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Comment by gregfjohnson

Some of the great developments of th 20th century were proofs of limits, of what cannot be achieved even in principle: for example the incompleteness theorem and halting problem, and the uncertainty principle.

IMHO, there is an "abstraction boundary" that limits what humans can ever know even in principle. There are some phenomena that are inherently "unabstractable". We may know that a glass of water has a wave function, but we will never know the particular wave function of any glass of water ever.

The phenomena in our universe that we can "understand" are those that can be modeled, those for which abstractions can be created that will fit in our brains. There may well be phenomena in the universe (or elsewhere) that are not amenable to modeling in any way that is compatible with human cognitive machinery.

parent gregfjohnson 10 years ago

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