Do Our Questions Create the World?(blogs.scientificamerican.com)
blogs.scientificamerican.com
Do Our Questions Create the World?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/do-our-questions-create-the-world/
91 comments
I find it both chilling and lovely. Because on one hand, life, endless adventure, full of surprises, insights, new understandings and experiences, feelings, etc. On the other, absolute, fundamental, loneliness (sophistry?) of our own nature - having an individual sense of self but also feeling related to everything we define as not 'I'.
Why this life, why is this the one I have? Where did all of this come from? How did all of this happen?
Life is a waking dream, because we often completely forget that we really just don't know at all why we are here. But we pretend, we forget, we make up stories, we do anything we can do to run away from that question. Why. How did all of this happen? Why does everything happen the way it does? What does that mean, for what I am, all the way at the core?
It's not really nihilism, but it sort of is. It's just, that's the perpetual question that never gets answered directly.
I've thought of myself before as a monad - a being so fundamentally lonely in their own existence that they split themselves up into infinite pieces, just to forget, there's nothing more than what they are. Maybe some buddhist influences, but, we all have our struggles in life. It's not really intended to be sophistry. It just is a very beautiful, but very chilling awareness. What if I go back into what I was when I die?
You could see this as a mental metaphor my mind has arbitrarily made up for all events I've witnessed and been a part of, some sort of perpetual social ostracism I keep walking myself into. But I still think it's more than just that. I loved science growing up. But I can never answer that question - and I know absolutely, that I never will. What happened before 'I exist'?. For any of us. My father often has had a variant of this question, and in the past, it's rubbed people the wrong way because, only a fraction of it gets expressed. We all wear masks. Sometimes there's just a profoundly deep sadness that no one can see.
Chilling, and lovely. In perpetuity.
Why this life, why is this the one I have? Where did all of this come from? How did all of this happen?
Life is a waking dream, because we often completely forget that we really just don't know at all why we are here. But we pretend, we forget, we make up stories, we do anything we can do to run away from that question. Why. How did all of this happen? Why does everything happen the way it does? What does that mean, for what I am, all the way at the core?
It's not really nihilism, but it sort of is. It's just, that's the perpetual question that never gets answered directly.
I've thought of myself before as a monad - a being so fundamentally lonely in their own existence that they split themselves up into infinite pieces, just to forget, there's nothing more than what they are. Maybe some buddhist influences, but, we all have our struggles in life. It's not really intended to be sophistry. It just is a very beautiful, but very chilling awareness. What if I go back into what I was when I die?
You could see this as a mental metaphor my mind has arbitrarily made up for all events I've witnessed and been a part of, some sort of perpetual social ostracism I keep walking myself into. But I still think it's more than just that. I loved science growing up. But I can never answer that question - and I know absolutely, that I never will. What happened before 'I exist'?. For any of us. My father often has had a variant of this question, and in the past, it's rubbed people the wrong way because, only a fraction of it gets expressed. We all wear masks. Sometimes there's just a profoundly deep sadness that no one can see.
Chilling, and lovely. In perpetuity.
> Why this life, why is this the one I have?
This one we are beginning to be able to answer. From what I can tell, the question is entirely backwards. One doesn't have a life. A life has a someone.
A self is a messy, changing collection of descriptions of a human, the most extensive of which are those descriptions that are contained within one's own brain and also in one's bodily presence.
The descriptions don't posses the life. The life generates and manifests the descriptions.
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To be fair, there are many, many useful reasons to frequently ignore this perspective and pretend that we are selves that do indeed possess a life -- the strongest being that we seemingly can't help but do so most of the time, just like we can't help but take the next breath.
However, taking the time to appreciate and meditate on the above can very worthwhile. At least, it has been for me personally.
This one we are beginning to be able to answer. From what I can tell, the question is entirely backwards. One doesn't have a life. A life has a someone.
A self is a messy, changing collection of descriptions of a human, the most extensive of which are those descriptions that are contained within one's own brain and also in one's bodily presence.
The descriptions don't posses the life. The life generates and manifests the descriptions.
------
To be fair, there are many, many useful reasons to frequently ignore this perspective and pretend that we are selves that do indeed possess a life -- the strongest being that we seemingly can't help but do so most of the time, just like we can't help but take the next breath.
However, taking the time to appreciate and meditate on the above can very worthwhile. At least, it has been for me personally.
