I’d be the first to admit that “theory of everything” is infinitely compelling to me, but increasingly I think it also deserves caution. It would certainly ope

I’d be the first to admit that “theory of everything” is infinitely compelling to me, but increasingly I think it also deserves caution. It would certainly open many new avenues to explore, and potentially bring lots of innovation. However, to prove it you would need infinite resources and infinite time—in other words, you will never prove it, so within the framework of physics you will not assume it is complete and correct and absolute truth. But there are people who will assume just that, they’ll see how well it works and what progress it brings and say “that’s it guys, we have finally arrived at truth!” When they see something that doesn’t fit in the model (say, consciousness or free will), they will say it doesn’t exist and influence policy decisions based on that. When they see someone using another theory or even suggesting there can be others, they will ridicule them. As map is never the territory, any model is always going to be a local maximum, and a particularly high local maximum followed by a steep trough might make it difficult to reach the next one.