Some of the people here who think they're very smart don't take it well when I call human intelligence almost "dog-like". I should leave them be...

In that vein...
I do like the hamfisted headline from your article: How to See Planet Uranus In the Night Sky. Someone inserted "planet" in there as an afterthought...

And yeah I think that's one of our limitations. But it's not like the Terrance Taos of the world are out making huge breakthroughs despite lifelong specialization. The former editor of Nature thinks that the future will offer an entirely new physics, maybe more than one, in the years to come. I wonder how close we are to the limits of what human brains can figure out.

Almost cat-like people have a reasonable basis for objection.

While I still think you're wrong for about the same reasons I hated everything about this movie except Scarlett's lips, I do appreciate your spirited defense of your position.

I doubt you can make the fine distinctions like your pretty graphic showed.*

They are quite bright. I can also read at night if I turn a light on.

*You can with proper measurement devices.

The Christian god is also "possible." No one has said that it is entirely impossible that you are correct (at least as far as I am aware).

Generally, it is the duty of the person making a claim that they provide a coherent argument and/or evidence for that claim. What it appears that you provided in the rest of the post I am responding to is a list of claims and an analogy. You've provided nothing in the way of an argument showing that this being wouldn't be smart enough to come up with multiple models that are all equally good to explain what its senses observe.

Our guy maybe could, if putting in some effort. He could look at the skies 1,000+ times and get the weighted average for every star. Every observation imprinted in his memory, comparing every observation with every observation of every star he has ever made. Every night is slightly different, that can be of help when refining the results. For us it's a difficulty, for him it could be a blessing. He uses every bit of information you can imagine is squeezed in there somewhere.

He could detect minuscule magnitude differences, check them again next night, and detect variable stars with accuracy. Shooting stars would be christmas, lots of physics to be learned. He would forward and rewind and order all information he has ever obtained with astonishing speed.

He would correct for the varying biases the eyes themselves produce. He can do it by comparing the images he gets. If there are systematic aberrations there looks to be no reason for in reality, then he focuses on the eyes themselves and calculates corrections.

This is very close to what the night sky looks like far away from all light sources. That's not a camera artifact - this is very very close to what it looks like, including colors. The milky way is like an internally lit cloud. Click to see the full size. It's also far larger in person of course. It's incredibly beautiful. Imagine being in a stained glass cathedral but it's the universe/galaxy and all around you.

It's one of the wonders of the world. Makes you realize there are some things ancient tribes had that we don't any more. I haven't seen this in a few years, it's a long trek to the far outback where there's little enough light to see this kind of thing:

Among other things I do not know why I would conclude computers will enjoy living intelligently better than humans can even when they predictably can do certain intelligent acts better.

I've given you this argument already and it's persuasive:

Survivorship bias doesn't explain it given the small number of theories posited. What about this argument is not persuasive? This is strong proof that intelligence and the principle of parsimony come up with rule sets that fit reality in a forward predictive manner.

Biology has even more profound examples - for example the incredibly strict predictions of evolutionary theory have been 100% successful. You could posit a billion fantastic magical theories about the origin and evolution of life, but we found right one - and very quickly. By assuming that everything runs on simple rules.

If the universe is built on a simple set of rules, and all the evidence suggests it is, those rules can reached through enough data and reason, provided most of the properties of micro physics show up in the shape of the macro world. Which they appear to.

I'm struggling to understand what you don't find persuasive about this particular aspect.

Love awe inspiring images like this. I experienced a transformative, awakening reaction the first time I saw our galaxy in such detail.

Had sort of an ahah moment at this illustration as well.



Do you think our super intelligent creature would be able to fathom this, how large and old the universe we view around us is? Without modern technology, improving on our senses, how does it measure the speed of light?



Another ahah image. How does our creature even imagine such a reality, much less prove it without the aid of a Hubble?

Indeed. That you want to keep divorcing the sensor array from the processing mechanism as if that doesn't break the whole system is one of many reasons why you're unable to beyond hand-waving.

The nature of the argument proceeds on painfully nonsensical premises.

Yes. And, of course, the real issue at hand is that because you keep screwing this up, you're not actually making any useful observations.

Here's an example of the type of error you're making.

The advancement of understanding planetary motion did not come from people getting smarter, but observations that were obtained by tools that were not attainable without them. It's not that it took brilliance to discover that the earth wasn't the center of the universe, but rather by observing things like little dots moving around the other little dots in the night sky. And those little dots were not observable without tools.

It's a classic failing of understanding the reasoning process and reverting to something akin to results-oriented thinking. Because we "know" the answer, it's somehow totally obvious what the answer should have been the whole time, and hence an intelligent person would have been able to deduce this from less information.

But that's just not how it works.

You think many things. But that you think them doesn't imply that it's true or that you've made even a remotely convincing argument about the truth of it. A lot of the issues were data-related, not intelligence-related.

I get it. You're sad that you're a stupid human. I feel bad for you, too. Yes, there are "flaws" in human reasoning. But you can't wave your hands and assume that if those weren't there that the conclusions would somehow be the same, or that those conclusions would still be reached.

