Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on "Science" as Curiosity-Stopper - Less Wrong

54 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 September 2007 08:04PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 September 2007 08:36:31PM 5 points [-]

In practice, grand mysteries seem to be those that have more implications, and yes, those that other people have struggled and so far failed to answer.

More implications - certainly. Those that other people have struggled and failed to answer - yes indeed! It's that term so far that I object to. If Science struggled for over a century to answer a question, such as "What is life?" or "What is fire?", then it should always be a grand mystery, forever and amen, to all who do not know it.

The problem is, of course, that between guessing the teacher's password, a general training-out of noticing one's own confusion, fake causality, a tendency to think of mysteries as "inherently understood" once someone else understands them, and, perhaps, too much pride to admit ignorance of what someone else knows, people don't realize that the grand mysteries are still mysterious unto them.