Re: TECH: Fractal Tardis Brains

hal@finney.org
Fri, 11 Jun 1999 08:55:36 -0700

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, <sentience@pobox.com>, writes:
> I
> keep telling you guys, if even human intelligence can bump up the
> apparent limits of physics by a few orders of magnitude every couple of
> years, do you really think They are ever going to hit the ceiling? I
> don't think there *is* a ceiling.)

This is far from clear. You can argue that as our scientific knowledge has increased, we have found more limits, rather than fewer. Who would have suspected a speed of light limitation prior to this century? Who would have suspected the uncertainty principle prior to this century?

Everyone seems to be ignoring Anders' post of a proof that wormholes can't exist. The current state of play is that there ain't no such animals. You can't use the discovery of the wormhole concept as evidence for breaking through limitations, if wormholes are impossible.

All the universe guarantees us is that life and intelligence is possible. That must be true or we would not be here. There are no guarantees beyond that. The universe may be friendly or unfriendly, malleable or difficult to manipulate. We only know what we have learned, and there is no basis for guessing that future discoveries will fall into one category or the other.

Hal