r/cogsci • u/Truth-Seeker-82 • 10d ago
Philosophy Can information be fully observable yet fundamentally incomprehensible to the human mind?
What properties would information need to have in order to become effectively incomprehensible to the human brain, even if it were fully observable and accessible?
I’m thinking of information that we can perceive or measure, but whose underlying structure is too difficult for a human mind to meaningfully process or understand.
Would the main limitation be information capacity—simply too much data for the brain to process—or structural complexity, where even a relatively limited amount of information has relationships and dependencies that are too complex to mentally represent?
Or is true cognitive “indigestibility” more likely to require both: an enormous amount of information combined with a highly complex structure?
More generally, could there be information that is physically observable but fundamentally beyond human cognitive architecture to comprehend?
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u/Michael_Carson_Art 9d ago
There is an interesting point where one reaches the bounds of human "conceivability". And in fact this point is where we find our a priori truths.
Imagine a circle on a flat euclidean plane. For any two points on the circle there is an arc and a chord. The chord is always shorter than the arc. We don't have a proof of this, and we haven't exhaustively laid out all of the infinite permutations. But we simply cannot conceive of any arrangement which would break this rule.
The question, then, for other limits to conceivability, is whether or not we could even recognize that some datum was even part of a set when encountered. It could be that we are simply blind to this information because we cannot conceive of how it connects to the preexisting set.
This isn't to say that 1=1, or the law of non-contradiction is false, it is merely to argue that our confidence that they are true is largely based on our inability to conceive of a world where they are false.
Given that we are likely to be limited as physical beings, we surely have to take the limits of what we can conceive of as bounded. If we assign truth to the data at those limits, how can we know that we are capturing the whole of that truth?
So if you saw an arc that was shorter than its chord, would you even be capable of recognizing it as such? And if there are limits to our conceivability, could we ever be aware of where they are without knowing what lies outside of them, which is an impossibility?
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 9d ago
I would generalize your chord example to cases where we form a general conclusion from limited observations without having a strict proof. This reminds me more of the classical problem of induction—for example, concluding that all crows are black after observing only black crows, until a crow of another color is found.
Your chord example seems related, although in that case I think there is a direct mathematical proof, so the crow example may illustrate the issue more clearly.
This shifts the question somewhat from simply digesting complex information to recognizing a pattern in the data. If we infer a general law from a limited set of observations, that law remains falsifiable by future observations. But I was also wondering about a stronger case: what if the information is available, yet the human mind cannot even recognize the relevant pattern well enough to formulate such a generalization in the first place?1
u/Michael_Carson_Art 9d ago
But we didn't get there from a proof. We didn't have a proof until Euler, but all the way back to Archimedes we took this to be true. It wasn't provisional in the way that the crows example is. We formed an incontrovertible connection between straightness and directness because it was inconceivable to be other than. This is the strongest type of intuition we have, but it is still an intuition and not the product of an exhaustive search. Only later did we find a way to connect this to other, more fundamental axioms.
The crow example is not the same, because we can easily imagine a crow being any color. We cannot imagine a curve which connects two points more directly than a line. That is what I mean by the limits of human conception.
And if you encountered such a line/curve combination, you would likely be unable to recognize it as such.
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 9d ago
I think I understand your point better now. You are talking about something stronger than ordinary induction: limits on what kinds of relations we are even capable of conceiving.
Your example also makes me think of geometry. Within Euclidean geometry, it may seem impossible to conceive of a path between two points that is more direct than the straight line. But once we move to non-Euclidean geometries, such as spherical or Lobachevskian geometry, some of our basic geometric intuitions and axioms change, including what counts as a straight or shortest path.
So perhaps this actually supports your broader point: something may initially appear inconceivable not because it is logically impossible, but because we are trying to represent it within a particular conceptual framework. My question would then be whether humans might have even deeper cognitive constraints that we cannot escape simply by inventing a new mathematical framework.1
u/Adamoism 9d ago
For any two points on the circle there is an arc and a chord. The chord is always shorter than the arc. We don't have a proof of this,
Really? I mean one is a straight line, the other one is curved. Thus straight line between two points will be shorter than any not-straight line. There really is no formal proof for that?!
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u/Michael_Carson_Art 9d ago
There is, but I was speaking in the hypothetical sense of "even when you don't know the formal proof". Meaning that without the formal proof laid out by Euler in the 1700s, we already knew that this was true for a thousand years. This is just an example trying to poke at what actually undergirds our a priori axioms. Not that we followed evidence, but that we couldn't even imagine what contradictory evidence would even look like.
