Sean Carroll’s Theory of the Everyday
The laws of physics underlying everyday life are, at one level of description, completely known, and can be summarized in a single elegant—if quite complex—equation.
No shit, Sean! He goes on to be quite the Debbie Downer.
Assuming Carroll’s claim is correct, it has a number of immediate implications. It means there is no life after death, as the information in a person’s mind is encoded in the physical configuration of atoms in their body, and there is no physical mechanism for that information to be carried away after death. The problems of consciousness must ultimately be answered in terms of processes that are compatible with this underlying theory. And while historically, discoveries of new particles and forces have spurred technological innovations, Core Theory means that won’t happen going forward, since those discoveries won’t be at a level to impact our everyday lives.