Cloudscape

Perhaps, for all its irony, it is by resigning ourselves to the mystery of the universe that we may better understand it. We may find safety in delusions of being all-knowing, but it will bring us no answers. Only by in all humility bowing down to the enigmas of existence can we fully see them, and see that they are far greater than ourselves, far greater than we could ever see, even for one moment, with our limited minds.
Thus the mind dissolves in the infinity of possibilities, and it comes to see that no matter what we will ever know, there are still infinitely many possibilities of how that which we know could be explained. That can be a frightening awareness, and so most people have fled from it into the safety of their certainty. But though it may cause many doubts, those doubts will in turn raise questions which will lead to insights; perhaps not always truthful insights, but insights nonetheless.
Still, when one has reached such state, one can be faced with doubts which at times can be tormenting; but through those torments, one becomes detached from opinions.
Still, uncertainty remains, as one then sees that one cannot know what will happen to oneself or the universe; one can deal with those doubts by not seeking truth in one's thoughts, but rather beauty; for the beauty of thought lies in its logic, and so the more logical it is, the more beautiful. For beauty lies in connections, and so does logic.
Thus, one can be at peace with thoughts which may not be correct, knowing that even if they are not true, they are beautiful; and cherishing the beauty in thoughts, it will grow, and so become more logical and thus closer to the truth. Hollow earth hypothesis, caloric theory or luminiferous ether: these are all thoughts which turned out to be wrong, yet they remain interesting, for they would otherwise have been forgotten altogether and not have been recorded in history. It is no loss, then, to have views that are not truthful, for thought they are not useful, they are still beautiful. If one seeks for beauty in thoughts rather than truth, then even if we will never know the truth, they will still have value to us. With this in mind, one can be open to all possibilities without being torn apart by doubt.
Since the beauty of thoughts is in their logic, the more beautiful thoughts will be, the closer they will be to the truth, even though they may never quite reach it.

There are no sane people. There are just insane people and people who are insane in an abnormal way. Almost everyone holds beliefs that they are certain to be true, but for some people these beliefs are shared with a large percentage of the population, and for some people these beliefs are shared with a smaller percentage. In other words, for some people the insanity is collective, for some people it is individual. We are almost all insane, but some are more original in their insanity than others. Some people think of their own delusions, others just copy them from others. The only difference is in the source of their inspiration. Most people's insanity is to adapt to others' insanity and blindly believe them to be right; other people's insanity is to blindly believe themselves to be right.
Almost everyone thinks they know the truth and that whoever thinks otherwise is wrong, with exceptions only in the very, very few open minds there are in the world. Generally, the more intellectual someone is, the more they are attached to their own opinions. If we attach any value to our beliefs, I believe it should be because of the beauty of the patterns of our thoughts, not because we think they are true. The truth can never fully be achieved but only approached. It is something which lies outside of ourselves, and in that we are perhaps too small too understand it. I believe that nothing is ever fully true or false, and that the truth is always somewhere in between. Thus, we can approach the truth as closely as possible, but never actually reach it. It is the asymptote of the function of knowledge. The truth is something infinitely subtle and nuanced, and while we may come closer and closer to it, we cannot fully reach it unless we could see its infinitely many nuances.

The truth is a target that lies at an infinite distance. Novice sailors find that when they as they try to attach a target, they have to readjust their course the closer they get to it. But the truth lies infinitely far. We can move towards it in as straight a line as possible, but we can never aim straight towards it because it is too far. Our aim can never be perfect, and the least we deviate from it will eventually lead us away from the truth. The closer we get to it, the greater this deviation becomes, so that again and again, we have to readjust our view.

This is illustrated by the model of the atom: at first, it was thought the atom was a solid sphere (Dalton); then, it was thought that that there were negative electrons floating on the positive nucleus (Thomson); then, it was thought that there was actually a lot of space in between electrons and protons (Rutherford); yet later, there turned out to be neutrons in the nucleus as well; yet later, it turned out the electrons weren't orbiting the nucleus in a circle but rather in a wavelike motion; yet later, the protons and neutrons appeared not to be solid but be composed of quarks, elementary particles; and yet later, these elementary particles all appeared not to be solid either, because they were actually really localized by the interference of energy waves. Right now, many scientists still live in the delusion that yes, they know the truth and that this is the end of it.

Will it ever end? Will we ever see that we are not, as we have deluded ourselves since the beginnings of time, Omniscient?
Someone who is deluded is always convinced of the truth of their delusions, and this conviction is by far a more criterion in defining delusions than their falsehood. If I believe that I might be involved in a mind control conspiracy, this is perfectly reasonable, as history has shown that it is possible; however, if I am certain that I am involved in such conspiracy, then I am insane. The irony is that this would make most people insane, were it not for the fact that a third criterion of a delusion is that it is not held by a culture.
I do not think I am so different. Even I like to feel that I know something, even if whatever it is I think to know is at most an approximation of the truth -- still infinitely far from the complete truth, but so too infinitely far from complete falsehood. Everything has some kernel of truth, and yet is not perfectly true.

The mind is like a lamp in the dark. If there were no-one to see the world, there would be no sight, there would be no light.

As any system inherently controls itself, any system can also inherently be controlled: we need only to know how it controls itself to control it. There must be some interaction between the system and part of the rest of the universe as the existence of the system would otherwise not be relevant. By controlling that part of the universe we could control that interaction, and in this way, interact with this system. If we find out how to do this, we can fully control the system, and any phenomenon that is part of it. With that knowledge, we can control anything. The only barrier to omnipotence, then, would be a barrier to omniscience.

It follows that anything in the universe can be controlled, merely because the universe itself can control itself, and we are part of that universe. If it is connected to our universe, it can be controlled - if it isn't connected to our universe, it doesn't really exist to us. There is therefore no limit to what we can achieve except for the limit to what the universe itself can achieve - that is, the limit to what exists in the universe. If the complexity of the universe is infinite, so the complexity of our knowledge of it will become, and therefore so will the complexity of our technology.

The idea that there is no limit to technology is known as the sans ceiling hypothesis.

For a discussion on whether or not the universe can be infinite in complexity, see the Infinity Principle:
http://cloudscape.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/04/28/the-infinity-principle.html

Related entries, on the eventual "theosis" (deification) of intelligent species such as ourselves:
http://cloudscape.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/04/28/god-theory-part-i-analytical.html
http://cloudscape.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/04/28/the-god-theory-part-ii-holistic.html