There are too many awesome people living today. If I spent my whole life trying, I would never be able to meet them all. There are too many books, too many jobs. Too many pretty streets, too many interesting houses to visit. There are too many cities with their traditional dishes and their must-see locations. Too many computer games, too many Minecraft worlds.

Sometimes I wonder at the endlessness of space, but our own world is already endless enough for all practical purposes. And yet we must look outside.

There is way too much knowledge for any one person to ever learn, and yet we must do research. We must pick and choose what we do. We give up good people and good paths, without even realizing our choices.

I was thinking about this on my way back from Iwaki, while looking outside the window from the car. I could think some of these infinite thoughts, or I could read a page from the infinite pages produced by people. Or I could talk to one of the infinite humankind in the same car as me.

And a quick, common-sense rule would tell me that one of these choices would be better than the others (probably talking to the person). One of these choices would make my life richer. But when we think about the enormity of our search space, these differences seem way below the significance level.

But in spite of appearances (as always), I thought of this as a positive thought. There are so many choices, and so many good choices inside this set, that it is hard to run out of them. There is always something good out there waiting for you – always a good choice to select – always many good choices to select.

Still, it can be scary to try to imagine it all from above.