I think it would have been a massive spur to space exploration. As soon as it was discovered the planet was inhabitable (and when would that have been ? Something like a hundred years ago?), I think there would have been a race to get there. Wealthy individuals and corporations would have willingly contributed funds. My guess we'd already have a manned coloney there by now.

It doesn't need to be completely independent of previous experience, just an idea no one's had before.

But the creative capacity of the mind may be infinite. And self-altering minds are capable of unlimited expansion and alteration. They might even edit their memories to avoid boredom, or redesign themselves so that they are incapable of feeling boredom.

Either way, it's better than being dead.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

But an idea based on previous experience is simply a combination or alteration of previous ideas. And there have only been a finite number of previous ideas, simply because there have only ever been a finite number of people, and we have existed for a finite amount of time. Given that we can only recombine ideas based on previously learned methods, by definition there can only be a finite number of possible idea combinations, and only a finite number of combinations of combinations, combinations of combinations of combinations etc. Any truly new ideas we gain must come from what we learn about the universe. The universe too is finite, and, presumably, is governed by a finite set of laws, and so, by definition, there is only so much one can learn about it. By the time we reach this terminal point, there will effectively be no more future events; the universe will have ceased to tell us anything new. We will only have our finite past to elaborate on, and, eventually, we will have exhausted all possible ideas we could ever have gained from it.

That's my point. It isn't. A common misconception (perhaps unavoidable, given the limits of human understanding) is to confuse "infinite" with "unimaginably huge". "Unimaginably huge" is not infinite, any more than a proton is infinite.

Being comfortable with nothing is called inertia. Once we have thought about all there is to think about, there will be no more need for thought. Existence without thought it is no different from being dead.

__________________
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

That is staved off by our wonderful capacity as individuals as well as societies to forget things, especially as we get older. We also tend to remember or rediscover forgotten ideas but with built-in variations.

__________________
"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

There's no evidence that this is true.

That's your unproven opinion.

We don't know if it's possible to "think all that there is to think about". You have yet to provide any evidence other than your opinion that the number of possible thoughts is finite, or that creativity is impossible.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I didn't say creativity was impossible. What I said was that no one can imagine anything that is not in some way based on previous experiences or knowledge.

__________________
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Which is also unproven. And irrelevant.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Why is it irrelevant? The whole point of this argument is whether or not human creativity is finite or infinite. I argue that human creativity is dependent on past experiences, and the collective well of past human experiences is finite, ergo the ability of human creativity to conceive of ideas is also finite, since we also possess a finite number of known ways with which to combine these thoughts.

I don't understand why you're being so defensive about this. You seem to think that because I think that the span of human creativity is not infinite, but merely so big that its vastness defies human comprehension, that somehow I think that human creativity doesn't exist. I made no such claim. I am a creative person myself; I fully respect and understand the nature of human creativity. But simply because I think there might be some finite limit to human creative thought, one that we might conceivably reach in, say, ten to the millionth power years, doesn't mean I think there is no such thing as creative thought. You seem to think that creativity must either be infinite or not exist at all.

There is some evidence for my claim. The area of the brain that creates and stores memory is also the area we draw on when imagining the future. We construct our possible futures from the memories we possess. A similar process, though more freeform, occurs with creativity.

Btw, this thread has gone way off topic and I don't want to overwhelm the discussion; do you think you could split this conversation off, mods? Thanks

__________________
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Exactly, and truly new variations of existing thought-- which you seem to dismiss as irrelevant-- can be original even if based on something that has come before. Based on does not necessarily mean unorignal, not if it's a completely unprecedented variation.
(bold mine)

Ah, there's your problem! You assume that something based on something old must be merely a recombination of existing factors. I'm talking about endless variations based on, but not limited to, existing ideas.

I'm not, we're having a discussion. It's a chat board, that's what we do here.



No, I'm merely interpreting what you said to the best of my ability. You said that you think no ideas can exist that are not recombinations of existing ideas. You said, in fact, that you defined creativity as an "idea that formed completely independent of any previous human experience". You set that standard, not me.

In part, we do just that. As I said several times, creative ideas can often be built on the foundation of existing ones. But you claimed that the number of ideas is finite, which would require no real creation of new ideas. This is not proven by your example. All your example shows is that we do use our existing knowledge and ideas in making new ones, not that there's no original ideas as a result. And if there are, then we are producing some variations beyond merely recombining the existing thoughts. Therefore there will always be a few new thoughts produced, varying from the previous ones.

And of course, that's just our present-day, human minds.

Agreed.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I don't dismiss new variations as irrelevant, nor, for that matter, did I define creativity in that way. My definition of creativity is the elaboration and recombination of thoughts and ideas in new and unusual ways. The point about an idea completely divorced from any human experience is that is what would be required for creativity to last for eternity. Since our past is finite, and the number of ideas we generate is finite, in order for new ideas to be created we would have to come up with ideas completely divorced from human knowledge or understanding, and I don't see that happening, at least, not, as you said, with our human minds.

Let's take literature as one example. The English language contains about ~600,000 words. The average book contains about 28,000 words. The total number of possible books at that length then, is 600,000 to the power of 28,000. Human beings are not likely to write infinitely long books, so there is also a finite number of possible lengths of books, which would introduce another order of magnitude to the number, but again still finite. The same logic would hold if I opened up the field to every word in every language, alive or dead, including any alien ones we may encounter.

The number of words, which are made from combinations of other words, is also likely to rise exponentially as the millennia go by, adding another couple thousand orders of magnitude to the final number. Eventually though, we will run out of new words, because, once we reach the universe's final state, there will be nothing left to observe, nothing left to explore, nothing left to create, and thus nothing left to name. For all practical purposes, human experience will end. All that will be left is reflection and discussion of the vanished Era of Experience. Our ancient word hoard will keep us going for a while, a very long while even, but we will eventually have spun out every possible implication, every possible shade of meaning, every possible drop of significance from every past experience, for the simple reason that the time during which we had experiences of any sort was finite.

__________________
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

I think you are both right:
of course every new idea grows in the fertile soil of already existing human knowledge, and thus is heavily influenced by it.
Nevertheless, completely new stuff can grow on this soil, too.

Maybe it doesn't happen all too often (as most new things are a remake or combination of existing things),
but still it does happen.

For example, General Relativity, String Theory, Quantum Mechanics, etc.
have certainly drawn on already existing knowledge,
but I think you can still argue they were a completely new approach, not just a remix of previous ideas.

I disagree. We can always come up with a new variant of the last thought ever thought. And then vary that one, and the next one, Ad Infinitum.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort