I use "deep" and "profound" for lack of better words.
I know I know very little of what there is to know. The more I learn, the more true I know the last statement to be.
However, I hunger for something profound. Something so broadly applicable that it penetrates all of life, and presented as so clearly true, that it is not simply held as "may be true."
Tautologies are general, and context free, but lack the power of application. But they are the closest to profound truth that I have found.
Everything to me now just seems like another things that "may be true" or are "simple facets" of thing that I believe are "likely true" along with tautologies.
I would like toe learn "likely true" things that are broadly and generally applicable.
As a kid, it seemed like I could learn new stuff like that...
- Using the speed of sound plus delay to measure the distance of things (a jet, a storm, fireworks whatever you could both see and hear). When I learned this as a kid, I would go to hill tops to see and hear vehicles whizzing by, and to this day, I have a habit of counting the time between lightning and thunder, and the delay between sight and sound of fireworks.
- That acceleration*momentum=power, was kind of like that too. Less directly applicable (nonetheless still applicable), and extremely general. I had already a common sense notion of the components involved, but the relationship seemed profound when I derived it as a kid.
But this sort of thing just doesn't seem to come around much these days.