Is Omniscience feasible?

Teralek
Teralek's picture
Posts: 620
Joined: 2010-07-15
User is offlineOffline
Is Omniscience feasible?

Is it possible that a sufficient advanced technological civilization attains omniscience? (e.g. technological singularity)

Is it possible for them to know the future?

Let's say: Is it possible that they can accurately describe what person X is going to be doing at 12:45 the day after?


Teralek
Teralek's picture
Posts: 620
Joined: 2010-07-15
User is offlineOffline
digitalbeachbum wrote:I can

digitalbeachbum wrote:

I can understand your point of view. You believe that if you are presented with, let us say, four options for dinner that you can pick either Chinese, Italian, American or Greek randomly and with out cause. You are in control.

I say that your choice of, let us say, Chinese, was already 100% and wasn't an option for you. It was laying in wait for you to come along and say, "I want Chinese tonight". You are only an observer of life and you are not in control.

Well not really... They can be randomly chosen but I think they always need a cause. Let's sat I choose Italian instead of Chinese, but I do that just to annoy you. Or let's say I'm tired of eating chinese and choose greek, the cause of this choice is that greek is going to give me more pleasure than chinese. However I can still choose chinese despite my motivations for any reason. All choices have reasons and causes, the decision over which you will support your cause is your free will.

It is common in life to have to make decisions over different motivators. The future is open. There is no fixed set of outcomes.


Vastet
atheistBloggerSuperfan
Vastet's picture
Posts: 13254
Joined: 2006-12-25
User is offlineOffline
To have omniscience, you

To have omniscience, you would have to know the location of, trajectory of, and velocity of every partical that exists. Accomplishing this task would require more energy and mass than can exist in the universe. Even if you add mass and energy, you are simply adding more particals you have to keep track of.

So even if you ignore the experiments that show you can never know the trajectory, velocity, and location of a partical simultaneously; you still will never attain omniscience because you cannot simultaneously observe everything.

Omniscience is truly impossible.

Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.


digitalbeachbum
atheistRational VIP!
digitalbeachbum's picture
Posts: 4895
Joined: 2007-10-15
User is offlineOffline
Teralek

Teralek wrote:

digitalbeachbum wrote:

I can understand your point of view. You believe that if you are presented with, let us say, four options for dinner that you can pick either Chinese, Italian, American or Greek randomly and with out cause. You are in control.

I say that your choice of, let us say, Chinese, was already 100% and wasn't an option for you. It was laying in wait for you to come along and say, "I want Chinese tonight". You are only an observer of life and you are not in control.

Well not really... They can be randomly chosen but I think they always need a cause. Let's sat I choose Italian instead of Chinese, but I do that just to annoy you. Or let's say I'm tired of eating chinese and choose greek, the cause of this choice is that greek is going to give me more pleasure than chinese. However I can still choose chinese despite my motivations for any reason. All choices have reasons and causes, the decision over which you will support your cause is your free will.

It is common in life to have to make decisions over different motivators. The future is open. There is no fixed set of outcomes.

We each have our opinions. No need to reply. I won't be reading it.


ProzacDeathWish
atheist
ProzacDeathWish's picture
Posts: 4149
Joined: 2007-12-02
User is offlineOffline
digitalbeachbum wrote:We

digitalbeachbum wrote:

We each have our opinions. No need to reply. I won't be reading it.

                               Well then, that's your choice.