[yelsgib]

Great comment, and I mostly agree :)

Slight digression, but I was interested in your last few sentences. Why do you not think that math or physics have an end game? I think that academic mathematics is dead/worthless, for instance.

Maybe you're talking about the difference between "ideals" and the incarnations of those ideals.

Capitalism is indeed an ideal, but its incarnation (so-called "global capitalism") might disappear as the dominant mode of human interaction. Here's hoping. This has happened in the past, right? E.g. there is no "Feudalism" as such, any more, even if concepts of feudalism are used.

Similarly (going back to Math), "Math" as such will never die - but its incarnation (the mass of all people doing all Math) might have an end game.

I'd actually love a math revolution, since I love math, but it doesn't look like it's going to be easy to re-invigorate it.

[anigbrowl]

That's a philosophical question I don't have the energy to properly answer right now. In the most general terms, I'm just saying that we will always have to make decisions within certain constraints, and widening the constraints is hard so there will often be competition between different actors within those constraints, much as in evolutionary terms.