Getting this right is a Really Hard Problem because there are entrenched interests for whom this poses an existential threat. There is a lot of power that comes from being an arbiter of truth in a society.
(I think one of the great unsung heroes of humanity is Jimmy Wales. He could have cashed in bigly on Wikipedia, but he chose not to, and as a result Wikipedia is one of the greatest repositories of objective knowledge ever assembled. And it’s free. It’s a freakin’ miracle. Arxiv is also big step in the right direction IMHO.)
[1] https://phys.org/news/2018-10-real-fake-hoodwinks-journals.h...
I think that in the near future there will be a mode shift about how we think about science and technology in general. Simulation will start to replace analytic reasoning (since logical deduction inside our heads has reached its limits of analyzing complex systems), and science will become more and more indistinguishable from engineering (The question of 'what is possible?' will begin to replace 'why is this possible?'). I'm both terrified and excited about this new era.
The Grand Problem of Complexity is a good name for it.
But to give you a bunch of unorganized links if you want to follow a similar line of thought:
- Cybernetics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics)
- Systems theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory)
- Seeing how theoretical physics has been left behind in progress for many decades in favor of fields like chemistry, biology, and earth sciences - which all seem to use those discovered laws of physics, and is increasingly trying to arrive at conclusions through computer simulation of those physical laws.
- Thinking about the relationship between computer graphics (which brings the virtual to the real) and computer vision (which brings the real to the virtual) - and its interplay between the two.
- Continental philosophy (I'm currently reading Batallie's The Accursed Share and it's giving lots of good insights about 'societal' systems and the general economy. Deleuze & Guattari also talks a lot about cybernetics, although their books are notoriously hard to decipher and I've only read second-hand explanations of it. And a few writings from Nick Land (preferably something before his breakdown) seems quite illuminating. Marx also seems to have some surprising proto-insights about the cybernetics of capitalism - it's an area of research I might delve into it later.)
Otherwise somebody has likely already cloned or mirrored Wikipedia.
I mean, in the past there could be a guy alone that discovers 10 math theorems alone and his proofs can be understood by highschool students.
Today we hail new proofs in maths that require 30 pages of proof that few people on Earth can understand.
The same for physics.
To me, the trend is clear.
"This book is written for such men as are in sympathy with its spirit. This spirit is different from the one which informs the vast stream of European and American civilization in which all of us stand. That spirit expresses itself in an onwards movement, in building ever larger and more complicated structures; the other in striving after clarity and perspicuity in no matter what structure. The first tries to grasp the world by way of its periphery -- in its variety; the second at its centre -- in its essence. And so the first adds one construction to another, moving on and up, as it were, from one stage to the next, while the other remains where it is and what it tries to grasp is always the same."
- Wittgenstein, "Philosophical Remarks", Preface
Will the current trend continue so that future discoveries are more and more intricate but also more and more specialised and thus perhaps less interesting? Or will there be a paradigm shift so that we lose interest in many of our "fundamental" results and there will be new low hanging fruits waiting to be "discovered"? Wittgenstein was more sympathetic to the latter view and often countered the view that mathematical results are discovered with the idea that mathematical results are invented (which does not make him a naive constructivist, however).
IIRC he expressed the opinion that his mastery of traditional painting was a burden and had to be unlearned before he could make his best work.
It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
...or this one:
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
But he also did this:
It always reminds me of the story about the woman who approached Picasso in a restaurant, asked him to scribble something on a napkin, and said she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, “That will be $10,000.”
“But you did that in thirty seconds,” the astonished woman replied.
“No,” Picasso said. “It has taken me forty years to do that.”
Ultimately, Picasso made a lot of witty, silly comments. I'm not sure I'd read much into them. Here's one of my favorites, although I can't seem to find an actual source:
Art is the currency of the infinite. I’m rich, I should know.
Ultimately, though, I'm not sure it's quite relevant to what I mean. Today, artists are still "taught" a lot of theory (too much, probably) and the educational goal isn't usually to be childlike.
Picasso is a good example. He broke the rules of art in creative ways because he had such a firm understanding of artistic methods. Nietzsche, with his deep grounding in Ancient Greek and Latin philology, is another modern innovator.
Today, however, we’ve largely adopted the conclusions of the innovators. Rather than try and recreate what led to these breakthroughs in the first place. Discipline and training are mostly irrelevant in a world that is more concerned with novelty and shock value.