Do you want to live in a world where everything can explained?

[CleanShavenJesus]

I'm wondering how we would know everything is known. Knowing how we proved that would be interesting.

I agree. I think, if we did somehow manage to discover everything we could, how would we know we did?

[Angrboda]

You neglected to provide an option for, "don't care."


I like knowledge and learning, and value its instrumental utility, but have no real feelings that more or less of it in and of itself matters to me. Having explanations for everything would change things. That's neither good or bad in and of itself. I suspect most of the human questions, even if radically altered by that knowledge, would still present the same type of challenges to each individual as they grow and develop. That's the reality that matters, in my opinion.

(ETA: It just occurred to me that if we start engineering minds with technology like that in the movie The Matrix, the human experience could be so radically altered as to be unrecognizable. Perhaps someday, "growing up" will be obsolete.)

[Violet]

Put those drugs away

Respond to inanity with inanity... nobody needs drugs for that.

Well... I don't.

---

I've learned everything I need to know about frogs thanks to you.

You're welcome, good Gearbreak.

* Violet graciously curtsies before you.

I hope that this new knowledge takes you far

[Ryantology]

Even if humanity knew everything, I personally would not, so I guess it wouldn't much matter to me.

[Cato]

Art. Even if an observer knew every technique and could ascribe the appropriate wavelength of light and sound, the three dimentional chemical contributions of taste, touch and smell; could the observer experience the same emotion that the artist felt? What if they are different? I don't think this lessens the observer's experience. How many iterations are there? I think science will always be silent in this realm.

[My imaginary friend is GOD]

I'm not sure such a world can exist, because the universe is infinite and constantly expanding, so there are always more things to learn.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

In this world, scientific discoveries and research have stopped: everything is known to mankind.

Right! And the field of invention is open to engineers who come up with all the new things. And the medical folks and everyone else who applies scientific knowledge to practical purposes.

One you have all the science the real work begins. All the science of cars and planes is known. Everything we don't know is computational limits. Yet there is still progress in both.

Every problem with making smaller and faster computer chips was fully understood long before the engineers figured out how to make it work.

---

I'm wondering how we would know everything is known. Knowing how we proved that would be interesting.

We can ignore Godel's incompleteness theorem for the sake of this discussion.

I would say simply everything which is observed can either be explained or fall into the category of not explained yet without the need for new physics. Right now dark energy and dark matter require new physics. Observations of stellar novas are far from fully explained but there is not the slightest suggestion that new physics will be required to explain the observations.

For example when it comes to medical drugs everything about the science of chemistry related to making them has been known for decades. How to make the reactions occur to produce them is not science but engineering.

[viocjit]

Yes but the question is how ?

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Yes but the question is how ?

How what?

[Polaris]

Then what would be the point of existence?