I need to return to this topic, as this post lacks clarity and explanation.
In about 1984, I had been researching (as in reading) about neuroethology. In 1980 or 1981 (probably) I returned to UCSB, after a time in Micronesia. I was inspired. During a previous year, between my time in the Marshall Islands and Kiribati, I had virtually camped out at the UCSB library, soaking up everything I could about Micronesia. My travels began with an intention to immerse myself in Underwater Photography. I had been exposed to much more than I had anticipated. When I checked in with Immigration at the Majuro airport, I was told I would be allowed a year's visa in the Trust Territory; I had planned for five years.
It was a wonderful time, never to be revisited, but it all seems a blur. Eventually, I was accepted to return to UCSB, with the stated intention of pursuing Naval Architecture, with the hope of studying the Outrigger Canoes of Micronesia. I began in 1981 with an eye to Mechanical Engineering; once I was actually on campus, however, I woke up to realize that I had first come to UCSB in 1964 with a dream of studying Marine Biology. So I changed my major, immediately, and buried myself in the books. This experience was a far cry from my earlier two years when the University was just the next step, I think, in a pre-ordained path.
During my three or so years at UCSB in the 1980s, I squirreled away credits with intensity and intention, in a broad range of disciplines. I think I enrolled in 19-22 credits in almost every term, also taking courses in Summer Session. In required subjects (for Biology studies) I took the more challenging courses, reasoning, as Tom Harding had taught me, that a man's reach should exceed his grasp. It was my explicit intent to learn to read everything: I was more important, for example, to learn enough math, biochemistry, chemistry, physics, ethnology, linguistics, to grasp the language, to develop the background to proceed further on my own.
I held two work-study jobs, for two professors, doing library research. As was my ilk, I immersed myself in these researches, to the extreme; even though the task was to generate slides for lectures, for these professors, I dug in deep.
Two of the subjects of interest at that time were ethnology and neuroethology. Professor Jim Case had inspired me with his lectures in General Biology (Bio 7?) with his explorations of what we could learn about the brain, non-invasively. Neuroethology was the study of the neural circuitry in the context of behaviors. Professor Tom Harding mentored me about ethnology of the Pacific Islands.
A textbook, a broad-ranging treatment of Neuroethology, had a chapter about Industrial Psychology. My interest was piqued when I learned of studies of workers in assembly jobs showing the number of errors increased over time. An idea was associated with this work: the human brain did not evolve for prefect replication of repetitive tasks. And, somehow, I realized or read that neither was the human brain evolved for engineering perfect systems; rather, for solving problems and improving on the existing imperfect solutions.
My epiphany was a realization that humans could not possibly invent a perfect, unbreakable system, no matter what. The problems posed by the desired objective---say, to design a perfect, unsinkable ship---are beyond our reach.
At the same time I was reading Linguistics. Every Ling textbook starts with a statement that human language is a qualitatively distinct entity from animal communication that comes before it. Thinking about the limitations of the human brain, I felt this was an insult to my intelligence. I will not dive deeper; there is more meat on this bone.
Today I saw an article about a single-core computer broke a quantum encryption target.
This is just another example: it will never be possible to design a perfect system of encryption. The attempts to do so will involve a never-ending spiral.
