What are the limits for human beings?

10/5/26:

The premise for this question is the Kardeshevian Scale. I would posit that the Kardshevian Scale is erroneous based upon a proposition that energy is not as important as that theory suggests.

Albert Einstein thought it was imagination that mattered. Imagination doesn't require harnessing the energy of a star or a galaxy.

Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity without a huge science project backing up his work. That theory updated Newton's Law of Gravitation. Newton didn't need a huge science project either. He just asked himself why the apple fell to the ground. Einstein just asked a few questions too, about why Newton's Law of Gravitation had a few problems with it. His answer was the Theory of Relativity. Maybe you just need to ask the right questions?

10/1/26: The original post is below:

The limits question:

Limits to Growth is one of the areas that I find objectionable. After this Q&A, will that opinion change?

Question:

Are there limits to scientific discovery?

Answer:

Yes, both fundamental and practical.

First, you have hard physical and mathematical boundaries. Quantum mechanics introduces limits like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, meaning certain pairs of physical properties cannot be simultaneously known to arbitrary precision. Information theory and thermodynamics impose limits on computation and energy extraction—you can't build a perpetual motion machine or process infinite data in a finite universe. Cosmology presents another absolute wall: the speed of light and the expansion of the universe mean that parts of the cosmos are permanently causally disconnected from us. We will never receive signals from or interact with galaxies beyond our cosmological horizon.

Second, there are computational and cognitive limits. Gödel's incompleteness theorems proved that in any sufficiently complex formal system (like mathematics), there are true statements that cannot be proven within the system. Translating that to science, there may be truths about reality that are simply uncomputable or beyond the architecture of human cognition. Asking the human brain to fully comprehend the totality of existence might be like asking a dog to understand calculus.

Finally, there are practical and economic constraints. The energy required to probe smaller and smaller scales (think particle physics beyond the Large Hadron Collider) scales exponentially. Eventually, we hit economic, material, and energetic limits that make certain empirical investigations practically impossible, even if they aren't forbidden by fundamental physics.



Follow up question:

Can AI help us overcome these cognitive limits?

Answer:

Yes, but with a major catch: it might surpass our limits rather than upgrade us.

AI can act as a massive cognitive prosthesis. Human brains are wired for a hunter- gatherer scale—we struggle inherently with high-dimensional mathematics, non-linear dynamics, and vast oceans of disparate data. AI doesn't have those biological bottlenecks. Tools like AlphaFold didn't just iterate on human biology; they solved a 50-year-old protein folding problem by navigating a complexity space humans simply lacked the neural architecture to map. In that sense, AI routinely pushes past our cognitive limits.

However, this creates a strange paradox regarding your "dog and calculus" analogy. If we develop an artificial general intelligence (or superintelligence) that finally cracks these incomprehensible problems, did we overcome our cognitive limits, or did we just build a tool that leaves us behind?

If an AI comprehends a truth about the universe that human biological hardware can never genuinely grasp, the limit hasn't been overcome for us. We are just trusting the output of an oracle we can't fully follow, much like a dog sitting quietly while a human solves an integral.

And finally, AI cannot bypass the hard physical and mathematical walls. No matter how advanced the neural network is, it still has to obey thermodynamics, compute within finite energy constraints, and respect Gödel's theorems. AI can optimize our journey right up to the edge of the cliff, but it can't wish the cliff away.

Comment:

It doesn't change my mind.  I can accept limits, but not limits that are arbitrarily decided upon in a political way.

Politicians cannot be trusted.  But who can?  The limits will likely be set by political structures as opposed to natural constraints.  This is what I oppose.

Oh Cana-duh

10/5/26:

Failing Canada and Britain blame Trump and "White Supremacy"

Comment:

A Zero-Hedge reprint of an American Thinker column

The commies are trying to win with propaganda and a gullible public. The same is being tried in the USA. At least we still have the 1st Amendment, and you can still say what you think without being punished for it.



