Limits on technology

[hammertime]

According to Ray Kurzweil, human intelligence (both biological and non-biological) will saturate the universe and cause it to "wake up" sometime within a few centuries. Some have also speculated that exponential technological progress could lead to the development of sub-Planckian "ontotechnology" which can bypass or even change the laws of physics.

Do you think that there are fundamental limits on technological growth? Do you think that any limits that we see are just the result of our limited intelligence? I mean, after all, once upon a time, we thought it was impossible to go into space.

[Negatron]

Perhaps we didn't think it was impossible, but rather vastly intractable. A person should be able to visualize a long enough ladder that would take one to space, which would be physically consistent. Such a thing was not ruled out by what they knew and by what we know about physics.

We know however that there is a rigid and proven limit on an object's ability to accelerate to a certain speed. Knowing this we can confidently say that doing so is impossible. There are usually alternative approaches to solving our problems so this is probably not a big setback in the grand scheme of things, but nevertheless an evident impossibility.

More likely than not there are ultimate limits, but as far as I can tell not limiting enough to stop us from achieving mostly everything we wish to achieve.

[DaveC426913]

Some have also speculated that exponential technological progress could lead to the development of sub-Planckian "ontotechnology" which can bypass or even change the laws of physics.Well, it can't bypass the laws of physics, since whatever it did would still be within the bounds of physics... But I can see it changing existing laws.

[hammertime]

Well, it can't bypass the laws of physics, since whatever it did would still be within the bounds of physics... But I can see it changing existing laws.

Right, so couldn't sufficiently advanced technology, say, tweak some parameters in order to stop the expansion of the universe, allow for spontaneous creation of energy, or enable wormholes or FTL travel?

[DaveC426913]

Right, so couldn't sufficiently advanced technology, say, tweak some parameters in order to stop the expansion of the universe, allow for spontaneous creation of energy, or enable wormholes or FTL travel?In a word: sure.

[ragarth]

As T.H. White once wrote, "That which is not forbidden, is mandatory!"

Unless there's a physical law that makes it impossible, we can potentially achieve it technologically.

[russ_watters]

What about the laws we just don't know about yet?

[Pattonias]

I think any progression of this type would still be considered a discovery. We would developer a way of manipulating principles we discovered were already there.

[dreiter]

Seems like it would be a lot of work to overcome deltaX*deltaP >= hbar/2

:D

[Zubin]

According to Ray Kurzweil, human intelligence (both biological and non-biological) will saturate the universe and cause it to "wake up" sometime within a few centuries. Some have also speculated that exponential technological progress could lead to the development of sub-Planckian "ontotechnology" which can bypass or even change the laws of physics.
Scientific models are incomplete. There is always room to add or change things.