What do you NOT know
Last time I proposed the question what do you know and I more or less got the same answer said in many ways. So, then, what is it that you think you can't really know or figure out. Perhaps the limits of the scientific method? Or else besides? Answer below.
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Since the board is on a bad physics kick, there are two things I currently most want to know that I can't figure out:
q-space assigns three separate dimensions to each electron, so an oxygen atom consists of 24 theoretical dimensions.
Electron orbits can be modeled as spinors.
Equations for the motion of an electron inside an atom imply that waves which travel fifteen thousand times faster might guide them.
What makes these statements simultaneously true?
The equation for the fine structure constant is a=ke^2/hc, apparently meaning that a (fine structure constant), h (Planck's constant) and c (the speed of light) are interchangeable in some sense. How?
For now I can't really know or figure out what's going to happen after I die. I have a real strong feeling about it, but I can't know for sure. And, even if I am right about my feeling, I don't know what that feeling will be.
Who cares what happens after we die? Makes no difference to us!
That was not the question. The question was: "So, then, what is it that you think you can't really know or figure out."
I answered that question.
But I can say in answer to your question: I care.
Whether it makes a difference to "us" is irrelevant. I don't check in with "us" before decided what I care about.
Good response, I care in a sense also, but the afterlife in particular, not so much of a subscriber. Maybe I'll actually wake up! lol
Could be. What I suspect will be the truth of it is something that I hope we can glean now, before death. I don't want to piss off the real physicists, but I think all the answers they seek will be forthcoming after death. I think if they continue on their current course, with a dollop of humility, and a revisit to what are probably some mistaken assumptions that form the foundation of their current thought, they might just pierce the veil. I hate to use the this term, but if they do so, they will look upon the face of god. I think, at that point, all creation will be saying "Welcome."
Now, the human in me would have all creation saying "No shit, Sherlock!" Or "What took you so long!" Or "If you had only listened!" Or "Roll eyes!" Or simply "Snicker." But I think all creation is happy with whatever, so a simple "Welcome" is more likely.
All those things I'll never know or come aware during my lifetime. Those things really exist.
Not the limits of the scientific method, but simple logic.
The Answers to Everything
On What ‘IS’
(Particles as the energy excitations of quantum fields)
An Eternal Basis has to be so,
For a lack of anything cannot sow,
Forcing there to be something permanent,
As partless, from which composites can grow.
There can’t be other directions given,
To that which no start; it is undriven;
So, it is as Everything possible,
Either as linear or as all at once.
Consider quantum fields of waves atop
One another: waves are continuous,
And so qualifiy as Fundamental;
Quantized lumps make ‘particles’, then more.
The temp-forms last from unit charge or strength;
The Basis is coterminal with them,
But is not cosubstantial with the ‘things’;
The information content is the same as Null!
Note that there is no other absolute:
Newton’s fixed space and time got Einstein’s boot;
Particle spigots making fields went mute;
Classic fields had no fundamental loot.
… proposed …
There are no ‘if nots’ for happened events;
That would be a fantasy world but meant
For simulations and playing mind games—
No use entertaining real replacements.
On Consciousness
What the meaning to this play we’re befit,
From dirt to dust within the script that’s writ?
The wise in search have thrown themselves to waste;
Experience alone is the benefit.
Physics describes but the extrinsic causes,
While consciousness exists just for itself,
As the intrinsic, compositional,
Informational, whole, and exclusive—
As the distinctions toward survival,
Though causing nothing except in itself,
As in ne’er doing but only as being,
Leaving intelligence for the doing.
The posterior cortex holds correlates,
For this is the only brain region that
Can’t be removed for one to still retain
Consciousness, it having feedback in it;
Thusly, it forms an irreducible Whole,
And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
A process fundamental in nature,
Or’s the brain’s private symbolic language.
The Whole can also be well spoken of
To communicate with others, as well as
Globally informing other brain states,
For nonconscious parts know not what’s being made.
…
Oh, those imaginings of what can’t be!”
Such as Nought, Stillness, and Infinity,
As well as Apart, Beginning, and End,
Originality, Free Will, and He.
I don't know just about everything. It might make more sense to ask what I need to know. I'm at an age when I don't really need to know anything more than I already do. If that's so, maybe the right question is what I want to know. I'm really curious, but curiosity isn't really about knowing anything, it's about finding out stuff. It's the process, not the endpoint. So, I want to find stuff out. Anything. Everything.
Looking at it another way, I've come to think that the most important aspect of my intellectual and spiritual life right now is awareness, becoming more aware. Is that the same as knowledge? Becoming more aware of; seeing, feeling, and experiencing; what's going on in my body, my mind, and physical and social reality.
The question, "what do you NOT know?" is surprisingly easy to answer, at least for someone like me whose ignorance exceeds faer knowledge. For instance, I don't know what real analysis, a branch of math, is. I suppose everyone is a similar situation with regard to some subject or another. If not and there's someone who knows everything, we have on our hands a person who could very well be god, in the sense of being omniscient.
What piques my interest is not so much what we don't know but what we can't know.
As I warned you from the beginning my response will probably be an anticlimax. Here goes...
Definition of knowledge (that which can be known)
1. Justified [Agrippa's trilemma]
2. True [Falsehood/lies]
3. Belief [False belief]
I have included in square brackets against each condition for what knowledge (what can be known) the circumstances in which we fail to satisfy the definition of knowledge. We can't know what is posited sans justification but the bigger problem is Agrippa's trilemma; we can't know falsehoods or lies and this seems to be linked to the last condition, failure to meet it to be precise, which is that believing something doesn't make it true and so, can't be knowledge i.e. in this case too, as in the others outlined above, we can't know!
What's more fascinating and more problematic I suppose is the question, "is there a proposition that's true, justifiable, and believable but unknowable?" Though syntactically error-free, at my level of linguistic skill, the question seems semantically nonsensical (excuse the tautology) All I can say is, I'm at the frontier of what I know.