Was watching Sherlock Holmes recently.
'Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off of it.'
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
'Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off of it.'
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
There are reductionist answers to these questions, albeit incomplete. We know about evolution, we know about the Big Bang. We are not sure by what exact mechanism consciousness works -- if we can even define it properly enough to begin with, but going by our current model of the universe we know it is the result of the Big Bang, and evolution.
There are intermediate answers to questions like "Why this life, why is this the one I have? Where did all of this come from? How did all of this happen?"
The chain of intermediate questions and answers leads to the ultimate frontiers of science. One has to accept the possibility that our desire for an ultimate, resounding answer to these questions may never be quenched. Perhaps the universe just defies human understanding at some point. Even our language become circular at some point: the definitions of "thing", "entity", and "object" all refer to each other - there is no definition beyond them; without circularity dictionaries would be infinite.
There are intermediate answers to questions like "Why this life, why is this the one I have? Where did all of this come from? How did all of this happen?"
The chain of intermediate questions and answers leads to the ultimate frontiers of science. One has to accept the possibility that our desire for an ultimate, resounding answer to these questions may never be quenched. Perhaps the universe just defies human understanding at some point. Even our language become circular at some point: the definitions of "thing", "entity", and "object" all refer to each other - there is no definition beyond them; without circularity dictionaries would be infinite.
The circular thing with dictionaries - that makes sense. I've always seen dictionaries as infinite. Shakespeare invented words. Computational definitions of symbols, mathematics, etc are different.
I don't really see it as circular, more like a spiral. Each layer of computation or math - in 3s. Computer, mind, paper. Or symbol relates to symbol through symbol. Deductive proof techniques, the memory of all existing knowledge filling in the gaps between each sequential step. Layers of definitions stack, those are computer programs.
https://youtu.be/Ad4T-j_bOVc
The internet makes so much of life weird. Memories, words. Everything a reminder, automatic.
I don't really see it as circular, more like a spiral. Each layer of computation or math - in 3s. Computer, mind, paper. Or symbol relates to symbol through symbol. Deductive proof techniques, the memory of all existing knowledge filling in the gaps between each sequential step. Layers of definitions stack, those are computer programs.
https://youtu.be/Ad4T-j_bOVc
The internet makes so much of life weird. Memories, words. Everything a reminder, automatic.
Whenever anyone asks me: why do you live? Where do we come from? I just ask back: why do you care?
> The history of every major galactic civilisation tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Enquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
> For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question "How can we eat?", the second by the question "Why do we eat?", and the third by the question "Where shall we have lunch?"
> For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question "How can we eat?", the second by the question "Why do we eat?", and the third by the question "Where shall we have lunch?"
And now we got 3 "I don't know".
Because it's interesting, dammit!
Really well articulated.
Im not sure the question of what happened before "I" is so puzzling though. If your're making up the events that you're witnessing today, why would the "time" prior to you be any different?
Im not sure the question of what happened before "I" is so puzzling though. If your're making up the events that you're witnessing today, why would the "time" prior to you be any different?
Thank you.
Time is something I'm learning to both be able to see as something to keep in mind from a practical perspective, but also, something I can seem to let go of. It's very challenging, sometimes - but it seems essential to grasp 'flow'. Thank you for that.
Time is something I'm learning to both be able to see as something to keep in mind from a practical perspective, but also, something I can seem to let go of. It's very challenging, sometimes - but it seems essential to grasp 'flow'. Thank you for that.
You may want to exclude language from reality. The dichotomy of questions and answers might not happen in the latter. Or the other way round: As long you have questions you're not there yet. I present you one piece of the puzzle: The Physics and Philosophy of Time - with Carlo Rovelli on Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6rWqJhDv7M
In a way he supposes minds as entropy inducing entities.
In a way he supposes minds as entropy inducing entities.
I agree, it’s not profound except at face value. Just strikes me as extremely vague and hand-wavy metaphysics
This is the reason that a lot of people don’t like philosophy - because people hide behind verbal tricks which have little meaning beyond sounding “deep”. Green ideas sleep furiously
This is the reason that a lot of people don’t like philosophy - because people hide behind verbal tricks which have little meaning beyond sounding “deep”. Green ideas sleep furiously
Some ideas are so subtle that words fail to describe. In the same way lay explanations of physics lack understanding that pure equations deliver.
The trick of the philosopher is an attempt at conveying meaning with a blunt instrument.
"To cross a river you need a boat. But when you reach the other side you don’t pick up the boat and carry it." ~ Alan Watts
The trick of the philosopher is an attempt at conveying meaning with a blunt instrument.
"To cross a river you need a boat. But when you reach the other side you don’t pick up the boat and carry it." ~ Alan Watts
My former PhD advisor said something along the lines of 'the incompleteness of natural language', this being one of the hardest problems he's been aware of.
This is him:
https://www.cs.stevens.edu/~naumann/publications/publication...
This is him:
https://www.cs.stevens.edu/~naumann/publications/publication...
I agree. If you immediately know the candle light is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago.
Can't there be room for both awarenesses in a single mind?
> Where was mind when the universe was born? And what sustained the universe for the billions of years before we came to be?
The past was created when people started probing it, in the same sense that the present is.
The past was created when people started probing it, in the same sense that the present is.
That is what I was thinking as well... made me wonder, did my mind create your comment 2 hours in the past when I had the thought? Are you even real?
One might have emotional attachment to an explainable universe; in such a scenario you might find the concept of an ultimate unanswerable question chilling. Or alternatively if you’re a skeptic, you might find it lovely.
> Where was mind when the universe was born?
This is an answer in the guise of a question, and the answer (belief) being that the universe is finite. Let me offer a better question: is the universe finite or infinite?
This is an answer in the guise of a question, and the answer (belief) being that the universe is finite. Let me offer a better question: is the universe finite or infinite?
>Let me offer a better question: is the universe finite or infinite?
What is the concept of infinity but the outer limit of our mind's ability to conceptualize?
What is the concept of infinity but the outer limit of our mind's ability to conceptualize?
"Infinite" can be understood as "not finite" or "without limit", or "equinumerous with a strict subset of itself".
(I don't know why you switched from "infinite" to "infinity". I am opting to answer for the word "infinite".)
(I don't know why you switched from "infinite" to "infinity". I am opting to answer for the word "infinite".)
Well, I suppose the answer is the same that for the game of the '20 questions in its “surprise” version' that the article mention.
Where was the word before the first question is asked?
Where was the word before the first question is asked?
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No. No, I think the world would still be there if we didn't question it.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. (Philip K. Dick)
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. (Philip K. Dick)
My metaphysical philosophy has always been:
- Objective truth: the physical world as it is. There are no "chairs" in this world (would an ant recognize a chair, or a bacteria?) - only data from which we can derive patterns.
- Consensus truth: what people have agreed to be true, often via perception or abstract logic. This is math, that is red, this is a chair, that is democracy.
- Subjective truth: what I believe to be true, by my own rationality or my own perception. This can sometimes deviate from consensus truth (eg. optical illusions).
There must be a term for this philosophical position, but I haven't found it yet (or the thinker associated with it). Obviously this is due to my ignorance because this is not a particularly profound metaphysical position to take.
Does anyone know the name of this?
- Objective truth: the physical world as it is. There are no "chairs" in this world (would an ant recognize a chair, or a bacteria?) - only data from which we can derive patterns.
- Consensus truth: what people have agreed to be true, often via perception or abstract logic. This is math, that is red, this is a chair, that is democracy.
- Subjective truth: what I believe to be true, by my own rationality or my own perception. This can sometimes deviate from consensus truth (eg. optical illusions).
There must be a term for this philosophical position, but I haven't found it yet (or the thinker associated with it). Obviously this is due to my ignorance because this is not a particularly profound metaphysical position to take.
Does anyone know the name of this?
There's also:
- Survival based truth: what we believe in order to keep being alive and make more of us. The moment we mess too much, we're not there any more. An unforgiving, but strangely, also somewhat flexible truth.
I think this is the winner, at least for people and animals. It's got an internal self-righting system and transcends distinctions such as objective, subjective and consensus - it's all of them. It's the kind of truth that keeps existing by adapting to the world, or else it gets eradicated.
- Survival based truth: what we believe in order to keep being alive and make more of us. The moment we mess too much, we're not there any more. An unforgiving, but strangely, also somewhat flexible truth.
I think this is the winner, at least for people and animals. It's got an internal self-righting system and transcends distinctions such as objective, subjective and consensus - it's all of them. It's the kind of truth that keeps existing by adapting to the world, or else it gets eradicated.
