Innocent until proven guilty?

[notachance]

When trying to decide if somebody is innocent or guilty of a crime, we can either assume that he's guilty until proven innocent, or innocent until proven guilty.

Which do you think makes more sense?

When trying to decide if an event is natural or supernatural, we can either assume it's supernatural until proven natural, or assume that it's natural until proven supernatural.

Which do you think makes more sense?

For example if we see a magic show, should we assume the guy is doing real magic until proven it's just trick, or should we assume it's just a trick until proven it's real magic?

If we see a guy turn water into wine, should we assume it's real magic until proven it's just a trick, or should we assume it's just a trick until proven it's real magic?

[bro]

Well, it depends. We can't explain many things now, but we may be able in the future. There's a lot we don't know yet. For example, in areas like physics, linguistics and many others.

What's more, that something acts according to the laws of the universe might not imply we have the (physical or mental) capacity to understand it. It may simply escape our grasp. It's not a remote possibility, actually.

youre right. what cant be explained now will be explained in the future. i feel silly for forgetting to mention that. >.<

why do you say there are things we cannot grasp? i fully disagree. i believe that in time, the human race has the potential to know everything. because everything that there is to know is finite. it just takes time, correct experimentation, asking the right question and a bit of luck to get it right the first time. it all comes down to how you explain it. for example math. a 4th grader would normally NEVER understand advanced calculus. if you show it to him he might think its impossible to know. but through many years of slowly progressing and learning layer and layer of math, when he reaches calc, it will make sense. knowledge takes progress.

[Ragna]

youre right. what cant be explained now will be explained in the future. i feel silly for forgetting to mention that. >.<

Heh, do not, it's natural.

why do you say there are things we cannot grasp? i fully disagree. i believe that in time, the human race has the potential to know everything. because everything that there is to know is finite. it just takes time, correct experimentation, asking the right question and a bit of luck to get it right the first time. it all comes down to how you explain it. for example math. a 4th grader would normally NEVER understand advanced calculus. if you show it to him he might think its impossible to know. but through many years of slowly progressing and learning layer and layer of math, when he reaches calc, it will make sense. knowledge takes progress.

I haven't stated it with all security, but it seems a probable scenario. We don't know 100% how our intelligence works, but we know it has come from a lesser intelligence through evolution.

In this sense, there's a physical and mental limit to our epistemic abilities. Just like a cockroach cannot understand the Pythagorean theorem, there may be things we cannot understand. In this sense, I have to admit it's not falsifiable, because if there are such things, by definition we cannot know or wonder about them either (as far as I can imagine) - what makes it impossible to disprove, too.

In fact, you proposed a good analogy though in a different level. The progress in man's intelligence through age is comparable to that of species through evolution. Just like a baby cannot comprehend the Poincaré conjecture, our species may still be in a level of intelligence that cannot grasp certain aspects of reality. It's possible that we evolve to be more intelligent in the future and then we may understand more things; maybe some already-evolved aliens in far away places already do. I can hardly think of an absolute "limit" to intelligence, I think about it in a gradual way. The variation within humans (from the mentally retarded to gifted ones) may be a tiny point in the scale.

[bro]

im pretty sure we know how information is stored in our brains. i could be wrong though so pls correct if im wrong. also i see our brain as a computer. nothing more nothing less. just an organic one. that creates everything from our emotions to original thought.

we dont have to personally know anything. just how to get to it. there was a quote from einstein that said something to the effect of why bother memorizing it when you can look it up in a book.

but i see what you are saying. i might not be able to grasp a concept while my grandson will be able to eat it up.

still im sure we can both agree that knowledge is finite and that i see no reason we cant access all of it in time

[Ragna]

im pretty sure we know how information is stored in our brains. i could be wrong though so pls correct if im wrong. also i see our brain as a computer. nothing more nothing less. just an organic one. that creates everything from our emotions to original thought.

We're far from knowing how our brain performs many tasks, and aside from that there are a number of questions which involve philosophical (and not just scientific) discussion - i.e., the mere ontology of qualia, our very sensations.

we dont have to personally know anything. just how to get to it. there was a quote from einstein that said something to the effect of why bother memorizing it when you can look it up in a book.

but i see what you are saying. i might not be able to grasp a concept while my grandson will be able to eat it up.

