The Cognitive Closure of Civilizations
- Is an age defined by the questions it asks or by the answers it provides?
- Intelligence is measured by the questions you ask not by the answers you find.
- Answers to most questions are trivial. A civilization/age may never find the answer to a question because it is not capable of looking in the right place.
- This cognitive closure defines the limits of what a mind can understand (of the questions it can answer).
- There is also a cognitive closure for civilizations: there is a limit to what a civilization can know.
- The set of all answerable questions constitutes the cognitive closure of a civilization/age. For example, ancient civilizations believed in fate.
- Every civilization/age interprets a new idea in its own way. The same concept can turn into very different memes in different places at different times.
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