Dangerous Knowledge

[Kalthanan]

"Dangerous Knowledge" is the title of a BBC special concerning physics, math, and philosophy. It explores the nature of infinity, and how much we can know or compute or theorize about the nature of the universe and our search for knowledge.

It's fascinating, although it brushes upon some topics a little too briefly, and begs further investigation.

Part 1

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Part 2

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If you want more, just search on YouTube for "BBC Dangerous Knowledge".

[Catweazel]

Good movie!!

I remember sitting through a computational discussion once about protein folding....this concerns when really really small stuff in your cells "decides" what it is going to be when it grows up.

The decision made by the amino acid (and it has to be correct so that you don't grow an extra arm for example) is made in fractions of a second.

The best computer in the world cannot currently complete this calculation in any reasonable time, let alone fractions of a second, and yet human bodies (cells) are doing it, have been doing it, millions and billions of times without error. Check out the Levinthal Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levinthal_paradox)

Whatever the protein folding logic is (and perhaps it is a measure of intuition) it is currently beyond man and machine to model. Perhaps when we understand this we understand uncertainty, paradox and chaos.