Is there a limit to knowledge?

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Is it possible for the human brain to run out of room to store knowledge? Like, if I learn too much, I'll forget some stuff I knew before?

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, LOL.

Vague memories of psychology class a returning, think it something like yes but you'll need to live past the human lifespan to do it.

Hopefully someone who actually knows will turn up

It's not a stupid question but forgetting is a daily occurrence to many of us. It's a matter of breaking and re-establishing nerve cell synapses. At the age of 83, believe me, it's a regular problem and I am thankful for Google to permit me to re-establish connections.

Since the human brain is limited and the possibilities of different ways of looking at most things may not be infinite but so great that it might as well be, I doubt you should become panicked that you might eventually know everything.

Pas de tout! We are finite state entities with limited storage capacity. Once you accept that the physical brain encompasses and bounds the mind, one can accept the limitations of the flesh. We are material beings down to the subatomic level.

We can compensate for our wearing out and limits by resorting to clever tricks and memory storage aids. Computers and data bases come in handy in that respect. Past a certain age it pays to take notes.

ruveyn

No,
because contrary to what people here wrote we are not computers
(computers are a bit like us but we are not like them)
and the question of room or storage is irrelevant to our case because we can abstract,
and abstraction gives you the power to "store" huge amount of data in a very small place or a single word,
AS are especially good at that.

even computers limited space makes an heavy use of abstraction
programming languages are constantly progressing toward more abstraction,
and so are we as a race because the more you know about the universe the less data u need to describe it.
truth is beautifully simple

If there is a "storage" area in our heads, i dont know of it, nor do i of its capacity, however i do beleive that you should always strive for knowledge, but don't loose your head when someone else has more. We were not ment to be storage drives

The memory capacity of a human brain is not established, but it is believed to be enormous, and certainly more than most people would have the time to collect.

If our life-span ever catches up to our capacity we should have some very interesting situations to deal with.

ruveyn

There was an interesting thing in philosophy class about a Greek sage who said that it takes 1 life to find the true meaning of one concept or resume it. Now Imagine if we could reincarnate and find the words for everything =O (or just share them between us, although i doubt any human would dare part with such priceless knowledge).

Thats a very good point.

I think a more practical boundary is that we dont have enough time in a day to do all the activities(or think all the thoughts) that would be needed to fill up our memories.

As well, there have been several eidetic savants and in particular one Russian researcher that experimented with memorization. None of them have reached any limits. The Russian in particular developed mental and processing problems rather than hitting memory limits.

Who was it that said that man's capacity for knowledge is limited, but his capacity for stupidity is infinite?

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein

Research into deep brain stimulation suggests that the brain retains all of your memories, the issue is accessing them: http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy ... lation.php

-skipping with the reading and on too my opinion-

I find that if someone were to know ~everything~ it would take centuries for them to say a single letter, just like a computer with next-to-no memory left.

or they will actually destroy the fabric of the space-blah-blah-blah, will cause a epidemic of destruction and mayhem blah-blah-blah...

_---_

The concept that one person's inability to coordinate his/her nervous system will destroy the universe is a rather strange exercise of understanding cause and effect.

I note that you are 117 years old, Teenagers have strange ideas. You will grow out of it.

Last edited by Sand on 10 Apr 2009, 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

[teenager answer]

Yes, because I already know everything.

[/teenager answer]