Galileo’s Big Mistake: A Clever Hack That Changed Human Thinking Forever. Can NVIDIA Fix It and Make Billions?

Until recently, education was holistic—there was no distinction between theology, religion, philosophy, mathematics, and science.

1. Access to education
In medieval Europe, the Church controlled most centers of learning, like monasteries, cathedral schools, and early universities (e.g., Oxford, Bologna).

Monks, priests, and clergymen were among the few literate people with access to books. Studying nature was often seen as a way to understand God's creation.

2. Conflict of interest
Any discovery that contradicted the church's view was a problem. Galileo was imprisoned and condemned for heresy by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633.

3. The great divide
Galileo divided education into qualitative and quantitative domains.

Galileo argued that subjective experiences such as religious belief, love, sense of smell, taste, and consciousness exist only in the mind but not in the physical world.

He laid the foundation of modern science as being objective, which should be studied through quantifiable properties like size, shape, and motion.

4. Galileo's (clever) big mistake

Did he draw a scientific boundary to avoid getting into trouble? By relegating subjective experience to the realm of the "unscientific," consciousness and feelings still remain a mystery.

5. Galileo's limitation presents an interesting challenge today.

Artificial intelligence's hardware and software operate within Galileo's scientific boundaries. It can solve quantitative problems using NVIDIA GPUs, but qualitative experience is out of scope.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): Unless there is new technology that transcends Galileo's scientific boundary, AGI will struggle to bridge this gap, as feelings and consciousness resist quantification.

Can NVIDIA fix It and make Billions?

Epilogue:
This week's blog was inspired by University of Durham Professor Philip Goff's conversation with Tim Ferriss

Today, people sprinkle mathematical equations to appeal to your subconscious scientific sensibilities (pun intended). Galileo may be turning in his grave.

what do you think?

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