Likely we don't even know the questions to ask of the cosmos

We all have questions. About all kinds of stuff. What's wrong with my computer? Who will win the next presidential election? Is that lump on my chest anything to be concerned about?

Almost always, our questions are presumed to have answers. Maybe not right now, but eventually. The winner of the 2024 presidential election will be known after the votes are counted, not before. Until then all we can do is wait.

And hope. That's when I turn a bit religious, even though I'm an atheist: Dear God, please don't let Donald Trump win a second term!

But the questions I find most interesting, especially after imbibing some Oregon marijuana courtesy of my beloved PAX vaporizer, are the ones that we humans are clueless about. Meaning, not only don't we know the answers, we don't even know the questions to which we lack the answers.

It'd be good if I could give some examples, but of course I can't. No one can.

Because what I'm talking about is a fundamental inability of us humans to grasp the Deep Unknown well enough to even fathom the basic contours of what we don't know.

This isn't just a difference in degree of, say, our inability to know what sperm whales are saying with their clicking sounds. That was the subject of a fascinating story in The New Yorker, "Talk to Me: Can artificial intelligence allow us to speak to another species?"

Most of us have heard of the famous philosophical/neuroscientific question, What is it like to be a bat? In this case, researchers trying to decipher the meaning of sperm whale clicks, which travel great distances through the water, are faced with the problem of how the whales look upon the world.

Surely very differently than we do.

But through artificial intelligence, it is hoped that with a large enough database of whale click patterns, known as codas, "it [AI] could then -- once again in theory -- generate sequences of codas that a sperm whale would find convincing. The model wouldn't understand sperm whale-ese, but it could, in a manner of speaking, speak it. Call it ClickGPT."

OK. That'd be way cool.

However, the story says that it's possible that nothing in our human experience matches up with some, or even all, of sperm whale experience. Researchers are hopeful this isn't true, but it might be.

And this relates to a fellow mammal on our very own planet. Imagine how much more difficult -- I'd say impossible -- it would be to grasp the fundamental questions of the cosmos, leaving aside the answers. This presumes, of course, that such questions exist.

I suspect that they do, though naturally I'm clueless about what the questions might be. The best I can do is gesture in the direction of where my intuition causes me to believe that such questions might be lurking.

What boggles my mind above all other boggles is the notion that something always has been, is now, and always will be. That sounds like a religious notion, but it really isn't. 

Sure, religious believers consider that God is the everlasting entity. However, as I've pointed out many times on this blog, and surely will do so many times in the future, saying that God always has existed brings us no closer to fathoming the boggle than saying the cosmos always has existed.

Actually, less close, since we know the cosmos, in the form of our universe, exists, while there's no convincing evidence that God does.

Regardless, it seems to me that we humans are very limited in our ability to comprehend eternal existence. We don't even know whether, when it comes to the cosmos, "eternal" means endless time or outside of time.

And for sure we don't know what even farther out questions about the cosmos could be asked if the human brain had a capacity to ask them. Again, I'm not assuming that the questions could be answered.

What I'm saying is that we humans, no matter how wise, intelligent, or enlightened we might be, lack the ability to come up with those questions because all we're capable of is fathoming queries that relate to our human experience -- which lacks any experience of existence having always existed.

Comments

[SantMat64]

There's a mystery even greater than that of the nature of the cosmos. It's a mystery that has boggled my mind for years now.

Donald Trump was President of the United States from 2016 to 2020. During those 4 years in office, what precisely did Mr. Trump do that warrants the terror you express about his possible re-election?

It's a serious question.

The agony over Trump began shortly before he was elected in 2016, and its fever hasn't abated even slightly since then.

It baffles me. Totally and completely. What precisely did Trump do that justifies the obsession some people have over him? I was around those 4 years, what did I miss?

If you object to the word "obsession," I have to wonder how. People obsessed over Trump can start talking about any one thing, but it all somehow quickly leads back to Trump. Discussions over toothpaste quickly and inexplicably turn to Trump. Who will win the World Series? Home runs, batting averages...Trump! And here, somehow a post about the limits of the human mind and the nature and mind of the universe invokes...Trump.

It could be that the Trump tic is quite revealing about the nature of the human mind. That is, we care far more about personalities than about genuine cosmic matters, or anything else for that matter.

That's why we obsess over political characters, as well as spiritual characters. We love some gurus but curiously hate other gurus who are carbon copies of the ones we revere. We can claim our devotion and animus are based on lofty principles. Doesn't look that way to me.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Brian
You wrote
"What boggles my mind above all other boggles is the notion that something always has been, is now, and always will be."

Consider the numbers between zero and one.

They are infinite.

Yet they are an entirely different set of numbers than the infinite set between 1 and 2.

Eternal is easier to understand if you think of slipping outside of time. Or, existing outside of time. That space is eternal and never changes, can't be corrupted, is never born and never dies only because it doesn't exist within time.

When you experience a moment of timelessness, eternal is all there is.

When you experience time here, and you can recall that experience of being outside time, you understand both as distinct qualities of the same reality. Qualities of your own personal experience. Which is the only experience one can ever know.

[Solomon]

Hi Brian

This is a very interesting video from Deepak Chopra with a great title:

Spoiler Alert: God Did Not Create the Universe

https://youtu.be/ZDPGnZRo0hQ?si=J9Xke2PihNCE0UA8

Maybe you could do an article with your thoughts on the subject that Chopra has discussed. Thank you.

[777]

As every Soul ( not only humans )
is God entirely, not a drop but entirely,
S/He knows all questions and answers

I find it 9¨9999999 IQ to fill eternity with the present voluntary
dumb situation
I guess SHE has endless other methods

The hidden secret is Love (compassion) not Science

[7]

It is n old book 'Set Speaks"

In the middle Seth explains about the astral world
where so many old earth religions still flourish
These defunds don't give up

Instead of pointing their energy UP wards
ex Nasa engineers try to contact earth with moderate successes
sais the Pentagon when they describe the ufos nagging US pilots
I believe there is also a lot of High IQ Cyborgs, left overs from
older civilisations

7

[Spence Tepper]

How paradoxical that so much is beyond prediction.

I think God must live the very mystery S/He/They created, which they so love.

We take comfort thinking all is known and complete and we are in good hands.

But I can't help thinking that living with us, with amazing surprises, disappointments and victories hard earned, and discovery, always new discovery, is God's passion. It is certainly the noblest addiction: the mystery, and the discovery.

[E]

I think we need to delve deeper into what is meant by the term “God”.

“God” isn’t a separate entity making decisions and determining the outcome of events for humans.

“God” is ALL of life—a collective appreciation that we are all connected.

I guess it’s almost easier to understand the true nature of God if you think of the word as a state of being—“God” is the collective state of consciousness on a quantum level where we ALL coexist harmoniously.

[Puddin]

Well it sounds like you do some of your better thinking when imbibing the peace pipe.

Or to the question of what are odds that we are only higher life from alone in the universe?

Or how did organic and cellular life begin - I don’t think the training data sets for AI have anything remotely close though so all mere speculation.

I don’t think we know how truly ignorant we are. I think we think there may only be small gaps in our knowledge - but I think they are huge.