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comment by mk
mk  ·  4619 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: It from bit
    There may be an absolute truth, but I guarantee we'll never discover it with our senses.

IMO absolute truth can be detected: If you perform a similar action in similar circumstances, you get a similar result. And importantly, the more similar the input the more simpliar the output. The asympote is the absolute truth, -it cannot be altered.

IMHO Wheeler was mistaking causation for a foundation of reality. I see the behavior of quantum entities to be no less strange than the relativity of simultaneity. Sure, quantum events can defy our notions of causation, but they will do it the same way every time. I think we can say 'reality is strange' without having to conclude that it depends on us.





b_b  ·  4618 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Let me clarify what I meant. I believe wholly that there exists a true description of reality, a mathematical one. Physics, and very much moreso human experience, can only approximate this truth. Simultaneity is an appropriate example. You and I may make different measurements of reality, but each is described by the same mathematics.
mk  ·  4618 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Ok. So, what I wonder is: Can we say that a consistent description of reality is all that we really need? Who cares if there is no such thing as simultaneity? Who cares if quantum systems can defy the macro flow of time? The only extent to which we would care, is if it doesn't fit our current model. But our current model has no 'grand answer' atm, so these findings do not overturn one. Why should we expect all relationships to fit our human conceptions of what relationships are? We know they don't, and we can test it over and over again with the same result.

It might be turtles all the way down; but if we have every reason to believe that it doesn't switch to rabbits unexpectedly, then maybe that's what we should start to consider to be 'the grand answer': It's turtles all the way down. We can still gather more information about these turtles, but why look for the foundation under the last turtle when there is nothing to suggest there is one? Turtles all the way is the foundation.

alpha0  ·  4619 days ago  ·  link  ·  
All actions are performed in a subjective context. Contingent absolutes, possibly.

    IMHO Wheeler was mistaking causation for a foundation of reality.

Conceptual coin flip. One could counter by challenging the notion of "causality". A choice to be made is a Given. :)

mk  ·  4619 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Do multiple observers confound both scenarios? For the first, there is an inescapable (even predictable) rhyme in experience, and for the second, who's choice?
alpha0  ·  4618 days ago  ·  link  ·  
You mean multiple subjective sentients? Apparently depends on their "moral character".

    Godel felt that this key "would give a person who understood it such power that you could only entrust the knowledge of this philosopher's key to people of high moral character."

http://bible.cc/matthew/17-20.htm