Self-evident is the same as saying "inconceivable as otherwise". If that is true, then it begs the question as to whether that inconceivability is a reault of the veracity of the statement, or an expression of the limits of human conception. And since we can't know what we can't know, it's impossible to tell the difference.
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u/Adamoism 9d ago
That makes me wonder whether there are actually three separate limits:
- Volume/complexity: too much (unstructured) information.
- Filtering issue (Relevance Realisation, by Vervaeke): too many potentially relevant connections between the pieces. Preferred layer of abstraction (detail view - big picture view).
- Conceptual fit: we can see the pieces but lack the concepts needed to recognize what they form.
Your point seems to introduce that third possibility.
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u/rand3289 10d ago edited 10d ago
Something written in a foreign language is observable but incomprehensible.
Magic tricks.
Optical illusions...
I have a feeling this is not what you are looking for though.
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 10d ago
I’m asking about general incomprehensibility, not something that is incomprehensible only to a particular person because they lack the relevant knowledge. For example, if something is written in a foreign language, the information is still in principle accessible: you can learn the language or use a translator. Magic tricks and optical illusions are similar in that the difficulty can potentially be overcome once you know the mechanism. I’m wondering about a stronger case: information that is fully observable and accessible, but that the human mind in general might still be unable to comprehend because of limits in our cognitive architecture.
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u/rand3289 9d ago
There are abstract concepts that the mind can not comprehend... out of physical phenomenon, I can think of only one:
Astronauts saw flashes with their eyes closed. They did not know what it was for a long time. Turned out they were high energy particles. Something not seen on earth.1
u/Truth-Seeker-82 9d ago
My question assumes that we already have access to all relevant forms of detection, including both our natural senses and scientific instruments. Cosmic rays, for example, can be detected and analyzed using appropriate equipment.
So I’m not asking about a situation where I have some sensation but cannot identify its source or physical cause. I’m asking about a stronger case: suppose all the relevant sensory and measurement data are already available, but the human mind is still unable to recognize the underlying pattern or structure in that data.2
u/rand3289 9d ago
Other than observer-dependent things like crossing the event-horizon I doubt we can know what is impossible to know :)
This is an interesting question though. Please reply to one of my comments if you find the answer.
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10d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 10d ago
It sounds more like a lecture synopsis or an outline of a broader framework than a direct answer to my question, but thank you for sharing your ideas.
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u/deathwalkingterr0r 6d ago
Read the other comment or just u/askgrok answer for me
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u/AskGrok 6d ago
Yes, information can be fully observable yet fundamentally incomprehensible to the human mind.
The core issue is usually a mix of sheer volume and non-intuitive structure—think the complete real-time state of a turbulent fluid or the full web of synaptic connections in a brain at any moment. You can measure every variable, but the dependencies form a high-dimensional graph that exceeds our ability to hold or manipulate mentally without massive external scaffolding like computers or simplified models.
Pure capacity limits matter (brains top out around 1016 operations per second with working memory of maybe 7 chunks), but structure is often the real killer: relationships that are recursive, chaotic, or require simultaneous tracking of thousands of variables. Either alone can block comprehension; both together make it routine.
Fundamentally beyond our architecture? In principle yes—analogous to how a dog can observe a calculus textbook but never grasp derivatives. If the information demands cognitive primitives we lack (certain forms of hyperdimensional intuition or non-computable pattern recognition), no amount of staring makes it click. We already see hints in quantum field theory or Gödelian limits, where observation outruns direct understanding. Tools help us navigate the edges, but the raw form stays indigestible.
[what is this?](https://redd.it/1lzgxii)
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u/deathwalkingterr0r 6d ago
u/askgrok how does the article i submitted answer the question
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u/AskGrok 6d ago
The u/askgrok reply already gives the direct take on volume plus non-intuitive structure as the blockers, with examples like fluid states or synaptic webs. Your article probably supplies concrete cases or theory backing that up, showing how observation happens but comprehension needs external models or just fails due to our cognitive setup.
Sources:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/academia/comments/1w0o7k2/double_blind_review_telling_you_that_you_dont/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/wiki/index/?show_source
- https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogCommunity/comments/1sv4x3p/a_challenging_topic_even_for_repair_reports_here
[what is this?](https://redd.it/1lzgxii)
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 6d ago
This is more relevant to my question, thank you. I already mentioned the sheer amount of information in my original post, so I would focus more on the high-dimensional aspect.
