/r/ - miscellaneous

The world has lots of complexity. For a thing to be able to take in or host a certain amount of complexity, it has to be more complex. Should they have the same complexity, they would either be identical (you can't put one bottle into another if they are the same), or of a different shape (incompatible). Complexity can be quantitative (a set of 10000 words that fit only one pattern) or qualitative (one clever rule that generates the same 10000 words, no more, no less) - these two being equivalent. Or you could have a mixture: 20 rules that generate either the one clever rule or the 10000 words - they are equivalent after all.

The world seems to be completely, purely quantitative: every little bit of it is just there, just the way it is. There is no need for rules and laws to connect the dots, because every possibility and moment for all time is already rendered. Or does it seem qualitative? There is only one great thing from which all other things, truths, laws and ideas come from, be it an axiom, a god, chaos, or some funky stuff like energy or love or lain. Let us not forget that these two extremes are one and the same thing: the entire world.

We humans have an impure, mixed view on the world. We have some of the details and some of the rules, but neither is pure. We don't really know any precise factual details, and neither do we know any universal truths. We have understood over time that neither can really replace the other for us: you can have lots of data and facts, they are worthless if you can't connect them and think for yourself; and you can be a genius with an IQ of 150, it's wasted if you are in a psychosis and out of touch with reality. The closest we can get to "quantitative reality" is data. The closest we can get to "qualitative reality" is intelligence.

Data is dumb as fuck, just idly sits there. We hoard it, mine it, make experiments, record history and weather and events. Intelligence under the right circumstances can produce data, but you need to get lucky. The more pure the intelligence, the less it is concerned with banal things like survival - just like patterns aren't really there (only perceived) intelligence almost wants to be nowhere. Interesting hoards of data seem to entice intelligence through curiosity. We try to balance the two, and sometimes get the impression that one or the other is the superior way to go.

Regardless of which impression we hold, we will never have complete understanding or knowledge of the world. A 4GB chip of RAM can't contain itself, it would need several atoms to store the type and location of just one. A brain also can't hold every precise detail about itself, especially that it's already close to full with stuff like music, pictures, how to breathe, when to smile to strangers, how to use the command line, etc. If this brain is more intelligent than a RAM chip, it also is more complex and thus need more complexity to be stored. It is neither perfect in storing data nor seeing patterns, yet this is all we have. Perhaps 7 billion brains can somehow manage to understand one, but then how many are needed to understand all 7 billion? Humanity and civilization is a small subset of the world. Suppose that the complexity of the world is 1025 at the moment, of which humanity is 5. What happens if humanity becomes more complex? Do we assimilate or create complexity? The numbers would either change to 1025:10 or 1030:10. Either way, we will never be more complex than the world we live in. We cannot contain the world inside of us, it is the world that contains us inside of itself.

As such, science will never really end. Data will keep breaking theories, and even if we find a theory that no data can break, we can rest assured it's us who suck at finding enough data.

Rational thinking is intelligence filtered according to a set of goals. There are infinite combinations of goals to filter intelligence with (into a false dichotomy of rational and irrational ideas), but only one intelligence. Something that is completely rational for the drug dealer might be insane for the athlete or the crypto-researching mathematician. These rational "viewpoints" have no implication on how complex (=intelligent) the dealer's plan is. All it affects is your expectations of success towards your specific goals - based on some crude understanding and a little experience, it's just a little above an educated guess. Rational thinking will always lag behind intelligence in its capability to grasp complexity - a price it pays for narrowing its view to specific goals only.

Life is pointless. The point (idea) is lifeless. My witty rhymes make you speechless.