Black holes are simpler than forests, and science has its limits

1. science will hit the buffers at some point

1.1. we clean up and codify certain areas to the point that there’s no more to say.

1.2. Maybe we’ll reach the limits of what our brains can hold.

1.2.1. There might be concepts, crucial to a full understanding of physical reality, that we aren’t even aware of.

2. A reductionist explanation isn’t always the best or most useful one.

2.1. ‘More is different,’ as the physicist Philip Anderson said.

2.1.1. Everything is made of atoms, and obeys the laws of quantum physics.

3. What’s important is how the pattern and structure appears as we go up the layers.

3.1. This is called "emergent complexity".

4. there are limits to human understanding

4.1. David Deutsch challenge this statement in his book

4.1.1. In "The Beginning of Infinity" (2011), he says that any process is computable, in principle.

5. Albert Einstein said "the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible".

6. How to define complexity?

6.1. Something made of atoms isn't complicated. Big things can't be that complicated

6.2. More complex systems are higher up, while the simpler ones go down below.

6.2.1. ‘Ordering’ sciences is controversial, and it is senseless to call sciences "unimportant"

6.2.1.1. Each layer of science has its own distinct explanations.

6.3. As Steven Weinberg explains, if you keep asking ‘Why, why, why?’, you end up at the particle level.

7. We can expect huge advances on three frontiers: the very small, the very large, and the very complex

7.1. We might encounter another barrier if we try to follow Weinberg’s arrows further down

7.1.1. We might never understand the space and because the mathematics are too hard.