I appreciate her effort and the intellectual courage to make this presentation. However, as the author of some of the greatest ideas in human history (to the extent that I am aware of it), I disagree with her ranking. Without going into my ideas, I feel obliged to note that we owe a great deal to those who tried to protect their loved ones, or even people they do not know (including future generations) in a world/universe that did not appear to them to be 'entirely' understandable. In other words, for thousands of years, with no claim to being able to understand the universe, men and women struggled to do what they could to prevent or alleviate pain, feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted, etc. Even today, many people who make contributions to the lot of humankind, and the flora and the fauna, make no claim to be able to _understand_ the mindsets of those humans who prey upon other humans... A person with proper epistemic modesty would choose _never_ to claim that the entire universe, and all the phenomena in it, are understandable. Instead, even a discoverer of one of the most astounding set of lawful phenomena would be better off stating something like this: "I find _this much_ to be lawful and understandable. I will not pass judgment on the rest, at this point." Likewise, a person who finds a cure to a very common and deadly disease would be well advised to say: "What I found appears, at this point, to cure the disease X. I make no claim that it can also cure _all other_ diseases. Nor do I feel justified to offer or endorse the promise that _each and every disease_ can be cured."
Awesome talk. Thanks for sharing.
I appreciate her effort and the intellectual courage to make this presentation. However, as the author of some of the greatest ideas in human history (to the extent that I am aware of it), I disagree with her ranking. Without going into my ideas, I feel obliged to note that we owe a great deal to those who tried to protect their loved ones, or even people they do not know (including future generations) in a world/universe that did not appear to them to be 'entirely' understandable. In other words, for thousands of years, with no claim to being able to understand the universe, men and women struggled to do what they could to prevent or alleviate pain, feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted, etc. Even today, many people who make contributions to the lot of humankind, and the flora and the fauna, make no claim to be able to _understand_ the mindsets of those humans who prey upon other humans... A person with proper epistemic modesty would choose _never_ to claim that the entire universe, and all the phenomena in it, are understandable. Instead, even a discoverer of one of the most astounding set of lawful phenomena would be better off stating something like this: "I find _this much_ to be lawful and understandable. I will not pass judgment on the rest, at this point." Likewise, a person who finds a cure to a very common and deadly disease would be well advised to say: "What I found appears, at this point, to cure the disease X. I make no claim that it can also cure _all other_ diseases. Nor do I feel justified to offer or endorse the promise that _each and every disease_ can be cured."