"No, the analogy is between one job of washing up (which will need to be done again in a few hours' time, and again and again for as long as you continue to eat) and learning one poem (which once done is done)."
Which is a false analogy, because you aren't comparing like with like. The analogy would be comparing one job of washing up with learning one poem, whether you decide to do some more washing up or learning is irrelevant. OK, you might claim that you have to do the washing up but not learn a poem, in which case the analogy breaks down from the start.
"I'm talking about the acquisition of knowledge, which you seem to want to be open-ended but which isn't proven to be and doesn't have to be."
But neither is it proven to be finite, and it doesn't have to be finite either. Both are assumptions. However, I am stating that the infinite is an assumption (and therefore may not be true -- since it's untestable because by definition something infinite it can only ever be an assumption), whereas you seem to be asserting that it is false (which is indeed testable, all you have to do is find an end to knowledge).
"if there is no way to understand a finite universe completely, then sooner or later we're going to hit a wall far more painful than the one you seem to be postulating, one that says "THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER" when you can see that there is farther to go."
Huh? Where's that wall come from? My visualisation of the Cosmic All has no need for any such wall, because no matter how big we get the universe will always be bigger. The only limitation, in my weltanschauung, is that as mortal beings (and if we become immortal we will no longer be human in any normal sense) we cannot know the infinite.
"To me, hoping that the amount of knowledge and understanding is finite is like hoping that people will stop writing books or music. If it ever happened life would be very boring..." Assertion.
Er, yes, that's what "to me" means. In My Opinion. I did not assert it as an absolute or about anyone else, and explicitly said so.
Re-reading? I love it. But there are already quite a few books which I don't reread because I know them too well (it's been around 25 years, I guess, since I last reread LotR, and I feel no particular desire to do so. But I keep the books because it's possible I might want to reread them sometime before I die.)
"not only that everything is not knowable but that somehow that's a happy"
Negative in the wrong place. I didn't say that everything is unknowable, I said that not everything is knowable, i.e. there are some things which are not totally knowable. For instance, in order to say that "there is no other intelligent life in the universe" one would have to explore every part of it -- and still while one was looking in one place they could have gone (or evolved) somewhere else. Can we know what came before the Big Bang (if that theory's still current)? Can we even know what is out there beyond the red-shift boundary, if we are limited by the speed of light? (Yes, that's a 'wall', possibly, and I don't like it.)
I don't think that "science has to proceed on the basis that everything is eventually knowable", Certainly it doesn't at the moment, it ignores areas where it can't find repeatable results and where there are no testable theories (from what I've heard that's part of the definition of science, that if it dealt with those other things then it might be philosophy or something).
Which one is "a happy" is a matter of taste (de gustibus And All That). I'm happy knowing that there is more to the universe than I, or anyone I know, will ever know. You aren't. You say "Personally, if the choice were between boredom and frustration (I don't think it is), I'll take boredom any day" -- I can't argue with that, because that's your personal taste (and mine is different). I do argue with an (apparent) assertion that the way you feel is the way everyone else does (or should) feel about it.
no subject
Which is a false analogy, because you aren't comparing like with like. The analogy would be comparing one job of washing up with learning one poem, whether you decide to do some more washing up or learning is irrelevant. OK, you might claim that you have to do the washing up but not learn a poem, in which case the analogy breaks down from the start.
"I'm talking about the acquisition of knowledge, which you seem to want to be open-ended but which isn't proven to be and doesn't have to be."
But neither is it proven to be finite, and it doesn't have to be finite either. Both are assumptions. However, I am stating that the infinite is an assumption (and therefore may not be true -- since it's untestable because by definition something infinite it can only ever be an assumption), whereas you seem to be asserting that it is false (which is indeed testable, all you have to do is find an end to knowledge).
"if there is no way to understand a finite universe completely, then sooner or later we're going to hit a wall far more painful than the one you seem to be postulating, one that says "THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER" when you can see that there is farther to go."
Huh? Where's that wall come from? My visualisation of the Cosmic All has no need for any such wall, because no matter how big we get the universe will always be bigger. The only limitation, in my weltanschauung, is that as mortal beings (and if we become immortal we will no longer be human in any normal sense) we cannot know the infinite.
Er, yes, that's what "to me" means. In My Opinion. I did not assert it as an absolute or about anyone else, and explicitly said so.
Re-reading? I love it. But there are already quite a few books which I don't reread because I know them too well (it's been around 25 years, I guess, since I last reread LotR, and I feel no particular desire to do so. But I keep the books because it's possible I might want to reread them sometime before I die.)
"not only that everything is not knowable but that somehow that's a happy"
Negative in the wrong place. I didn't say that everything is unknowable, I said that not everything is knowable, i.e. there are some things which are not totally knowable. For instance, in order to say that "there is no other intelligent life in the universe" one would have to explore every part of it -- and still while one was looking in one place they could have gone (or evolved) somewhere else. Can we know what came before the Big Bang (if that theory's still current)? Can we even know what is out there beyond the red-shift boundary, if we are limited by the speed of light? (Yes, that's a 'wall', possibly, and I don't like it.)
I don't think that "science has to proceed on the basis that everything is eventually knowable", Certainly it doesn't at the moment, it ignores areas where it can't find repeatable results and where there are no testable theories (from what I've heard that's part of the definition of science, that if it dealt with those other things then it might be philosophy or something).
Which one is "a happy" is a matter of taste (de gustibus And All That). I'm happy knowing that there is more to the universe than I, or anyone I know, will ever know. You aren't. You say "Personally, if the choice were between boredom and frustration (I don't think it is), I'll take boredom any day" -- I can't argue with that, because that's your personal taste (and mine is different). I do argue with an (apparent) assertion that the way you feel is the way everyone else does (or should) feel about it.