Are we quantum beings?

[HZY]

Relative to the length of time the universe has been around, and the “infinite” size that the universe has expanded into, we humans are, shall I dare to say, pretty “plancky”. By that I mean, shouldn't our existance, relative to the time and physical scale of the universe, be thought of as being quantum in nature? Like a firefly in the mid-summer night, a brief flash of a speck of light and it is gone. Yet imbedded in such “a brief flash of a speck of light” is consciousness, if you follow my drift. If such is so, how can we not interpret consciousness as being “plancky quantum” even though we are in it while we are still alive? So the question is, could quantum beings like you and I, so brief in existence yet so quick at vanishing, really be “being around long enough” to receive sufficient data, even if with a telescope and all its subsequent variations, to truly comprehend the Cosmos?

[Sy Borg]

It depends what you mean by "truly comprehend". The only things I truly comprehend are that which I experience directly. In truth, even the scale of the Earth is impossible for me to comprehend. The entire panorama of my visual range encompasses an area so relatively small as to be invisible from the ISS.

There is so much that we can't experience directly because we are fragile little beings so specialised to our existence scuttling around the surface of this huge spherical body in space. Almost every environment and condition in the universe would kill us immediately. Almost all of our information is second-hand or abstract.

However, if you are considering physical models that describe the conditions of the cosmos, I can imagine that we can persist for another billion years, what we don't comprehend would probably be exceptionally fundamental, chaotic or huge.

[Belinda]

HZY , I agree that it is impossible for transient creatures to know everything.

I am wondering if we shouldn't be asking "What is a human being?". I mean, if, and it's big 'if', human beings are partly defined by having cultures of knowledge that span many many generations despite natural disasters, wars, and genocides, then those human cultures will form ever greater stores of knowledge, and, while not knowing everything, humans will be very very knowledgeable indeed just as long as the accumulated knowledge from the vast stores can be retrieved.

[HZY]

HZY , I agree that it is impossible for transient creatures to know everything.

I am wondering if we shouldn't be asking "What is a human being?". I mean, if, and it's big 'if', human beings are partly defined by having cultures of knowledge that span many many generations despite natural disasters, wars, and genocides, then those human cultures will form ever greater stores of knowledge, and, while not knowing everything, humans will be very very knowledgeable indeed just as long as the accumulated knowledge from the vast stores can be retrieved.

What if the limit of knowledge retrieval per unit human entity is reached such that any additional intake can no longer be absorbed? What does that say about our capacity to fully comprehend the universe?

-- Updated March 14th, 2016, 10:21 pm to add the following --

...I can imagine that we can persist for another billion years, what we don't comprehend would probably be exceptionally fundamental, chaotic or huge.

Is comprehension limited by nature? Is there an upper bound? What will comprehension evolve into after "a billion years"? I wonder.

[Sy Borg]

What if the limit of knowledge retrieval per unit human entity is reached such that any additional intake can no longer be absorbed? What does that say about our capacity to fully comprehend the universe?

-- Updated March 14th, 2016, 10:21 pm to add the following --

Is comprehension limited by nature? Is there an upper bound? What will comprehension evolve into after "a billion years"? I wonder.

There will always be an upper bound. A computer powerful enough to calculate the precise nature of all relationships in reality would be large enough to form a planet with a superheated core (so much for the mechanisms at the physical centre!). It's physically impossible. Besides, we're inside so an outside perspective is impossible.

As for what we may evolve into, it depends on how you see the biosphere's trajectory. I think it important here not to consider the human journey in isolation; it is only the latest stage. What is different about the biosphere today as compared with a billion years ago as primitive eukaryotes were emerging? I see it as akin to the formation of the planets, which started as a relatively uniform and amorphous cloud and gradually clumped together, clearing space around it.

I can see this process continuing. Humans have done this to the rest of nature, and the process is also occurring within human society - the formation of dominant aggregations that 'clear their space" (ie. environment, the poor and, increasingly, the middle class). I see an increasing compression and integration of humanity. These insulated societies will demand a level of discipline, control and lack of privacy that would be as impossible for people today as our current level of discipline and control would be for early hominids.

Our descendants will surely be far less "wild" than us.

[Belinda]

HZY wrote:

What if the limit of knowledge retrieval per unit human entity is reached such that any additional intake can no longer be absorbed? What does that say about our capacity to fully comprehend the universe?

Knowledge arranged hierarchically is more economically stored?

[Renee]

It is a logical fallacy to reduce something to nothing where that something is not nothing and do it only in comparison of that something to something else which is infinitely bigger.

I say it is a fallacy, because you change the reference.

In order to make a valid assertion of comparison, it is ESSENTIAL that one not mix up the reference points.

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In my opinion you should look at this in a hierarchical way.

Nothing.

Something.

Infinite.

The stepwise largeness between these sizes is the same. But the stepwise difference ought not to make you think that one bigness melts into another kind when compared with something stepwise bigger (or smaller) on this scale.

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You should also consider, while we are at it, that infnity itself is hierarchical. Think of geometric shapes: a point, an infinitely long line, an infinitely large plane, an infinitely large space. Each (except the point) includes an infinite number of the previous (hierarchically smaller) thing of infinity.

An infinite line is not a point. Yet, according to the original proposal by the original poster, anything that is smaller than an infinity is a nothing. Yet here is shown that infinity is smaller than infinity (in case when you compare a line to a plane) and therefore not a point. Therefore a something (finite thing) should not be reduced to nothing even when compared to something infinite.

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Quo usque tandem abutere, Katalina, paciencia nostra?

[Belinda]

But, Renee, Euclidean entities are useful abstractions for measuring, they are not empirical knowledge.

[Renee]

But, Renee, Euclidean entities are useful abstractions for measuring, they are not empirical knowledge.

Belinda, conceptual abstractions are useful also for understanding reality.

What I ask you to do is to transfer the conceptual relationships between infinite and finite in Euclidean space to infinite and finite in the world of reality.

Think of a man as a segment of space. Think of space as infinite. Think of nothing as a point. Then try to transfer the concepts as in a simile or comparison or illustrative example.

If you need me to prove you how my explanation fits your original question, then we are stuck, because I can't provide a proof. Exactly because your question concerns stuff in the material, empirical world, and my answer concerns stuff in the abstract, a priori world. But there are lots of other similes and comparisons that man created and can conceptualize to help him understand the real, empirical world through concepts taken from the world of abstract, and this is one of them.

[Belinda]

Renee wrote:

Belinda, conceptual abstractions are useful also for understanding reality.

Yes, but only as analogies, metaphors. Empirical reality exists materially and also immaterially, but infinity exists in idea only.