Comments on: If I can only take my knowledge with me, then can I take Google?

By: Ray

Ray — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:44:00 +0000

Thank you, Mariano. That is a very interesting way to express it.

By: Mariano MARINI

Mariano MARINI — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:33:44 +0000

Sorry in advance for my bad english (I’m italian).
‘Where the knowledge is stored’?
Well, we can say that it’s stored in our spirit as the material event are stored in material body.
Let me try to explain better.
Let looks at the material world. If I crash with my car against a wall, that event is stored in the contorted body sheet of my car.
In the same way, I thought, knowledge structure my spirit.
It’s funny to note that we can erase some knowledge in the same way we can do it with car (repairing).
I give different meaning to the words ‘remember’ and ‘know’ and you?

By: Bradley Ross

Bradley Ross — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 02:43:43 +0000

Greenfrog: I wouldn’t argue that the “fabric…comprehends all that is” any more than I would argue that the internet “comprehends” anything. I’m just arguing (very speculatively) that there is a heavenly telescope through which God can peer to comprehend events at any distance through time and space. The telescope is just a tool in the hands of an omnipotent being that grants him omniscience.

Natalie’s original question about WHERE the knowledge is stored is a very interesting one; I think her theory might have merit. I’m trying (in my fumbling way) to make a related argument that I think acts as a supporting corollary to her argument.

By: Tatiana

Tatiana — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:00:26 +0000

Carl (#12) the opinion that used to be a factoid that people only use a small percentage of their brains actually meant scientists didn’t know what the rest was for. Since they had no idea how the brain worked at all, that wasn’t surprising. Now the consensus seems to be that it’s all useful to us, we just don’t know in great detail how we’re using it, and how the system as a whole works. We are learning more all the time, and it’s amazing the details we know in certain areas like the visual cortex. But that particular factoid doesn’t have currency nowadays. :) Whether that’s because it’s actually untrue is not certain, but it does stand to reason that we wouldn’t maintain large amounts of metabolically expensive organ tissue unless it was good for something. Evolution would tend to favor those who had less.

As for the topic in general, I hope Wikipedia is part of what we get to take with us! Google without wikipedia would be a far poorer thing than it is. =)

By: Ray

Ray — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:30:50 +0000

So which one of you is Keanu Reeves and which one is Lawrence Fishburn? :-)

By: greenfrog

greenfrog — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:16:47 +0000

(re #21, I really can’t be trusted with a mouse that seems to click on its own.)

In response to Bradley Ross (#20), the line of thought that you articulate is one that suggests to me that if God exists within time and space, there is a yet greater ordinate than that God: the fabric of existence that composes God. Isn’t it only that fabric alone that comprehends all that it is?

By: greenfrog

greenfrog — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:12:24 +0000

By: Bradley Ross

Bradley Ross — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:04:05 +0000

Some people have a hard time believing that God knows everything. If there is an infinite universe and he has presumably finite physical brain, how can he hold it all in there?

I don’t believe that he does. I suspect that he has a mechanism we don’t yet comprehend where he can look up (or “Google” as Ronito says) the information any time he needs it. This allows him to “know” everything without actually keeping it in his head at any moment. This celestial lookup seems to solve a lot of the problems entailed in dealing with infinities.

By: Sam MB

Sam MB — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 13:37:23 +0000

I think of the knowledge for the afterlife emphasis in early Mormonism more as an expression of metaphysics/perfectionism than of accumulated data (which is so hopelessly consumerist). In that sense it is the “enlightenment” that travels with you, not the facts, which can be left with something like google. I’m aware that later Mormons and Mormon authorities have taken the consumerist approach to knowledge, but this is a case where I think the original approach makes more sense.

By: Natalie

Natalie — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 13:24:33 +0000

I was just thinking that another aspect of our knowledge formation that intrigues me in our current era is the increasing irrelevance of the knowledge that we gain from our past, especially the knowledge we gain from our elders. Of course, there are some moral notions we pass down that are still very important today, but we now live in a time in which the rate of change is so rapid that knowledge goes out of date very quickly. We generally don’t learn our father’s trade, and even if we do, the job demands are different. Generation gaps are so much more significant now.