When people ask, “What’s the point in understanding everything?” they’ve just disqualified themselves from using questions and should disappear in a puff of paradox. But they don’t understand and just continue existing, which are also their only two strategies for life. These are the apes who sat in the back of the cave, scratching themselves while ooking about how bashing rocks together was a total waste of time. Except back then they had a better excuse for their sloping foreheads and scratching themselves in public.

Previous investigations of apparently pointless physical phenomena led to little things like electricity, quantum mechanics, absolutely everything, the entire modern world. Stuff like that. The most important breakthrough in the last thousand years came from shining invisible light on a piece of metal to watch more invisible bits come out. If scientists hadn’t followed up on this odd little detail (aka the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, the most badass-sounding revolution in scientific understanding), the absolute limit of modern technology would be brass and steam. And we’d have Cavepunks wearing fake animal skins, posting lithographs of themselves holding giant fake clubs that don’t actually work for hitting things.