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bananaflagtoday at 12:18 AM3 repliesview on HN

It's basically the opposite situation from 150 years ago.

Back then, we thought our theory was more or less complete while having experimental data which disproved it (Michelson-Morley experiment, Mercury perihelion, I am sure there are others).

Right now, we know our theories are incomplete (since GR and QFT are incompatible) while having no experimental data which contradicts them.


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Paracompacttoday at 12:43 AM

What about underexplained cosmological epicycles like dark matter (in explaining long-standing divergences of gravitational theory from observation), or the Hubble tension?

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klipttoday at 12:44 AM

Doesn't that imply our theories are "good enough" for all practical purposes? If they're impossible to empirically disprove?

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throw_m239339today at 12:49 AM

I find the idea that reality might be quantized fascinating, so that all information that exists could be stored in a storage medium big enough.

It's also kind of interesting how causality allegedly has a speed limit and it's rather slow all things considered.

Anyway, in 150 years we absolutely came a long way, we'll figure it that out eventually, but as always, figuring it out might lead even bigger questions and mysteries...

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