Will 'Understanding' be Extinct by 2050?

To the extent that city people are a few bits of gristle short of a hamburger I would go along.

You have a positive talent for coming up with the most egregious tripe. Define "understanding." Just how the hell do you equate "understanding" with "the need to create." God, this is some of the silliest stuff you've come up with, and that is quite an accomplishment.

I should first give you an explanation of what I mean by the word ?'understand'.

Understanding is a step beyond knowing and is seldom required or measured by schooling. Understanding is generally of disinterested knowledge, i.e. disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ?'disinterested knowledge' as similar to ?'pure research', as compared to ?'applied research'. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application.

Understanding is often difficult and time consuming and the justification is not extrinsic but intrinsic.

These claims may be too general but I do not think so.

Understanding is a step beyond knowing and is seldom required or measured by schooling.

Understanding is generally of disinterested knowledge, i.e. disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ?'disinterested knowledge' as similar to ?'pure research', as compared to ?'applied research'. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application

I do not think understanding can be taught. Understanding is an act of creation and each of us must learn how to do it if we are every to recognize the "ecstasy of understanding".

Metaphors seem to be the only way to talk about such things. We commonly use 'knowing is seeing' and 'understanding is grasping' I think the difference here is obvious. Seeing is easy and grasping is difficult and much more intimate. If one has had the experience of understanding I think they will recognize that it is much different than knowing.

Knowing is painting-by-number and understanding is an original piece of art. A eureka moment is an understanding moment. I have never had an epiphany but I guess it may be an act of understanding.

To understand requires work and time and curiosity and caring.

It seems to me that philosophy has handled the words ?'knowing' and ?'understanding' with a great deal of ambiguity.

Comprehension is a hierarchy, resembling a pyramid, with awareness at the base followed by consciousness, succeeded by knowing, with understanding at the pinnacle.

I formulate these metaphors/analogies to give you an idea of what I mean by each level of comprehension.


Awareness--faces in a crowd.

Consciousness?-smile, a handshake, and curiosity.

Knowledge?-long talks sharing desires and ambitions.

Understanding?-a best friend bringing constant April.

Re: Will 'Understanding' be Extinct by 2050?
In that case, based upon the only imperfect conception of "understanding" provided in that forest of semi-mystical gobbledygook, in response to this question:



No, i don't agree. That's the silliest question i've heard in a month of Sundays.

Setanta

I suspect most people never have the experience of understanding until their schooling is past. As an adult understanding is possible but it requires curiosity, caring and a great deal of effort. I suspect many people never have that experience that Carl Sagan called "a kind of ecastasy".

What you suspect (a very elitist and condescending "what" it is) is no plausible basis for claiming that "understanding" will cease to exist within 50 years.

I'll be 90 in 2050. I suspect my understanding will have slipped a bit.

I'll probably be dead, and unlikely to understand anything. If i were alive, i'd be 100 years of age, and unlikely to care if i understood anything.

"Understanding" it might be argued is currently experiencing exponential growth.

Consider Carl Sagan's "understanding" vs Aristotle's

or my "understanding" vs a similar person just 200 years ago.

I recently watched a TV show based on Greene's book "The Elegant Universe". The book gives us a broad brush outlook on physics from Newton to Einstein to Quantum Theory to String Theory in an attempt to focus on the TOE (Theory Of Everything). Pretty big ambition for a one hour TV show!

In my layman's view I would say that this business of trying to comprehend the nature of the universe within the atom is the equivalent of what empathy tries to do when we attempt to ?'get into' the mind of another. When we try to ?'get into' the world of the other person and when we try to ?'get into' the world of they atom we are doing what I call ?'understanding'.

In both cases we are creating a model of the other that will make the behavior of the other comprehensible. This model in the case of Electromagnetic Theory consists of four equations. This model for QM as depicted by Feynman in his book QED is much larger but nevertheless it is small compared to the knowledge required to reach the conclusion.

A little bit of understanding stands on a giant pyramid of knowledge.

Our future depends upon our success with empathy and not our success with finding the TOE.

In that case Chuck we've had it or, in greenspeak "we've **** our hole full".

Not that I think so mind you.

Been reading up on your posts?


Sorry cob, couldn't resist.


But seriously, even though I can relate to the claim that technology can be degenerating to people's ability to come up with creative solutions, I do not think that it will completely erase our wits.

All in all, I do not think the contrivances of our modern age will have much impact at all on the things that matter. Humans today are the same as they were 50 thousand years ago.

Hear Hear

NOt true, not true at all. Humans are taller and heavier they they were 50 thousand years ago.

You need to check out Cro Magnon man, Dys.

Cro Magnon were French, and entirely different matter.

They may have eaten cheese, but there is no reliable evidence that they were surrender monkeys . . .

cyr wrote-



I think we probably have much better looking ladies than they did then and they may even be less trying now as a bonus. That seems an important difference to me.

Point is that I do not think 'understanding' will ever end.

Still, our current understanding of things is a thing that changes constantly, for better or for worse.

When we think about the lifespan of any culture in history and the time it takes for them to end, there may be a possibility that the understanding of the world of 2006 may be obsolete in 2056. Who knows?

Humanity will probably survive our modern civilisation.