Do we fully understand anything about the nature of the cosmos? Can we?
You're reading statements put out by university PR departments, or worse yet, journalists' attempts at summarizing them. It's almost all garbage. The actual information is in papers and conference proceedings.
When somebody's primary exposure to science is through the headlines "Science discovers red wine is good for you" ... "Actually it isn't" ... "Actually it is." "Actually it isn't" ... how can we expect them to believe that scientists actually know what they're doing? We can say "well your iphone is amazing and science made that, so you should take the rest of it on faith" but that doesn't work on a lot of people. And perhaps rightly so; imagine the argument "Our priests are very good at predicting eclipses [true!], so you have faith when they tell us that sacrificing your child is necessary to ensure a good harvest."
Not like you, of course. You’re so much smarter than the masses right? What an insufferable and ignorant view of the average person.
Do you think it is insufferable and ignorant to acknowledge the fact that roughly 1 in 5 adult Americans is barely literate, and roughly half read below a 6th grade level? Should we pretend this isn't true, for the sake of decorum? (If you doubt these figures, I trust that you know how to look it up.) To people like this, the primary scientific literature is simply inaccessible. Some of them go with the flow and take science on faith, but the more skeptical among them will often wind up distrusting scientists because pop-sci communication is rife with inconsistencies and exaggerations even they can spot.
If you think I've gotten anything factually wrong in the above, please point it out. If your problem is merely with my attitude, then I can assure you the feeling is mutual.
As if one was hunting for Pi, knowing it could never be fully resolved, but still: “more digits is closer!”. Except they started with a “4.”
“Everything” doesn’t mean equal amounts of every thing.
Yes, it does in this case. The universe is infinite.
Whether or not this is true, it's somewhat irrelevant, as the observable universe is finite, meaning there's a finite amount of "stuff" that can causally influence us. What happens far beyond the observable universe is not worth dwelling on, as we will never see it or be otherwise influenced by it.
Well that’s a completely bogus claim you’ve entirely made up and presented as fact. But I’ll bite anyways: even infinite sets can have different cardinalities. The set of natural vs real numbers, for instance.
(See how making claims with 0 support besides pseudo-ontological bologna isn’t helpful?)
You seem unable to separate faith from fact. And you could certainly use a dose of your “the map is not the territory” quip when it comes to your “logic”.
And people with astronomy degrees are quite likely to believe astronomical observations bring them closer to “The Truth”, because “data”. Just as people with CS degrees believe computational study does the same, because “simulation”. And those with Psyc degrees…
And the whole point of the article is to say we used to think these things were super rare but actually they’re quite common… now we know everything!