I believe this is what Jordan Peterson calls "Darwininan truth." He thinks it is the ultimate truth, but Sam Harris (on the side of "Newtonian truth") would certainly beg to differ.
I can only imagine that there are both, the "Darwinian" one that we humans use as an interface to an underlying, patternless, data-oriented "Newtonian truth."
I can only imagine that there are both, the "Darwinian" one that we humans use as an interface to an underlying, patternless, data-oriented "Newtonian truth."
The fact that you acknowledge there exists an objective truth means you're a philosophical realist, as opposed to an idealist.
The fact that you recognize there's a subjective truth, and that it can differ from the objective truth, hints at philosophical skepticism -- though skepticism goes a bit further and claims the objective truth is essentially unknowable.
I don't really understand your "consensus truth" category. The things you list are just labels, not truth statements. Apples and oranges.
The fact that you recognize there's a subjective truth, and that it can differ from the objective truth, hints at philosophical skepticism -- though skepticism goes a bit further and claims the objective truth is essentially unknowable.
I don't really understand your "consensus truth" category. The things you list are just labels, not truth statements. Apples and oranges.
Thank you for these. I will read up on them.
The book Sapiens uses the term "intersubjective" for your consensus truth. He describes such things as shared fictions.
Great book, as far as books that attempt to cover all of human history, science, and philosophy go.
Great book, as far as books that attempt to cover all of human history, science, and philosophy go.
Roughly speculative realism?
I don't know any name for it but I've wondered about those same delineations (my term for the second is "consensus-based reality"). I worry about to what extent the first one can be said to definitely exist.
I use "reality" instead of "truth" for all of those positions, reserving "truth" for logic or the opposite of a lie.
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Can you prove Dick's statement is true? Denying reality is a very powerful trick. Any unavoidable physical consequence inside reality can be ignored by a sufficiently aversive mind.
Consider the differences between these claims:
"My reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
"Your reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
and bonus:
"Fantasy is that which, no matter how much you believe in it, doesn't come to be."
Consider the differences between these claims:
"My reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
"Your reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
and bonus:
"Fantasy is that which, no matter how much you believe in it, doesn't come to be."
Is this quote from Time Out Of Joint?
If so I need to read that book.
With political and other scandals where you get into believing the propaganda but then there are awkward facts that just can't be erased. Yet the world goes on ignoring the facts that, if taken into consideration, mean the convenient narrative verging on a fable can only be a lie.
The fact that disproves everything could be a five second clip from headline news reporting made decades ago, only broadcast live. Or the first edition version of a newsprint article revised in the 'final edition' that did make it to microfiche. Or a forum repost from a decade ago, now lost to a content management system update. These clues are everywhere, sometimes ignored due to 'fast moving events' where we are collectively still trying to learn the story and pertinent details and little clues are lost to the big picture we are still trying to see.
Maybe only with sci-fi can this be told, with real events too much opinion shaped by TV and the PR companies gets in the way.
If so I need to read that book.
With political and other scandals where you get into believing the propaganda but then there are awkward facts that just can't be erased. Yet the world goes on ignoring the facts that, if taken into consideration, mean the convenient narrative verging on a fable can only be a lie.
The fact that disproves everything could be a five second clip from headline news reporting made decades ago, only broadcast live. Or the first edition version of a newsprint article revised in the 'final edition' that did make it to microfiche. Or a forum repost from a decade ago, now lost to a content management system update. These clues are everywhere, sometimes ignored due to 'fast moving events' where we are collectively still trying to learn the story and pertinent details and little clues are lost to the big picture we are still trying to see.
Maybe only with sci-fi can this be told, with real events too much opinion shaped by TV and the PR companies gets in the way.
Not believing in realty is semantically suspect. Delusion still provides a (false) reality in which to live. Hell if anything it’s evidence of active questioning to perceive anything.
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I can't claim to understand the first thing about quantum mechanics, but whenever I read about it I always come to think of lazy evaluation. Then I want to know if it's there simply for performance reasons or if it's to enable an infinite universe.
Just read the 'it from bit' paper referenced in the article. Wheeler goes quite in depth into why "turtles all the way down" is not a solution.
http://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/wheeler.pdf
http://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/wheeler.pdf
If you were simulating the universe it certainly doesn't help performance having to simulate an exponential quantity of interfering states rather than a single classical one. It's anything but lazy evaluation.
