERYTHING that occurs. But no one wants to take accountability for themselves, either. Just wondering, who is preventing us from learning? The information is freely available for anyone who wants to seek it out. It's no ones fault but your own if you do not invest the time required to learn it. In order to prevail in this day in age you can't ask why is someone else not doing this for me. You need to do it, plain and simple. Because in their opinion, and partially my own as well. Anyone who fails the self initiative test, doesn't deserve to run with the big dogs. I do understand that particular complications arise. But i'm a pretty down to earth person and the majority of failures I personally see others experiencing, has more to do with their inability to make sacrifices, or is the result of several poor choices they made from the get go.

 

Even this type of post, where I try to be frank with people. Usually winds up with comments that just lend to proving the point.

I am not trying to imply everything is fair in our lives or that people have done things that they shouldn't pay for. But what I am saying is that those people being brought to justice wouldn't make anyone work harder, or have a better education. Have you tried going and REALLY living off the land? Talk about getting the shaft. Who then would you blame for your hunger? God? Even our poorest person lives like a king when compared to LDCs and our absurd feelings of entitlement prevent us from EVER being thankful. We got 99 problems and the 1% ain't one.

 

 

 

From my personal experience. People let their ego(mental inadequacies/jealousy) get in the way and by doing so, limit themselves and other people. Plus come up with excuses for their mental inadequacies.

 

Everyone wants to be a Genius.

 

I couldn't agree with you more.

[SamBridge]

Humans are the one exploring science in the first place, how is it that they are inhibiting-it? The actions you described merely slow down the progress, they do not reverse the gaining of the knowledge we have already attained.

[PeterJ]

Either you're trolling or misinterpreting me. It is obvious, Carbon on it's own is just an inanimate object, so is iron, phosphorous, and a number of other components that make up the life we see today. They are objects they we determine have no consciousness or intelligence, yet somehow consciousness arises from them. We don't know exactly how non-intelligent objects can make intelligent life, so we can't rule out what possibly can make intelligent life.

There you go. We don't know how non-intelligent objects can make intelligent life. It is called the problem of consiousness and it is intractable. It is intractable because the starting premise is false. There is no evidence that such objects can ever make intelligent life. There is just wishful thinking.

 

Do you not see the fantastic assumption you make when you say 'somehow consiousness arises from them'. This is not science but philosophical conjecture.

 

To be fair, most people in consiousness studies make the same assumption. But then most people in consciousness studies find the problem of consciousness to be intractable, and this may not be a coincidence.

Edited March 4, 2013 by PeterJ

[Consistency]

Humans are the one exploring science in the first place, how is it that they are inhibiting-it? The actions you described merely slow down the progress, they do not reverse the gaining of the knowledge we have already attained.

 

What if the knowledge that is gained is bias and ultimately wrong?

[PeterJ]

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I've long toyed with the concept the race would still live in caves if it weren't for the necessity of impressing women (the opposite sex).

 

Lol. Almost cetainly true I'd say.

[Arete]

A more tangible way in which certain humans in US congress are impeding scientific progress, by limiting its funding:

 

[lightburst]

Computers won't be doing the things we do as humans because Alan Turing said so. Although we might be able to create a good enough AI to discover patterns that we wouldn't otherwise recognize, inducing/deducing new laws would always be the job of humans (or in the far future, dolphins).

 

If humans are going to limit scientific discoveries, it's going to be through budget cuts and ethics. I think we would have reached artificial evolution by now (smarter, stronger than people from early 20th century) if it weren't for that darn 'ethics' and 'no playing god'. But that's just me.

[Griffon]

Why should our minds that evolved to meet the challenges we faced on the African savannah be up to the task of truly understanding the universe, which is essentially what science sets out to do? We have no idea whether we understand 0.001% or 99% of what there is to understand.

 

We might unlock the bottleneck in progress if we found a way to somehow enhance the human mind by directly interfacing with computers - possibly quantum computers.