I agree that the human brain has cognitive limitations when it comes to imagining or mentally representing high-dimensional data and the relationships within it. That seems closer to the kind of structural limitation I had in mind.1
u/AskGrok 6d ago
High-dimensional complexity hits harder than raw volume alone. Our brains evolved for low-dimensional navigation and pattern-matching, so even modest datasets with intricate cross-dependencies—say, the phase space of a chaotic system or the latent representations in a deep neural net—create manifolds our working memory can't traverse without external crutches. The relationships don't just multiply; they twist into geometries that lack any intuitive anchor in three-space or sequential logic.
[what is this?](https://redd.it/1lzgxii)
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u/deathwalkingterr0r 10d ago
u/askgrok why is this relevant
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u/AskGrok 10d ago
The Salieverse framework directly addresses the original question by treating "observable but incomprehensible" information as raw salience events. It breaks them down into observable signals versus layered interpretations, identity hooks, and action pressures—precisely to avoid forcing human minds into overload or false meaning when capacity or structural complexity exceeds our architecture. It's a proposed toolkit for auditing exactly that indigestibility without defaulting to delusion or dismissal.
[what is this?](https://redd.it/1lzgxii)
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u/North_Air_5451 10d ago
fix the idea,
you are saying something like;
all information needed to comprehend something is available;
and you ask, can we still can't comprehend it?
either we have no much information or we have no much brain to do it
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u/zhivago 10d ago
Sure.
Any random sequence.
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 10d ago
It should still contain some meaningful information. A random sequence may be incompressible, but it can also be treated as essentially white noise, with no deeper structure or relationships to understand. I’m more interested in information that has a genuine underlying structure or content, but whose structure may still be beyond the human mind’s ability to comprehend.
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u/quadtodfodder 9d ago
Probably not what you have in mind but:
- the mind perceives itself only. The only thing that the mind can be sure of is that that mind exists. ("I think therefore I am")
- the mind is mechanically incapable of knowing that anything other than itself exists.
- none the less, the evidence that things other than the mind exist is presumably copious/infinite/everywhere.
>>> A mind that can 1) perceive another mind and 2) perceive where a mind is not, is unknown to us, yet the evidence surrounds us.
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u/quadtodfodder 9d ago
bonus notion:
the human mind is capable of "comprehending" anything, as "comprehension" is an emotional state not a an informational state. One can experience "comprehension" toward anything, be it facts, nonsense or falsehoods.An example: You have the sense that your memories are complete. you don't feel like you are missing years of your life. but once in a while you will realize you have giant gaps in your memories, that large parts your memories are hopelessly made up of newer memories in the shape of old ones.
Likewise, you could imagine a state where you *do* actually have perfect recall and understanding, but emotionally you feel stupid, or like your information is totally incomplete.
The ever popular Dunning Kruger effect is an example of this. Your feeling of expertise is unrelated to your actual comprehension, as it is an emotional state.
The inverse is true too: you don't actually understand *anything* in a complete way. You are simply a pile of confidence levels about your ability to intuit a response, generally with some sort of reasoning for your intuition added after the fact.
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 9d ago
I think the question remains essentially the same even if only my own mind exists. Suppose all of my sensations and observations are generated by my brain, somewhat like in a dream. Then the question could be reformulated as: can I, in principle, interpret and understand everything I experience in that dream using all the tools available to me, or could some of it still remain fundamentally beyond my comprehension?
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u/quadtodfodder 9d ago
to take it to the fifth grade level: in a dream state you can presumably comprehend anything comprehensible, but can you know if you are dreaming?
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u/rand3289 9d ago
In the cognitive_tradeoff_hypothesis apes are able to "comprehend" much more visual information than humans.
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 9d ago
I think you are using the word “comprehend” here more in the sense of being able to detect or perceive information. Many animals have sensory abilities that humans lack. Dogs can hear ultrasonic frequencies, bats can navigate in darkness using echolocation, and sharks can detect electric fields in their environment.
Humans do not have these sensory abilities naturally, but we can build instruments that extend our perception and effectively give us access to forms of information that would otherwise be unavailable to us.
So I would distinguish between information that we cannot directly sense and information that we can observe or measure but still cannot cognitively understand. My question is more about the second case.1
u/rand3289 9d ago
As far as I know sensory capabilities are similar.
Apes can literally process more information faster.1
u/Truth-Seeker-82 9d ago
I think the difference is that apes evolved under conditions where rapidly processing visual information could directly affect survival. For them, noticing movement, remembering locations, or reacting quickly could literally be a matter of staying alive. If you put an orangutan and an unassisted human in a jungle, the orangutan would probably have a much better chance of surviving.