The growth of knowledge is neither linear nor does it come without the process of making mistakes. Mistakes are part of the knowledge-building process. Being "more intelligent" doesn't mean those mistakes are necessarily going to be avoided, nor does it mean that there won't be mistakes of other types.

They seem simple because these are things that you already believe. It's not hard to convince someone that something is true if they already believe it. It reads like this: "Of course it's obvious this is what an intelligent being would conclude. Why? Because I believe it's true and certainly an intelligent being would conclude things I believe are true!"

It's nonsense.

I challenge you to find the last time I've mentioned "all my degrees" in this forum.

You're reaching out to the philosophical depth of what "intelligence" is and should be. Intelligent beings should behave like this. And if we weren't so dumb, that's what we would be like. You're aspiring to try to see further than all of us morons here trying to tell you the flaws of your thinking, because you're chasing ideas that are far beyond what we can do with our limited minds and limited philosophical perspective. And if only we were enlightened like you, we would agree with you because you know you're right about intelligence.

If you want a discussion, then have a discussion. Rather than insisting on your rightness all the time, actually discuss your assumptions and your claims. Defend them with meaningful observations. Take a look at both science and history for what they really are and not the delusional narratives you've turned them into.

Don't just sit around repeating your assumptions as if they're conclusions. When people who know more about something than you do tell you you've made a mistake, learn from those errors and make better statements.

You can call it trolling if you want. You can pretend like I've offered nothing and that you've added something. Adding fins and a racing stripe may win you a first prize ribbon, but it doesn't mean you've actually done something useful.

Why do you claim that there are a "small number of theories posited"? Once you understand that, you'll understand survivorship bias.

Great, I have to watch a movie and can at least expect a pair of nice lips. That totally wrong though? At some point what the eyes can see still contributes to what can be defined as like a boundary to trace with fingers.

A tough one. Maybe from reflexions. If he has a fast internal clock he could compare light bouncing off a mountain 30 kilometers away during sunrise for example. Then he needs to register 1:10,000th of a second. Not possible for a human, but let's say he registers this a thousand times, then the answer will be pending around the correct one. With repetition he can create kind of an "instrument" of himself.

He could use a similar technique for making his eyes telescopes. He could just add all the images he sees of the sky, gradually increasing the amount he has taken in. Even the faintest stars can evoke a blip on the retina now and then. He will not miss it, he collects them all. Our telescopes does this with large light collecting areas, he would do it by repetition.

Please address subatomic particles which have been brought up from beginning without satisfactory response, but just feverish hand waving. I'm eager for your explanation how he distinguishes up, down, top, bottom, strange, and charmed quarks, or that there is a difference between a tau neutrino and muon neutrino. You do realize, I should hope, that a single counter example is sufficient to refute the OP's claim of rediscovering "all of physics". Speed of light is indeed a tough one, as you say, but is utterly trivial compared to recreating the standard model.

There's a good reason humans built the 7000-ton detector below. And it isn't just because they are dumb.



I'm curious how our creature with human senses and pad of paper makes such an instrument of himself, as you say.

It looks OP kind of corrected his claim to something like "all of pre 20th century physics and a good chunk of quantum mechanics", even if he hasn't explicitly corrected the original claim.

There may of course be a possibility that extremely much raw processing power combined with handling cleverly every bit of information the senses produce could lead to a general picture of how things work even on sub sub atomic levels, but I don't have a suggestion right now how that could happen. This may be the point when the Intelligence could find himself on the wrong path.

Oh, so the claim has been walked back to recreating experiments from rudimentary apparatus before the age of electricity as a power source. And even that appears debatable. Yet you, Masque, and Tooth instinctively dismissed initial objections to the claim of "all of physics" as not well thought out.

Got it, thanks.

It was more of trying to see how far this idea can carry. I think a lot further than maybe instantly obvious.

And even getting Newton before lunch was questioned, the final answer is out there somewhere.

Dismissing initial arguments related to modern physics might be, though.

If you want to put quarks into this list:
Then by all means do. This thread is about exploration of what we can do, not "you have no proof that the hardest aspect x is probable therefore the whole thing is stupid". I've learned things from this thread. Other people have too. Which was the point. It doesn't kill you to think in a different way for a while.

My instinct say it's highly probable that:

1. The world would be different at an observable level with differences in the underlying laws; apart from the fact that a large variety of complex phenomena that happen on Earth depend on these laws in ways even mere human intelligence can notice, cosmic events which depend on the basic nature of matter for their frequency and outcomes have imprinted themselves on Earth over billions of years. And you can derive as much from absence as presence; maybe more. For example, the fact that life hasn't been irradiated away in the time it took to evolve tells you a huge amount about the various bounds of possibility and the various probabilities that we have no clue how to data fit (despite its relative simplicity), but a competent modeller could.

