On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 10:36:02 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Tue, 1 Mar 2016 04:08 am, Rustom Mody wrote: > > > And who is the last arbiter on that 'reality'? > > I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that this is a genuine question, and > not just an attempt to ask a rhetorical question to demonstrate your > profundity. > > You should not assume that there is any such thing as "the last arbiter" of > reality. There is no arbiter at all, let alone a final one. But what we > have are various ways of managing and uncertainty and error. One of which > is consensus. For instance, there are seven billion people on earth who > think they are people, and one who thinks he may be a butterfly. Which is > more likely to be correct? > > https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zhuangzi > > To quote Terry Pratchett: > > 'The poet Hoha once dreamed he was a butterfly, and then he > awoke and said, "Am I a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or > am I a butterfly dreaming he is a man?"' said Lobsang, trying > to join in. > 'Really?' said Susan briskly. 'And which was he?' > 'What? Well...who knows?' > 'How did he write his poems?' said Susan. > 'With a brush, of course.' > 'He didn't flap around making information-rich patterns in > the air or laying eggs on cabbage leaves?' > 'No one ever mentioned it.' > 'Then he was probably a man,' said Susan. > > > Because there are limitations on how we observe reality, there are limits to > how objective we can be. We have an imperfect ability to observe the world > around us (including our own mental states) and are prone to errors. But, > over a wide range of conditions (although not *all* conditions) we can > eliminate many classes of error by comparing notes with our fellows, so to > speak. If I think I am a butterfly, and my wife thinks I'm a man, and my > co-workers think I'm a man, and my neighbours think I'm a man, chances are > good that it is me who is mistaken, not them. > > Consequently reality is a shared construct -- or rather, our understanding > of reality is at least partly a shared construct. > > In principle, at least, *everything* is subject to disproof. But in practice > some things are more certain than others. I wouldn't bet $100 on quarks > still being considered the fundamental building block of matter in 200 > years, but I would bet a million dollars on the sun still seeming to rise > in the east every 24 hours. > > As Isaac Asimov put it: > > When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. > When people thought the earth was spherical, they were > wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is > spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, > then your view is wronger than both of them put together. > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong > > http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm > > It's not that reality itself is subject to change (except in the trivial > sense that we can take actions that modify the state of the world: I can > pick this cup up and move it over there, you can eat that apple) but that > our understanding of reality is subject to change. Sometimes our > understanding is full of uncertainty and doubt, sometimes it is subject to > re-interpretation, and sometimes our understanding is almost certainly > correct: it is difficult to imagine any credible or believable > reinterpretation that would change the facts as we know them. A thousand > years from now, the sun will still appear to be rising in the east.
Consensus? Um lets see... Here are two writings: [1] http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/blake/to_see_world.html [2] http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html If you see [2] around line 75 it almost verbatim echoes Larry's complaint of what 'they' did to Kennneth And how is [1]'s starting different from Kenneth's finding his weight to be the weight of the universe? Maybe the authors of these need the services of a psychiatrist? If not you may find some appeal in this modernized version: http://blog.languager.org/2011/10/vagaries-of-intelligence.html As for Asimov, yeah he's right perhaps in distinguishing wrong wronger and wrongest Not so much in underestimating the time for humans to autocorrect their errors A collection [inspired by earlier comments of yours :-) ]: http://blog.languager.org/2016/01/how-long.html -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list