Why we will always have worldview contradictions (Harris)
March 12th, 2008 | Published in Education, Fundamentalism, Life, Quotes, Religion, Truth | 1 Comment
How many beliefs could a perfect brain check for logical contradictions? The answer is surprising. Even if a computer were as large as the known universe, built of components no larger than protons, with switching speeds as fast as the speed of light, all laboring in parallel from the moment of the big bang up to the present, it would still be fighting to add a 300th belief to its list. What does this say about the possibility of our ever guaranteeing that our worldview is perfectly free from contradiction? It is not even a dream within a dream.
—Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (W. W. Norton, 2004), p. 57.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:38 am (#)
Can someone explain the math behind this assertion? Is the author saying that the number of logical computations required to check the compatibility of any 300 beliefs is something like 2 X 10^300?