[kovacs_x]

I'm 1000% sure, in 20, 50, 100, 500 years humans will look back on "science of 20/21th century" as we look now on say 16/17th century- there were some things that were "mostly" right, but most of it was incorrect / inprecise / incomplete and was a fantasy of earlier thought up models.

It's been like that always. Don't think it'll be different this time. Though people of every time thought they had (almost) complete understanding of the universe. I remember reading that at the beginning of 20th century science was largerly considered complete... we know how it turned out! (think relativity, quantum physics, etc.)

Think about that!

(ps. me personally I just cannot stomach that universe is only <15B "years" old. Not saying there was no BANG! (ie. large cosmic event) back then and we're products of it :), but don't think it was "the beginning of everything". Seems very much like "god created universe!" type of thinking)

[physicles]

Sure, the frontier is always messy. Scientists talk about “quarks” and “dark energy” but those are just placeholders for “we kinda get what they do but we have no idea what they actually are.”

100 or 500 years from now, QM and GR will turn out to be approximations, or shadows, of some deeper theory. But that won’t change how insanely accurate their predictions are.

Our understanding of reality isn’t just moving forward, it’s getting asymptotically closer to ground truth. New theories may upend the conceptual framework, but they still just add decimal points — they have to, otherwise they’re worse theories than what we already have.

[Vecr]

Why? Sure, maybe a better number to give is "somewhere around 20", but it's difficult to tell how the "true number" could be over 100 or even 50.

[miramba]

Explanation needed. How can you, a primitive ape on a tiny remote planet with an average lifespan of 80 years (not meant as an insult, I am too), be sure about what happened 15, 20 or 100 BILLION years ago? I think this is what parent meant with: "people of every time thought they had (almost) complete understanding of the universe." - "Don't think it'll be different this time."