# What can we know about that which we cannot even imagine?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.03886 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.03886/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 146 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Aug 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.01815/) (2017)
- [Why AI is Harder Than We Think](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.12871/) (2021)
- [What is important about the No Free Lunch theorems?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.10928/) (2020)
- [The Implications of the No-Free-Lunch Theorems for Meta-induction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11956/) (2021)
- [Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09828/) (2019)
- [Magic: the Gathering is as Hard as Arithmetic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05119/) (2020)
- [Cetacean Translation Initiative: a roadmap to deciphering the communication of sperm whales](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08614/) (2021)
- [Constraints on physical reality arising from a formalization of knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03499/) (2017)
- [Noisy Deductive Reasoning: How Humans Construct Math, and How Math Constructs Universes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.08298/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this essay I will consider a sequence of questions. The first questions concern the biological function of intelligence in general, and cognitive prostheses of human intelligence in particular. These will lead into questions concerning human language, perhaps the most important cognitive prosthesis humanity has ever developed. While it is traditional to rhapsodize about the cognitive power encapsulated in human language, I will emphasize how horribly limited human language is - and therefore how limited our cognitive abilities are, despite their being augmented with language. This will lead to questions of whether human mathematics, being ultimately formulated in terms of human language, is also deeply limited. I will then combine these questions to pose a partial, sort-of, sideways answer to the guiding concern of this essay: what we can ever discern about that we cannot even conceive?