I remember when the "proceduraly generated" games first showed up - 30 years ago?
You could get a billion different scenarios, each one involving a million locations.
None of them existed before you started playing the game. And generating all of them in advance would be a) impossible, given the memory requirements and b) a huge waste, considering that 99.99999% of the players never needed to experience 99.99999% of the scenarios.
So what they did, they only presented up what is "observable" to you, the player.
So there is some saving there.
You could get a billion different scenarios, each one involving a million locations.
None of them existed before you started playing the game. And generating all of them in advance would be a) impossible, given the memory requirements and b) a huge waste, considering that 99.99999% of the players never needed to experience 99.99999% of the scenarios.
So what they did, they only presented up what is "observable" to you, the player.
So there is some saving there.
That's not an answer to the concern. Classical mechanics has no foundation -- it's a large castle floating in the air. Quantum mechanics tries to start from much less less assumed "something from nothing structure", which is puts much more complexity in sight (instead of just hiding it in axioms) that needs to be managed somehow.
If you want purely high-performance model of the Universe, nothing performs better than "everything you observe is simply invented the moment you invent it", be it classical or quantum.
If you want purely high-performance model of the Universe, nothing performs better than "everything you observe is simply invented the moment you invent it", be it classical or quantum.
This is a line of reasoning that some physicists are exploring: https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00058
> "Can the theory that reality is a simulation be tested? We investigate this question based on the assumption that if the system performing the simulation is finite (i.e. has limited resources), then to achieve low computational complexity, such a system would, as in a video game, render content (reality) only at the moment that information becomes available for observation by a player and not at the moment of detection by a machine (that would be part of the simulation and whose detection would also be part of the internal computation performed by the Virtual Reality server before rendering content to the player). Guided by this principle we describe conceptual wave/particle duality experiments aimed at testing the simulation theory."
Here's the kickstarter they (successfully) ran to fund some of the experiments: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simulation/do-we-live-i...
> "Can the theory that reality is a simulation be tested? We investigate this question based on the assumption that if the system performing the simulation is finite (i.e. has limited resources), then to achieve low computational complexity, such a system would, as in a video game, render content (reality) only at the moment that information becomes available for observation by a player and not at the moment of detection by a machine (that would be part of the simulation and whose detection would also be part of the internal computation performed by the Virtual Reality server before rendering content to the player). Guided by this principle we describe conceptual wave/particle duality experiments aimed at testing the simulation theory."
Here's the kickstarter they (successfully) ran to fund some of the experiments: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simulation/do-we-live-i...
I immediately became lost in quest to trace the source of a quote near the top of the article, and returned to bookmark this piece to read thoroughly, but here is the fruit of my almost instantaneously easy etymology search:
The quote "" “Unitarianism [Wheeler's nominal religion] is a feather bed to catch falling Christians” (Darwin); "" is from not one, but two Darwin's.
Here is Charles Darwin quoting Erasmus Darwin in his own slant: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00115-00015/5
The source is a Charles Darwin ancestor, Erasmus Darwin. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/566632-the-life-of-era...
The quote "" “Unitarianism [Wheeler's nominal religion] is a feather bed to catch falling Christians” (Darwin); "" is from not one, but two Darwin's.
Here is Charles Darwin quoting Erasmus Darwin in his own slant: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00115-00015/5
The source is a Charles Darwin ancestor, Erasmus Darwin. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/566632-the-life-of-era...
I'm too materialistic for taking those views seriously, but I recommend a nice Science Fiction book that deal with this:
"Distress" by Greg Egan [1].
1. http://www.gregegan.net/DISTRESS/DISTRESS.html
"Distress" by Greg Egan [1].
1. http://www.gregegan.net/DISTRESS/DISTRESS.html
for the physics people: first look up charge whitout charge and mass without mass. once you understand what Wheeler says about fundamental particles, and how charge and mass could be topological properties, and how Wheeler coined the term "wormhole". then go and read Maxwell (the original king of unification [of magnetism and electrostatics]) treatise on electromagnetism. There is a chapter on monodromy of electric potential, which would be senseless in an euclidean sense,... i.e. Maxwell himself considered wormholes, but skips over them rather quickly and turns to what is more easily modeled with R^n... On wikipedia "wormhole" concept is attribute to Einstein and Wheeler, but as I read it, even Maxwell considered the possibility that discrete charges were a topological effect in exactly the same sense as "charge without charge"!!
