Steve grapples with the idea that the window might be closing on humanity's effort to unpuzzle, or learn, or understand the world around us.
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The demand for a meaning which the world does not supply is often disguised under a passion for metaphysics. But the real problem is not to find the world meaningful, but to endure it without meaning—and still to act.
Lionel Trilling — The Liberal Imagination
Most people think that if they just had more information, they'd make better decisions. But the problem is rarely informational — it's structural. The question isn't 'what do I know?' but 'what am I incentivized to see?'
Charlie Munger — Poor Charlie's Almanack
In science, as well as in other fields of human endeavor, there are two kinds of geniuses: the "ordinary" and the "magicians." An ordinary genius is a [person] that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what he has done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. They are, to use mathematical jargon, in the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark.
Mark Kac