What is the highest possible idea/question man can contemplate?

What is the highest possible idea/question man can contemplate?

And why do geniuses settle to study things less than the highest-possible idea/question?

Grothendiek spent most of his youth thinking about properties of shapes and numbers, but gave that up as he got old and started thinking about more important things.
Von Neumann could multiply digits really fast, impressive, but when he came to the end of his life he was extremely afraid of death and didn't know how to cope. He spent too much time thinking about inferior ideas, instead of contemplating the highest idea. Naturally he would panic and be anxious in the face of death, huh.

What the fuck? There is no ''highest possible thing'' to think about. People just are drawn to different things, by nature or nurture I don't know.

>What is the highest possible idea/question man can contemplate?

The one you subjectively value the most.

This is the most autistic thread I have ever seen on Veeky Forums

>why can't I suck my own dick?

>There is no ''highest possible thing'' to think about.

...

Society typically forces people to choose paths. In a truly optimal world people would be free to study and learn anything they wanted. But then you would get lazy fucks who don't contribute anything at all.

barnett triple integrals

you don't think there exists a difference of significance/importance in scale between Von Neumann making breakthroughs in Physics versus a neckbeard arguing about which naruto character is the strongest??

what?

>Von Neumann
>Breakthrough

Ye, what is that? Le ''Jack of all and master of none'' - guy.

>people would be free to study and learn anything they wanted

That would be terrible and sub-optimal tho.

I actually kinda agree however, in the sense that public education should be completely defunded.

Those who are truly worthy will find a way to acquire the knowledge they need, as was customary in more civilized times; the sovereign simply has to accept those who show up, with nary a dystopian bureaucracy to be found.

No, compared to what? What difference does it make wether one guy is arguing Itachi prime vs Jiraya vs Game theory?

...

Peasants swerve, superior man coming through.

>master of none

Stan Ulam, who knew von Neumann well, described his mastery of mathematics this way: "Most mathematicians know one method. For example, Norbert Wiener had mastered Fourier transforms. Some mathematicians have mastered two methods and might really impress someone who knows only one of them. John von Neumann had mastered three methods." He went on to explain that the three methods were:

A facility with the symbolic manipulation of linear operators;
An intuitive feeling for the logical structure of any new mathematical theory;
An intuitive feeling for the combinatorial superstructure of new theories.[102]

Edward Teller wrote that "Nobody knows all science, not even von Neumann did. But as for mathematics, he contributed to every part of it except number theory and topology. That is, I think, something unique."[103]

>he contributed to every part of it except number theory and topology.

So he did literally nothing. Good to know.

...

He's right, y'know.

>And why do geniuses settle to study things less than the highest-possible idea/question?
Because they find some things more interesting than others. It's largely a matter of taste.

We already have the answer to that question (and you already know it). Trouble is we don't know what the ultimate question is.