Brilliant reply to the parapsychologists 'incident':
"Where there’s smoke, there’s smoke.” John Archibald Wheeler
"Where there’s smoke, there’s smoke.” John Archibald Wheeler
"The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov is a quite literal take on this question: http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
Questions require a questioner. The normal scientific view is that the world, in part through Darwinian evolution, produced beings that can ask such questions. To have the questioners exist first and then create the world assumes they must be non-material spirits.
"The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing" --Einstein
Reality is a distributed consensus algorithm.
Work in the blockchain somehow, sell a million books.
Work in the blockchain somehow, sell a million books.
It'll be like "The Secret" except that if you believe hard enough, Satoshi will add bitcoins to your account.
What a vapid piece of a garbage:
books by wheeler worth reading?
books by wheeler worth reading?
Mmmhkay, so that's a rehash of good ol' George Berkeley's philosophy, then? That's cute, only coming 300 years later :)
There's a world of difference between solipsism and viewing observation as an act of creation.
Berkeley is not solipsist. He posits that reality exists only as much as it is perceived or thought; perceiving is creating. Therefore the world persists only because God perpetually perceives and think it, and the Creation is a continuous process from God's thought.
If so, by Betteridge's law, the Universe must disappear.
Ugh. Has Scientific American become PseudoScientific American?
Recently they published this https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-mult... by an author who believes ""There is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the revealed appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the revealed appearances of other dissociated alters. This idealist ontology makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism ..." https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp/jcs/2018/00000...
Recently they published this https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-mult... by an author who believes ""There is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the revealed appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the revealed appearances of other dissociated alters. This idealist ontology makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism ..." https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp/jcs/2018/00000...
For as much as reality is patterned, and can be comprehend 'absolutely' in a pragmatic, utilitarian sense - there's also another side to awareness (or many, I can never be sure). Imagine that everything that has to do with 'mind' is just as comprehensible in a different way. Or rather, imagine that that awareness 'takes over' or 'overrides' the natural awareness one was taught or learned to comprehend 'reality' with.
Science is vitally important to understanding things, making progress (however humanity defines it), building things, etc. But deep insight philosophically, I mean in my opinion, that's just as important, because they go hand in hand. One becomes a tool for the other. Or a tool turns into an awareness.
As someone whose had more than their fair share of experience wading in the somewhat deep (as in 'crazy') parts of the conscious pool of thought, yea, reality, comprehending it in the same way it's known to others - absolutely vital. But also not.
Doesn't make it pseudoscience. Just different questions, different things being noticed, taken apart, figured out, asked about, pondered on. Just like anything else, like ants on a trail to Feynman. Just because it looks 'weird', misinformed - whatever - for a brief instant, doesn't mean that's what it's going to turn into.
Science is vitally important to understanding things, making progress (however humanity defines it), building things, etc. But deep insight philosophically, I mean in my opinion, that's just as important, because they go hand in hand. One becomes a tool for the other. Or a tool turns into an awareness.
As someone whose had more than their fair share of experience wading in the somewhat deep (as in 'crazy') parts of the conscious pool of thought, yea, reality, comprehending it in the same way it's known to others - absolutely vital. But also not.
Doesn't make it pseudoscience. Just different questions, different things being noticed, taken apart, figured out, asked about, pondered on. Just like anything else, like ants on a trail to Feynman. Just because it looks 'weird', misinformed - whatever - for a brief instant, doesn't mean that's what it's going to turn into.
Over a few decades Scientific American has gone from deep research reports, to pop science, and now to untestable cosmic thinking and other clickbait. If it is not testable it is not scientific thinking.
Philosphical thinking may also be grounded in recurring phenomena or be completely blue-sky. A philosophy that premises alternate reality begins by ignoring how underdetermined is the human brain when reflecting on itself. A scientific exploration is grounded in physical premises even if no objective data is possible.
Philosphical thinking may also be grounded in recurring phenomena or be completely blue-sky. A philosophy that premises alternate reality begins by ignoring how underdetermined is the human brain when reflecting on itself. A scientific exploration is grounded in physical premises even if no objective data is possible.
I think you may be looking at the past through a filter. Perhaps you definition of pop science has drifted over the past few decades.
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Should we dismiss someone's writings because of other things they believe? Newton was convinced that the Bible contained hidden meanings and spent great amounts of time trying to extract scientific information and prophecies from it.
