There are various prediction markets out there right now which predict the rate of scientific progress; if you feel you know better than scientists about how quickly physics can advance, then you can go ahead RIGHT NOW and try to make money off of them.
"Prediction markets"? Is this like some kind of gambling ring for scientific advancements? By all means, point me to the place!
Oh, you mean there's nothing about General or Special relativity up for grabs? It's almost as if they're incredibly robust theories and that we have quickly hit the realm of diminishing returns with respect to fundamental physics.
There are only two possible outcomes for the pursuit of modern science, one if science is unlimited and one if it proves limited:
1) The causal chain behind things turns out to be relatively within our grasp, so we keep cutting things apart as we are now. And, just as things have been, every few hundred years or so modern science will simply hit another paradigm shift and have to reinterpret or throw out its old models as insufficient. So long as we have access to smaller and smaller, and bigger and bigger, slices of existence, our models will always have to change. Alternatively...
2) The causal chain behind things turns out not to be in our grasp, and we can only cut things up so far. Something like the Higgs-Boson or string theory turns out to be the final theater for scientific warfare against the world, and no new tools enable us to dig any deeper or climb any higher. We're simply left with what we have.
Either way, things don't look particularly promising. This is basically my problem with science.
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et tu, Joey Crawford?
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