Try to look at it this way. Following your direct line of ancestors you arrive at a point (millions of years in the past) when your ancestor was probably monkey-like. He could not understand a square root, it was just something about his nature and his limitations with that cranial capacity and mental abilities. But today you can. So our descendants in the long future may develop new evolutionary intelligent features that will allow them to perceive something about reality we couldn't before, or reach a higher level of abstraction.

still im sure we can both agree that knowledge is finite and that i see no reason we cant access all of it in time

Even if knowledge is finite, the problem is not so much quantitative (like you seem to imply) as it is qualitative. No matter what we do, we cannot breathe underwater with our current bodies - that's the way we are. The same goes for mental limitations. I know the struggle because nobody can imagine anything that he or she can't understand, but again, there are no octopuses arguing over Plato's dualism.

[bro]

Try to look at it this way. Following your direct line of ancestors you arrive at a point (millions of years in the past) when your ancestor was probably monkey-like. He could not understand a square root, it was just something about his nature and his limitations with that cranial capacity and mental abilities. But today you can. So our descendants in the long future may develop new evolutionary intelligent features that will allow them to perceive something about reality we couldn't before, or reach a higher level of abstraction.

really? you think so? because some amazing level of abstract thinking happened hmmm4 - 5 thousand years ago? people back then had the capability to understand, just like we did. no less. there was just less to know so they were not as knowledgeable. if your argument was true people like hammurabi, or aristotle would never be able to think up the things they did.

also how do you know a monkey cant get a square root? have you talked to one in its language? see thats a barrier.

how is there a different qualitative level of knowledge? ever. i challenge this claim. all knowledge is the same. just information about the world around us. and imagination is like evolution. you dont go from microbes to mammals in one step. the same way you imagine things small first. then keep modifying them untill you get a new object.

[Ragna]

really? you think so? because some amazing level of abstract thinking happened hmmm4 - 5 thousand years ago? people back then had the capability to understand, just like we did. no less. there was just less to know so they were not as knowledgeable. if your argument was true people like hammurabi, or aristotle would never be able to think up the things they did.

You're thinking in a scale that is just too small. Humans 4-5 thousand years ago were just humans, very similar to us, so what I'm referring to has little to do with them. Aristotle probably could have understood anything any modern intelligent person can, yes.

also how do you know a monkey cant get a square root? have you talked to one in its language? see thats a barrier.

I've seen several videos and read articles about modern primate intelligence, and numeracy was never highlighted. In fact I know about some modern tribes of human beings where they can't count (they're still hunter-gatherers; though this is an entire different thing).

But I'm not talking about this, I'm talking about your ancestors very long ago. If you have doubts about monkeys, go back to when they were still reptilian in the mesozoic. I'm positive those had no advanced mathematical skills (birds have gotten as far as understanding zero, and that was an exception). In any case, you cannot deny a difference in capacities and that there are things that simply scape their grasp.

how is there a different qualitative level of knowledge? ever. i challenge this claim. all knowledge is the same. just information about the world around us.

Hm, this is not what I'm saying. Of course knowledge is the same for everyone, from the dumbest to the cleverest. If a dumb person has the solution to the Rubik's cube, it's still knowledge he possesses, identical other people who know how to do this.

I'm instead talking about intelligence. In a big scale, I guess gradual and maybe (in structure) quantitative changes produced the evolution of intelligence from non-human to human intelligence. But in any case, our mental abilities remain finite. So the quality of a bird's intelligence is a segment in the scale of intelligence, and just like we can't see infra-red and ultra-violet, we may not be able to understand concepts beyond our current development of intelligence. If you think we're in the "summit of intelligence" and that our brains have achieved a "perfect level", please provide reasons for this because I can't see any. That we're the highest among all animals doesn't mean we're the highest possible - just like having something warm and something hot doesn't make the warm thing cold (in any case, it's "colder").

and imagination is like evolution. you dont go from microbes to mammals in one step. the same way you imagine things small first. then keep modifying them untill you get a new object.

Our current type of intelligence has some definite characteristics different from other animals' intelligence (because animals also have their own intelligences). The only thing I'm pointing out is that each instance of an intelligence in the past seems to have improved, so why couldn't ours? I see no reason to think we've reached a "top". At any given instant, there were always things beyond the current frontier.