Random note: I've been using more semicolons since SAT, as zhengrong told me how semicolons should be used. I've realized that a lot of commas I've used in the past were supposed to be semicolons. It's not like there is no difference between a comma and semicolon; I've noticed that appropriate usage of semicolons does enable more effective communication in text, even without knowing how they should be used.

I remember watching a chemistry tape. A teacher put an object in a sealed cardboard box, and passed it to some students to let them guess what it was. The students described the object to be "heavy", "not round", and "makes a sound". Although there was nothing disturbing about this scene, it did make me feel rather sad because it shows that we can't really understand the world. With a lot of shaking and perhaps measuring, all we can find out about the object in the box is how it responds to shaking. Thus, our knowledge of that object in the box can be completely described using a function, with it input being the ways the box can be shaken, the output being the observations. In the real world, even the inputs and outputs are objects in sealed boxes. Whenever we measure something, we base our readings on something we aren't completely sure of.

Consider a stapler. All you know about staplers is based on correspondence of how you interact with it and how it responds. How do you know how you interact with it? By pressing on it "hard", there is a degree of uncertainty about how hard we press it. How does it respond? We could measure how fast the staple comes out, but this is also based on our imperfect instruments. Like, how do you know that this pencil isn't exactly 10cm long? You need to know what 10 cm is, right? Okay, so it's a fraction of the distance traveled by light in a fixed amount of time. What is this fixed amount of time? A multiple of the period of a certain EM wave from a Cesium atom. Exciting. How would you measure the period? You can find count the number of cycles, but its so fast that the you need scaling factor, which may not be precisely determined. Or you could measure the wavelength using diffraction patterns, but length is not defined either. What is 10 cm? I have no idea.

Okay. So you've measured the pencil, but you're not sure if the ruler is accurate. You are also not sure if your senses are accurate. What is accurate anyway? Correspondence to the "true" value? Then what is the "true" value? How do you know what is false without even knowing what is true?

In my opinion, there is "knowledge" only because we are imperfect. There is scientific knowledge only because we don't know what is going to happen, so we have to predict. There is mathematical knowledge only because we can't count properly, so we need to use some abstractions and simplifications. There is historical knowledge only because we don't know what happened in the past, so we have to recall, refer and infer. Nature isn't constrained by any laws; it's just like that, and there is nothing to "know" or not "know" about it.

As humans, we have come thus far, with the help some good guesses about Nature. In ourselves we strive towards happiness and abhor suffering, and what we've managed to do with this drive was to propagate and prosper. In a sense, it is like an electronic circuit driven by electrons' affinity towards a high electric potential, and what it manages to do is to perform logical operations for us. Most of the electrons that have been pushed wouldn't reach the region of high potential, but it has done its job.

Some find joy in food. Some find joy in getting good grades. Some find joy in sports. Some find joy in making fun of others. Some fear the prospect of going to hell. Let's join in the fun, and see what they manage to pull off.