Infinite Gap - 'the paradox of learning'

I discuss the paradox of learning more and yet knowing less. That, however a segue, to learning more and understanding more. A human biology example. And an AI afterthought, for good measure:

NOTE TO READER: I am no scientist and am speaking only proximately and directionally. Which is not to erode the argument proper. The argument stands!

Fifty (say) years ago we were closer to incubating life synthetically than we in fact are today. How come, considering the advent of time, the progress in synthetic biology and genetic engineering? We should, surely, get closer to solutions over time, with ongoing research and ‘doing science’? I suggest, having considered this particularly biology quandary as well as our limited understanding of brain function, that it is perhaps 'getting closer to problems' that we should restate the goal as. To grow understanding, in other words - that’s perhaps a better mission.?Albert Einstein is noted as saying, "if I only had only one hour to save the world, I would spend spend 55-minutes defining the problem and only 5 minutes finding the solution".

Back to our apparent regress. A fake regress more accurately in that the presumption of innovation was made in the absence of complete information. It turns out that our scientific progress, has in fact revealed the cell, the human genome to be a lot more complex, and indeed marvellous, in relation original conceptions, those 50 (say) years ago e.g. the intricate networks of regulatory molecules that control gene expression. And it is that newfound complexity (newfound but only discovered, for the complexity was always there) that pushes the timeline and possibility of a synthetic life form even further out. Scientists are stopping to ponder if creating life synthetically is even at all possible. Scientists at the time could only interpret that which they could in fact see. What they could not see was assumed to not be there and therefore the error in the extrapolation. And what they could in fact see was barely close to the truth of the matter. G.K. Chesterton was hugely prescient: "It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem". We require both modesty and forethought - to know that there may be more than meets the eye. Naval Ravikant - a clever man - predicts another ‘50 years of Moore’s Law before we can simulate what’s going on inside a cell, near perfectly, and probably 100 years before we can build a brain that can simulate inside the cells’. I think that timeline will reveal even more how remarkable the cell in fact is i.e. how much more complex the problem is than that even conceived today, pushing Naval’s conjecture out even further. His allusion to Moore's Law 'years' suggesting a degree of caution and apprehension, I think. Sounds increasingly like an 'expanding universe', where cosmologists are constantly looking at an horizon increasingly running away from them at the speed of light. Only this time at the micro-level.?'If nothing else both areas of study (cosmology and biology) highlight the vastness and complexity of the natural world, and yet much to discover and understand about the universe and the living organisms that inhabit it.' (ref. ChatGPT for that articulation). Naivety and reductionism and simple mindedness has its part to play in people getting stuff done. The great filmmaker Orson Welles described 'ignorance as the greatest authority'. But in this instance it's not setting up a drop-shipping store on some marketplace or even making a movie where science may be ignored largely speaking.

Our gain in knowledge puts into perspective how obtuse (a cocktail of pride, ego and arrogance) and how misplaced we were; how ‘narrow’ we were in our understanding those 50 years ago. Recent gains in knowledge having only revealed further gaps in our knowledge base as opposed drawing us closer to a solution. Indeed, as James M. Tour puts it, “origin-of-life research is like moving down a football field in nanometer increments while the goalposts are racing away.” Whilst the ‘knowledge’ gap increases it is my hope that our ‘understanding’ yet increases. Socrates said, “I know that I know nothing”. Quite the paradox - perfectly sensible and yet empowering.?

So learning is sometimes a rabbit hole - but a segue to learning more. And all-in if that helps you wise-up, incorporating for any temporary feelings of vulnerability, that can only be a good thing. That’s empowering.

As we attempt to achieve the singularity, AGI (artificial general intelligence) and now SAP (super artificial intelligence) supposedly, we may just find much the same with the mind and consciousness - over and above the small matter of the brain. In 2017 American neuroscientist Christopher Koch, surmised that we know less than 10% of what the brain does. And less than 10% is tantamount to saying anything between 0% and 10%, in real terms. Tantamount to saying that we know almost nothing in relation what we want to know. Pattern recognition, the basis of current AI is what we have managed so far. If I were to attempt some crude interpolation to brain function I would suggest only a 'narrow' portion of brain function as having been solved in computers simulating pattern recognition. That’s skirting at the edges, if we are attempting to arrogate human sentience. To quote Naval again: “We’ve never even modelled an amoeba”. Thought on the other hand? by extension creativity? That’s something else, altogether. I don’t see how we hack the 90% + of composite unknown, unknowns and known, unknowns to arrive at ‘computer’ sapience. Science does leap, but it mostly iterates.

And suddenly Ray Kurzweil’s 2038 prediction for the singularity gets pushed out to 2308. But that’s okay. We’ll just realise that we don’t know. And that will just keep us hungry, engaged and ambitious. It’s called failing. Our optimism will compel us forward. But failing recommits us to learning. Well, either that, giving up or hustling. And hustling for me is in the 'tolerating-things-as-they-are' category and making the most of an already structured society or rule set. Today it’s all a bit arrogant. Our ambitions I mean. There’s nothing like time and knowledge to tamp that down and bring us back to earth. In fact to the building blocks of our design - our image and our likeness. Chesterton noted “There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place ...”. I fear that we are by nature consigned to the latter. We're pioneers. And that's okay, so long we are willing to course correct as we traverse the universe. That we are uncomfortable like Socrates in saying that 'I know that I know nothing'. That such discomfort pushes unto into higher understandings of ourselves and the world we inhabit. It's a temporary state along a continuum. Foolishness on the other is fixed state.