I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask “Why are we here?” I might think about it a little bit, and if I can’t figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.
p. 239, from interview in “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out” (1981)
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Richard Feynman
Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
All Goals in Life Are Problematic — Except One
by Zat Rana
https://medium.com/personal-growth/all-goals-in-life-are-problematic-except-one-6036f9cd9ef7
Feynman embodied this, but he also once said something that captures what it is that differentiates such a pursuit from mere goals and certainties:
Goals, incorrectly, assume that we already know what it is that we want. Interestingness is more humble. It makes up its mind as it moves, slowly blowing from one thing to another, until it eventually grasps something that lies beyond prediction.
I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.
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Is the “questions that can’t be answered over answers that can’t be questioned” quote by Feynman authentic?
https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/3692/is-the-ques-tions-that-can-t-be-an-swered-over-an-swers-that-can-t-be-ques-tion
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
What is Science?
http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/what_is_science.html