"It is not clear yet that intelligence has any long-term survival value''.
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curious people | curious events | curious juxtapositions | iconoclasts | ambiguity | whatever
Some people will be very disappointed if there is not an ultimate theory, that can be formulated as a finite number of principles. I used to belong to that camp, but I have changed my mind. (2002)
ReplyDeleteThe problems in physics are more difficult now than they were in the 20‘s and 30‘s. There is not the same hope of making rapid progress which there was in those days. Excitement is usually combined with the hope of making rapid progress, when any second rate student can do really first-rate work. But the easier fundamental problems have by now all been worked out. Those that are left are very difficult to work on, and one doesn't seem able to get the right basic ideas for handling them.
ReplyDeleteIt is quite possible that they will require wholly new ideas. In fact it's pretty certain they will; otherwise they would already have been thought up.
There certainly is a fairly well established concensus amongst scientists that global
ReplyDeletewarming is happening, and even a concensus as to its cause. However there is diverging opinion on consequences, particularly in the near future, that is, within our lifetime. The genie is now out of the bottle but what it will do is still largely speculative where there is little or no concensus. Conceivably our goose is cooked already regardless what we may or may not do, yet mankind blithely carries on like the emperor with no clothes, seemingly none the wiser. I´m reminded of a comment by theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking that ''It is not clear yet that intelligence has any long-term survival value''.