2. That a greater intelligence will see patterns and connections that we miss (just like going up each level from dog -> genius human with the same senses shows a quite amazing deepening and broadening of understanding, connections and logical derivations from what's observed purely through increased intelligence). There is no particular reason to think that a genius human is the top of that pile, and excellent reasons to think they aren't. Example: tiny working memory, slow processing rate of concepts (maybe a couple a second?), imprecision coming from messy biology (the all-purpose cell has been co-opted to be a processing unit!), the fact that even within humans there's huge variation with no sign of "topping out" or leveling off at the heights.

I think #2 is basically unarguable - the only question is whether the jump up is a large degree or a very large degree. #1 is something I'm really interested in exploring more.
If you could answer that, you'd be smarter than anyone who ever lived.
Except this thread isn't about refuting my "claim". It's about exploration. I posited a strong position to get people to actually think about it, not because I think it can be proven (it obviously can't - the only proof is in the doing). Masque and plaaynde were smart enough to get that. Brian and Aaron, not so much...
I think the speed of light is so fundamental it could be quickly derived to a reasonable approximation. The permittivity of free space, for example, gets you there and can be easily measured and very likely inferred.

It partly is. A classic example of this is Feynman, who got a fantastic approximation of the yield of the first nuclear explosion by holding up some paper torn into confetti, and watching how it was affected by the shock wave. A number of far more complex detectors didn't do much better. A small example to be sure, but an intelligence can find other ways to skin a cat that we can't. Provided #1 is true.

Yes. Think about the entity picking up a stone and pose the question: How the **** did this evolve?

Yeah it's something everyone should see. The first time you see it, it feels like you're on a spaceship parked off the edge of a galaxy somewhere. I just stared for hours.

Once you see the Milky Way, you derive it very simply to high probability. From this starting point:

1. Gravity
2. Basic underlying laws governing all things in the universe
3. No privileged position of the observer

You get multiple galaxies to a high probability. The odds of there being only one are a tiny result sets out of all result sets, and the result you see (a gravity clumped star cluster) would be identical to what you'd see if there were more. I'd say you could derive it indirectly too from a large variety of things.

Even without that, the Magellanic clouds for example (both galaxies) are highly visible with the naked eye in the Southern hemisphere, I've stared at it many nights growing up there. This is what you see with the naked eye looking at the large and small Magellanic clouds, with a meteor going between them.

Check out human reason. Supposed to work along with human emotion. A sufficient intelligence to use human reason would have to be capable of some relation with human emotion or the qualification of human reason has a challenge.

So sufficient intelligence to understand human emotion enough to use human reason. I suppose that having an understanding of human emotions about physics maybe sufficient for at least role playing purposes.

By assuming your conclusion, we can conclude the things that we had intended to conclude. It's completely simple and can be done with high probability.

It's pointless talking to someone so daft. If you don't learn it in a book, it's not real for you. Creative thought is just completely absent.

Look, this is a microcosm of everything you don't get, and hence offer unreasoned criticisms when there are plenty of reasoned ones. I don't even know how to respond to the level of pure unreason you offer. So let me lay it out for you why this is a high probability base assumption:

Support for this proposition, purely from philosophy

1. The most basic mathematical/structural rules REQUIRE that manifested complexity is based on simpler, homogenous rules. Nearly all of math fits in this category. Indeed, this proposition forms the very basis for reason and prediction.

Could the universe be a vast, anything-goes system, in which our minds are simply fooled by faulty memories into thinking we're predicting it? Sure. But if you're going that far out, you really have no business discussing science.

2. Homogeneity and ergodicity are perhaps the simplest base assumptions, and probably true in a universe that reliably obeys rules and seems persistent and predictable on multiple levels, which an observer will quickly notice that it appears to be. It makes no sense to posit non-homogeneous, non ergodic rules at the first approximation or first attempt at modelling.

3. This is the path that human reason itself has taken as it's grown more sophisticated - the search for the simplest possible explanation for the broadest possible set of phenomena. Intelligence seeks simplicity - it seems to be an emergent property, at least in humans, that we somehow understand that a smaller modelling entity in order to best predict a larger data set than the modelling capability must create a simple set of rules and refine them. And an intelligence will be a superset of humans, so it'll have this property.

4. This path, once the modeller goes down it (and it's one of a small handful of basic philosophical starting positions, perhaps the most fundamental) will have far greater explanatory and predictive power than any other. Indeed, that's why humans have ended up here, and why materialism has largely overtaken other philosophies for mindshare - it's the the philosophy that produces the most reliable results in predicting what physical world will do, by a landslide.

If you don't grasp the above, perhaps you lack even a sliver of creative intelligence, or perhaps you have a fundamentally different take on philosophy. Either way I cannot understand why this is even controversial. Plenty of stuff I've said in here is controversial, but this particular aspect isn't at all, but if you don't agree with it (either because you see something I don't or because you lack basic mental clarity and first-principles understanding of the philosophy around science and reason - who knows?) - then I understand why this thread isn't for you. And if anyone else who actually has the ability to articulate their position wants to take a crack at telling me why the above is wrong, I'd be interested to hear it.