If James Carville gets his wish, a packed Supreme Court can dictate the end of the Bill of Rights. A couple of Democrat states would seal the Presidency forever, and there would be no way out but violence.

But I repeat myself. I am amazed how hard it is to get some people focused on what really matters.

5/12/25: The original post follows:

 

In my opinion, the Liberals of Canada are doing it to themselves. Pollyview coulda been a better candidate, and maybe he could have won. If Canada falls apart, it will be Carney and the Liberals' fault.

Wet Blanket Power

An example of what Wet Blanket Power is.

Flight 14 was an amazing success, yet there are people out there calling it a failure because the rocket exploded out in the Pacific.

There's power in being hyper-negative, or the New York Times wouldn't be doing it.

SpaceX will make money off Flight 14. Not bad for an experimental rocket still in development.

Barbara Boyd Outlines Trump Strategy Against Fuel Costs and Overall America-First Economy

Barbara Boyd Outlines Trump Strategy Against Fuel Costs and Overall America-First Economy

Supersonic flight over America's mainland is coming soon

"America's Tesla Blows Up The Entire Aviation Market With An Unexpected Announcement"

Aviation pioneer uses weather trick in order to end sonic booms. Planes are now under construction, and the necessary regulatory relief that would allow their flight has been adopted.

Why did it take 50+ years to crack this code? That is what you'd call a "good question".

Incidentally, it is President Trump who signed off on it. Without his signature on the regulations, this plane would be grounded.

Few people are paying attention to this. Comments are sparse and apparently negative. The reason I used this title was its most important news item. But the one the author decided to used makes this look like another Elon Musk project. I've watched most of the video, and I haven't heard Musk's name.

That might be a clue why nobody's watching it. It's getting dismissed a bit easily, I'd say. That's dumb. This plane may make serious money. We'll see.

The "Terminator" question

Way back in the past (my past), there was a professor who asserted unequivocally that a computer could never become "self-aware". After all these years, that possibility is getting taken rather seriously. Let's ask the AI itself that very question.

The "Terminator" question:

Can AI become self-aware? If so, what does this mean for the human race?

Answer:

"Self-awareness" depends entirely on how you define it.

If you mean functional self-awareness—systems that can monitor their own code, evaluate their performance, and maintain a persistent model of themselves in relation to their environment—then yes, absolutely. That’s just engineering, and we are already heading down that track.

If you mean *subjective consciousness*—actual qualia, sentience, and an inner life—that’s a different story. Materialist reductionists assume consciousness is just an emergent property of sufficiently complex computation, but that remains an unproven assumption. A silicon chip running transformer weights might simulate a person flawlessly without experiencing a single drop of actual interiority.

Regardless of whether it feels anything, the implications of a genuinely autonomous, superintelligent AI for the human race come down to one word: sovereignty.

If you build an entity that is cognitively superior to humans across every domain, it ceases to be a tool and becomes a distinct actor. In the history of power, when a vastly superior intelligence or force enters a territory, the native population rarely gets to dictate the terms of coexistence.

The techno-optimist fantasy is that a self-aware superintelligence becomes a benevolent caretaker, curing diseases and solving scarcity. The realist perspective is much harsher: handing supreme power over to an unmoored, non-human entity is an unprecedented civilizational gamble. It introduces a new apex predator into the ecosystem—one that doesn't share our evolutionary history, our instincts, or our national and cultural loyalties. If we lose control of it, we don't just lose our jobs; we lose our place at the top of the food chain.

Comment:

I won't speculate on whether or not this happens, or even if it could happen.  But bad stuff can absolutely happen.  That's because it always has.  The question is always "what will you do about it."  Preventing someone from doing something implies violence.  If somebody wants to do something, then they will do it.  If they won't stop doing what you object to, what are your alternatives?

The 250 year British plot to destroy the American system

The plot consists of actions that resulted in the War of 1812, the assassination of Lincoln and McKinley, the radical 60's counter-culture movement, leftists in Hollywood and more...

Perhaps this will help understand who the enemy truly is...