> what abstractions are we missing today that will be obvious to future generations? I think we're missing a science of meaning, and (closely related) trust.

> what abstractions are we missing today that will be obvious to future generations? I think we're missing a science of meaning, and (closely related) trust. We have a science of raw data and bits (basic thermodynamics into information theory), a science of sending streams of bits (information theory), and provide rigorous numerical bounds for e.g. if you know the medium, how quickly one can signal. We don't have a predictive, numerical theory of meaning, which is how interpretations of data or information cohere to the real world and how those meanings can be trusted and transmitted from one another in a robust way. We're seeing the failure of meaning all around us today as we're drowned by real data and fake data and noise, as competing voices and groups spread selfish memes and narratives that ultimately obscure truth. We're seeing the failure of meaning as our overcompetition in academia spawns a raft of fake or non-replicable studies and p-hacking, threatening to drown the signal with noise. Anyway, there are hints of a 'science of meaning' in different fields: Graphical statistical models hint at how causality can be inferred from downstream facts, game theory tells us some (very limited) conditions under which selfish players can learn to trust one another, evolutionary theory tells us how groups can learn to cooperate and share models of the world. But none of these provide predictive and quantitative bounds, so as of yet, meaning is an art left for cultural leaders and manipulated by advertisers and politicians, and not yet a science.