SciAm hosts a lot of Blogs with no editorial oversight. It's unfortunate. Nature does too.
>“I do take 100 percent seriously the idea that the world is a figment of the imagination,”
I can’t take anyone seriously if he suggests that. Is hunger figment of imagination? The war crimes and multitudes of unspeakable injustices? Nature is really real. The effects seen in the atomic world must not be conflated to the big.
I can’t take anyone seriously if he suggests that. Is hunger figment of imagination? The war crimes and multitudes of unspeakable injustices? Nature is really real. The effects seen in the atomic world must not be conflated to the big.
Those are strange examples.
How is "hunger" or "injustice" anything but imagination?
>The war crimes and multitudes of unspeakable injustices?
Playing Devil's Advocate here, but moralizing such things is indeed the product of subjective human imagination. Nature doesn't moralize, though it does appear to seek balance on some levels while at the same time violently evolving.
If we look into our own body's on a micro scale, we see the same mass conflicts of micoorganisms massacring and genociding eachother. Is that injustice? Without it human beings and living things in general wouldn't exist.
Playing Devil's Advocate here, but moralizing such things is indeed the product of subjective human imagination. Nature doesn't moralize, though it does appear to seek balance on some levels while at the same time violently evolving.
If we look into our own body's on a micro scale, we see the same mass conflicts of micoorganisms massacring and genociding eachother. Is that injustice? Without it human beings and living things in general wouldn't exist.
>Quantum theorist John Wheeler’s “it from bit” hypothesis anticipated ongoing speculation that consciousness is fundamental to reality
Flagged for pseudoscience.
Flagged for pseudoscience.
The article is obviously on topic for HN. Accounts that flag like this eventually lose flagging privileges.
Theres so much abuse of flagging and downvoting on this forum that I honestly think it does more damage to the community than the benefits it's supposed to bring. And that's even with all the heuristics you use to catch abuse.
So often you see unpopular yet perfectly valid (sometimes even technically correct) comments voted into oblivion and then whole arguements arise because if it. Sometimes technically incorrect comments based on popular myths deserve "air time" if they're followed by an intelligent rebuttal, but those comments get lost in the ether meaning nobody learns anything.
It just feels there is so much lost content and bad will generated by the current state of peer moderation.
I say this as someone who has a very healthy "karma" so please dont take this as a whinge post. More just my opinion and observations.
So often you see unpopular yet perfectly valid (sometimes even technically correct) comments voted into oblivion and then whole arguements arise because if it. Sometimes technically incorrect comments based on popular myths deserve "air time" if they're followed by an intelligent rebuttal, but those comments get lost in the ether meaning nobody learns anything.
It just feels there is so much lost content and bad will generated by the current state of peer moderation.
I say this as someone who has a very healthy "karma" so please dont take this as a whinge post. More just my opinion and observations.
John Wheeler is a highly respected physicist and his “it from bit” is still referenced in many papers every year. It's speculative and still not rigidly defined, but definitely not pseudoscience.
Wheeler is a fine physicist. Claiming "consciousness is fundamental to reality" is not.
I personally wouldn’t characterize it from bit that way, but it’s not as crazy as it seems.
We know that subjective reality exists because we directly experience it. But the evidence for an objective reality is shaky at best.
If it exists it isn’t anything like the classical world we inhabit - that has been proven multiple times over.
We know that subjective reality exists because we directly experience it. But the evidence for an objective reality is shaky at best.
If it exists it isn’t anything like the classical world we inhabit - that has been proven multiple times over.
>We know that subjective reality exists because we directly experience it. But the evidence for an objective reality is shaky at best.
Objective reality can kill me, so I'd consider that rather less shaky than the images that appear when I sleep.
Objective reality can kill me, so I'd consider that rather less shaky than the images that appear when I sleep.
"Where was mind when the universe was born? And what sustained the universe for the billions of years before we came to be? He nonetheless bravely offers us a lovely, chilling paradox: At the heart of everything is a question, not an answer. When we peer down into the deepest recesses of matter or at the farthest edge of the universe, we see, finally, our own puzzled face looking back at us."
Can someone explain how his 'answer' is chilling or lovely? It's fine if he wants to offer his own pet theory of reality, but to give a cop out answer to its most fundamental question doesn't go far to support it.