“Within Any Possible Universe, No Intellect Can Ever Know It All”

David H. Wolpert, of the NASA Ames Research Center, argues that no entity within any possible universe can know everything about that universe.

Within Any Possible Universe, No Intellect Can Ever Know It All - Scientific American.

” . . . the universe lies beyond the grasp of any intellect, no matter how powerful, that could exist within the universe. Specifically, during the past two years, he has been refining a proof that no matter what laws of physics govern a universe, there are inevitably facts about the universe that its inhabitants cannot learn by experiment or predict with a computation. Philippe M. Binder, a physicist at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, suggests that the theory implies researchers seeking unified laws cannot hope for anything better than a ‘theory of almost everything.’”

Basically one cannot measure, test or predict something with absolute precision if one is part of what is being measured, tested or predicted.

If you wish to delve deeper into Wolpert’s work on this topic, his paper relating to the above article can be found here (PDF). Thanks to Carey Allen, who commented on the above article at Scientific American, for providing the reference to the paper.

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