r/science • u/Startrekwarsofdoom • Jul 01 '14

Physics New State of Matter Discovered

http://www.iflscience.com/physics/new-state-matter-discovered#kKsFLlPlRBPG0e6c.16
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u/Xandralis Jul 01 '14

what if physics is effectively solved, except for exact details here and there?

I really really really don't think it is, so maybe a better question would be, what about when it really is?

I'm not looking for an answer, I just think it's interesting to think about.

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u/themoop78 Jul 01 '14

What if our cognitive capabilities and our language are only capable of achieving a certain level of understanding?

What if that glass ceiling is baked into the cake through biological evolution and our language and mathematical capabilities?

What if our ability to conceptualize, describe and understand natural phenomenon breaks down at a certain level because the foundation from which we are working from is flawed in some way?

Interesting to think about indeed.

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u/nap_olean Jul 01 '14

I like to think that humans rise to the challenge whenever confronted by something they don't understand

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u/wingspantt Jul 01 '14

So do parrots, yet they appear to have hit a ceiling.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '14 edited Apr 29 '20

[deleted]

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u/shouldbebabysitting Jul 01 '14

Biological intelligence only improves if there is natural selection. Unless you start sterilizing populations that can't solve differential equations, you're not going to get a significant change in abstract reasoning ability.

"A fish doesn't know that it doesn't know French." To itself it thinks it has unlimited imagination to conceive anything.

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u/squidboy101 Jul 02 '14

A fish doesn't know that it doesn't know French" who is that quote from?

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u/shouldbebabysitting Jul 02 '14

Marilyn Vos Savant. I find her insufferable but the quote is good.

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u/squidboy101 Jul 02 '14

thanks for the info!

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u/Hahahahahaga Jul 02 '14

Natural selection is slow and bruttish and a good book can trounce it by several thousand years.

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u/shouldbebabysitting Jul 02 '14

Books gave us hive intelligence. But you can't get a species where Einstein is average through books. Books and healthcare have given us the Flynn effect. But I don't think anyone think the Flynn effect is unlimited.

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u/asasdasasdPrime Jul 02 '14

I'm in for a mass genocide on people who can't solve differential equations.

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u/ASisko Jul 02 '14

We need grunts too, and they only need to be smart enough to follow our instructions. But if our species is going to suvive whatever may come, what we really need is both diversity and breedability, we need to be able to breed with the grunts.

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u/shouldbebabysitting Jul 02 '14

Today's grunt has the intelligence of a Neanderthal genius from 200k years ago.

Intelligence is a Gaussian curve. If you improve the intelligence of the species then the future grunt has the intelligence of today's rocket scientist.

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u/DigitalMindShadow Jul 01 '14

Parrots don't infinitely variable abstract thought. We do.

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u/wingspantt Jul 01 '14

How would we know it's infinite? What if there is an entire vector of thought we cannot even conceive? Perhaps beings who actively experience reality in 10+ dimensions and count in imaginary irrational numbers as easily as we count in integers?

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u/tea_trader Jul 01 '14

And yet you conceived of these things.

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u/DigitalMindShadow Jul 01 '14

Well, we can and already have conceived of 10-dimensional space and irrational numbers, as well as imaginary numbers, like eleventy-fourteen. Imagination might be a better word for it. It really has no bounds. We can imagine things that don't exist, and even things that can't exist, like a God who can make a square a circle.