<div dir="auto"><div>What can we understand that's beyond the confines of our ability to understand what the equipment we were given? </div><div dir="auto">ilsa</div><div><br></div><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><font color="#ffffff"><font color="#ff0000">Ilsa Bartlett</font></font><div><font color="#ffffff"><font color="#ff0000"><font color="#3333ff">Institute for Rewiring the System</font></font></font><br><a href="http://ilsabartlett.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">http://ilsabartlett.wordpress.com</a><br></div><div><a href="http://www.google.com/profiles/ilsa.bartlett" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/profiles/ilsa.bartlett</a><br><a href="http://www.hotlux.com/angel.htm" target="_blank">www.hotlux.com/angel</a><br><br>"Don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person."<br>-John Coltrane</div></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 1:15 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
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<div>On 28/10/2025 19:01, Adrian Tymes wrote:<br>
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<pre><pre>On Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 11:08 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer"><extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org></a> wrote:
</pre><blockquote type="cite" style="color:#007cff"><pre>It's a shame, though. It would be nice to have a more orderly brain to
pick apart to see how they work, and to contrast with an equivalent
non-flying animal.
</pre></blockquote><pre>"If our brains were simple enough for us to understand, we would be
simple enough that we could not."</pre></pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well, that just sounds defeatist to me. It makes a nice little
pessimistic soundbite (if you like pessimism), but is there any
evidence that it's true? Or any logical argument for it?<br>
There are also nuances. For example, different interpretations of
"to understand".<br>
<br>
Maybe you are right, given "understand completely" (whatever that
actually means). <strike>Maybe</strike> definitely not, given
"understand enough to be useful/worth the attempt".<br>
<br>
We have, after all, discovered a lot about how brains work already.
Maybe not a lot in comparison to all there is to be discovered, but
more than enough to be useful, and I doubt if we have reached some
sort of limit on what we are capable of discovering and
understanding.<br>
<br>
And there's always AI assistance with this kind of research, which
greatly extends our reach, and adds more variations of "to
understand".<br>
<br>
On the whole, I think the statement is harmful, in that it tends to
discourage even trying.
<pre cols="72">--
Ben</pre>
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