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by stavros 73 days ago
Life might be complex, but it isn't unknowable. Claiming life is unknowable isn't being humble, it's being naive.
1 comments

Why couldn't it be unknowable? I am not saying that it is, but it could be. The human brain has its limits and things could me too complex for us to understand enough to be able to modify them at will. We could understand a lot, but not enough to manipulate it with certainty. Biology is not physics.
Because physics is knowable, and I don't think an unknowable thing can be created from a knowable thing.
Why not? Human mind has its limits. The complexity of physics is orders of magnitude smaller than biology, let alone any kind of social science. Physics is the exception, not the rule. The rest of sciences are way more messy.
What are the limits? What have we run up against that we couldn't understand, no matter how much we tried?
Almost anything outside physics is not predictable. Anything that involves human behavior is totally not understood, especially if it involves a bunch of humans (economy, sociology...). You could describe it, sure, but that is not the same as understating and modifying at will.