> I can say, we will never know what the first human that got to North America had for lunch on their 20th birthday, and I think that’s as true as it could reasonably be.

if there is a large mirror a few hundred light years away we might be able to see his lunch in the reflection ;)

Not necessarily. The signal-to-noise ratio drops the farther you get away.

Very few things about the origins of the universe can be stated as fact at this point so “we will never know” isn't a "fact" either. Implied certainty on either side seems pre-emptive.

I'm not questioning that part. I don't know if stating that we'll never know about the origins of the universe is correct. I tend to agree personally that it seems premature.

All I'm saying is that making (nearly) absolute claims with incomplete knowledge is not a contradiction.

Furthermore there is the complication caused by ambiguous problem statements. In your example, how we define the first human that got to North America? Which immigration wave? What if there were immigration waves that were completely wiped out without leaving any effects of the subsequent populations?

What is the 20th birthday? According to which calendar? (Leap days etc)?

What is lunch? Not every people subdivide their meals in a predictable way that you can pinpoint to what "lunch" is

Etc etc

EDIT: forgot the most obvious: define what counts for human. It's not clear cut to distinguish boundaries between species

Furthermore if a human time travels back to the past and then sets up shop and lives amongst the first humans, maybe they are the first human? Semantics and ambiguity have a way of making unspecific questions paradoxical