A thought experiment on why pursuing all knowledge in the universe might be impossible. If you had 99.9% of all knowledge but needed to make one decision, the missing 0.1% could invalidate everything you believe. Each step forward feels rational but might be guided by a fundamentally flawed compass.
How do we gain all the knowledge in the universe? There's a group of scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs that have made it their number one goal to gain all the knowledge in the universe. But is that even possible? Right now, humanity possesses a small fraction of the knowledge compared to what is left to discover. Any idea or conclusion we come to can be disproved with new knowledge. So we do not know if it is possible or not to gain all the knowledge in the universe. But according to universalists, the best way to find out is to attempt it. So how does someone act if their goal is to gain all the knowledge in the universe? Let's imagine that your goal is to gain all the knowledge in the universe, and you have 99.9% of the knowledge in the universe, and you are faced with one final decision that will determine whether or not you gained the last 1% of knowledge. You would not know which decision was correct, no matter how much evidence and and reasoning you had supporting your decision, the very last 1% of knowledge that you're trying to gain could contain the knowledge needed to make the correct choice. As much as you know, the missing 1% can disprove everything that you believe. This means that our pursuit of knowledge could actually be making us more lost. Every decision appears rational based on the knowledge that we currently have, but the vast amount of knowledge that we are missing could reveal that everything we are doing is wrong. It would be like we were navigating with a compass that was pointed the wrong way. Every step would seem correct because it would agree with the compass, but the compass itself Is only making us more lost. Infinite paths lie in front of you.