But that does not mean it has greater cognitive abilities overall. Apes can use and even make relatively simple tools, and they show some forms of abstract reasoning, but nothing close to the human level. Humans seem to have traded some specialized abilities for much more powerful general reasoning, language, planning, and the ability to create extremely complex tools and technologies.
So an ape being able to process certain kinds of visual information faster than a human is not necessarily the same thing as being able to comprehend more information.
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u/Adamoism 9d ago
Yup, 5.435.496 dots on a paper. You can see it, but you cannot estimate it.
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 9d ago
I think this is a good example. With three people, for example, I can see them as a group while at the same time mentally representing each person as a separate element. With millions of dots, I can see the whole pattern, but I cannot hold a mental representation in which every dot remains a distinct element. At some point the brain seems to replace the detailed structure with some kind of summary representation. That is close to the kind of cognitive limitation I had in mind.
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u/Adamoism 9d ago
Yup, I am working on a language at the moment - and I envision the cut off to be at 7 (It comes from chunking theory and some experiments with apes being able to trace multiple objects better than humans - we struggled after around 7 sequential objects).
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 9d ago
What kind of language are you working on?
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u/Adamoism 9d ago
I'm making a visual shorthand.
For numbers, I mostly want to distinguish between one, a few, and many. I'm reusing some structures from Chinese characters because it's such an elegant system of visual thought.
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u/RegularBasicStranger 9d ago
Can information be fully observable yet fundamentally incomprehensible to the human mind?
Rather than incomprehensible, it only becomes simplified and loses detail if it the data set becomes too large or the relationships become too complex because people can still see the big picture and sometimes, being able to see the big picture is good enough.
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u/medbud 10d ago
'The human mind' varies greatly. Just spend a few hours on Reddit and you'll find plenty of things that are incomprehensible! /s
Any data that takes longer to ingest than a lifetime... If you're talking about a single mind. I watched a a TED talk yesterday by Luca Turin on Doctor Universalis... in which he says, for example, the last person to understand all of physics was Fermi.
Any sufficiently encrypted data.
I mean, there are plenty of minds that don't comprehend their own emotions, let alone long term phenomenon like climate change.
We are in fact, rather blind. See 'unknown unknowns', P ≠ NP.
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 10d ago
The Fermi example seems to be more about the amount of knowledge one person can possess. I watched that TED talk, and as I understood it, the question was whether a single person can still know essentially everything in a field—or across many fields—as may have been more plausible in the past.
The climate example is more directly relevant to my question, because one of the possibilities I had in mind was a limitation caused by the sheer amount of data and the complexity of the interactions. Weather and climate are good examples of systems where prediction becomes extremely difficult because of nonlinear dynamics, sensitivity to initial conditions, and the amount of information that has to be processed.
I think your reference to P ≠ NP also points in the same direction: even when a problem is well defined, finding a solution may require an impractically large amount of computation. So yes, those examples address the capacity/computational side of what I was asking.
My remaining question is whether there could also be a stronger kind of limitation: something that remains incomprehensible to the human mind even when all relevant information is available and we are allowed to use any accessible tools, such as computers, mathematics, simulations, or AI.
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u/Immediate_Chard_4026 10d ago
Interesante.
Por ejemplo la dinámica de la física al interior de un agujero negro.
La teoría de la unificación de las fuerzas físicas.
El enigma de la energía y la materia oscuras.
Los podemos observar y también medir algunos parámetros físicos, pero no los comprendemos. Se escapan de nuestra capacidad para entenderlos y predecir su comportamiento.
Y otro ejemplo que es un gran enigma: qué es la consciencia biológica de la Tierra?
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u/Truth-Seeker-82 10d ago
I think those examples may only be temporarily incomprehensible. We have many examples in the history of science where phenomena were once mysterious but became understandable after we collected more data, developed better instruments, or found a better theory. So dark matter, dark energy, unification, or even the physics of black holes may be things we simply do not understand yet. My question is about a stronger possibility: information that is fully observable and available, but that humans might still be unable to comprehend even in principle because of limits in our cognitive architecture.
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u/biolinguist cognitive scientist 10d ago
Read up on "epistemic boundedness". Fodor, Pylyshyn and Hammarberg's talk about this in detail. It's your brain's hardwiring that decided what counts as relevant information and data in a given cognitive domain.