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Stop conflating “reality” with “perception”. Reality is the objective truth. Perception is out individual mental models of reality, built up by our own past ex

Stop conflating “reality” with “perception”. Reality is the objective truth. Perception is out individual mental models of reality, built up by our own past experiences and our limited information set. Edit - I think this is actually a very important distinction to make. There IS an objective set of facts that can answer these questions definitively. And we need to remember that. By conflating terms like “reality” and “truth” with ideas of mental models and perception (or even using phrases like “my reality”), we’re already giving up before the game is even played. Reality and truth are must be defined as the objective, omniscient state, even if it is practically unknowable. They must be defined this way because we must acknowledge that those states exist at all so we can strive to get as close to them as possible. If we cease to acknowledge there is a real, objective truth, then everything is arbitrary and unmoored - we’re lost at sea with no bearing and no direction. I do agree with the general premise of the piece, however - that perceptions of reality in society have been weaponized and manipulated on an industrial scale. But it’s super super important not to lose the idea that “reality” exists.

Koshkin 4y ago
But reality is not “the objective truth.” The notion of ‘truth’ belongs to the conceptual framework of knowledge (and the very complex process of its acquisition), and, unless you yourself conflate the mental image with reality, you realize that the objective, material world as such does not have to contain true or false statements about itself.
- _gabe_ 4y ago
  > The notion of ‘truth’ belongs to the conceptual framework of knowledge Or, as I believe the OP is trying to point out, truth is what is. Just because people used to believe that maggots spontaneously generated doesn't mean it was true. The knowledge was false because the reality did not behave in accordance with the supposed knowledge. > you realize that the objective, material world as such does not have to contain true or false statements about itself. It does though. Gravity is stable on earth for the foreseeable future. Therefore, if I jump off a cliff, I will fall. This is true. It doesn't matter what flawed knowledge I gather that says otherwise, that would conflict with the reality. Reality is truth. The material world consists of truth simply by existing, and falsehoods arise when people try to conform reality to an idea that is wrong.
  - seventytwo 4y ago
    Yes, this is what I was getting at.
  - datadata 4y ago
    In the gravity example, you have a clear way to make a prediction and test it. The concept of gravity can clearly map via perception to reality, and thus the truth. Most of the questions in this article given as examples of massive disagreements however are not like this. They hinge on interpreting the definitions of concepts we have invented that do not map so clearly to reality. The debate is often entirely over the definitions of the concepts themselves, not over reality or truth. It is more about language than physics.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > Or, as I believe the OP is trying to point out, truth is what is. Just because people used to believe that maggots spontaneously generated doesn't mean it was true. The knowledge was false because the reality did not behave in accordance with the supposed knowledge. This is problematic for a few reasons I can see: 1) we often do not have access to 'what is' (and worse: sometimes we do not or can not realize it) 2) because of the ~"cultural unacceptability) of (1), we often define truth ~"colloquially", or by 'consensus' (although, it isn't necessarily actually based on consensus), and the public is often not notified 3) A philosophical definition of Truth is typically Justified True Belief, and the True part is often taken for granted (because of (1), or otherwise) as True (or is colloquial/consensus 'Truth') while people are focused on the Justified part 4) There is Objective Truth and Perceptual Truth (which can be planted), and as the saying goes: Perception is Reality 5) For certain topics, many people seem to lack the ability to desire to know what is True (typically: matters of War, Gender, Religion, Sexuality, Morals, Operating Systems, etc etc etc) 6) Linguistics, semantics, semiotics, etc - there is an infinite amount of complexity across the entire pipeline >> you realize that the objective, material world as such does not have to contain true or false statements about itself. > It does though. Gravity is stable on earth for the foreseeable future. Therefore, if I jump off a cliff, I will fall. This is true. It doesn't matter what flawed knowledge I gather that says otherwise, that would conflict with the reality. Speaking of (6) above: the claim was "does not have to", and you rejected it with a single instance of a single scenario where a true statement is possible (it is not possible in all scenarios) - one experiment can disprove a theory, but one experiment cannot absolutely confirm a theory is true. And this is on Hacker News, which is populated by genuinely smart people. > Reality is truth. Portions of it are, but far from all of it is. Consider the beliefs of Trump supporters, conspiracy theorists, etc - these are a part of reality...the beliefs may not be True, but they are Real...and, they can exert a force that is both Real and True (despite what underlies being only Real). Thus, the (seemingly) unreal/untrue has a way of "seeping/morphing" into Reality, and Truth (in a sense). > The material world consists of truth simply by existing, and falsehoods arise when people try to conform reality to an idea that is wrong. Material/physical reality is only a portion of the whole: there is also metaphysical reality.
datadata 4y ago
There is an objective truth for the physical reality of things, but that truth immediately gets murkier as you step away from physics or into more abstract concepts. It is important to establish that objective truth is out there, but it is not sufficient, as many of these questions (from the article) can't be directly answered by reality: "Covid-19 escaped from a Chinese laboratory." is something that could be answered by reality one way or another, with a hypothetical perfect observer. A single fact could answer this question. "Climate change demands a radical transformation of modern lifestyles." This question is about the future, rather than the past, so it depends on our ability to assess the truth about predictions of objective reality, rather than merely to analyze objective reality directly. Reality can help us build better predictive models, but it can't decisively say if this statement is true or not. You could say that the future is part of the objective reality, but here we are forbidden from being able to perceive it at all. Finally, "Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to get elected." This one concerns only past events, it could definitely be resolved with knowledge about some specific fact from objective reality. However, in the absence of such a fact appearing we are forced to make decisions about the intents of people to make a judgement. I have trouble with the idea that this could be mapped directly to objective reality, ie something like collusion is an objective state of the brain that could be perfectly classified in theory. I think that our concept of "collusion" here is the problem-- it is simply not well defined enough to be used in a way that is not fraught with disagreement. Put another way, it is entirely possible that perfect observers of Trump and Putin would not agree with each other on this question, and that is a problem. To summarize, objective reality is important, it really exists and can of course be used to find the truth in many ways. But we are stuck with concepts that are not part of objective reality, when those concepts show up in questions, objective reality might not be of much help.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Your last point resonates with me. In objective reality, Donald Trump publicly asked Russia to hack Clinton's emails. I'm told this could be evidence of collusion or a joke, and honestly that does track because I often have trouble telling if reality is just an elaborate prank on me.

Koshkin 4y ago

But reality is not “the objective truth.” The notion of ‘truth’ belongs to the conceptual framework of knowledge (and the very complex process of its acquisition), and, unless you yourself conflate the mental image with reality, you realize that the objective, material world as such does not have to contain true or false statements about itself.

_gabe_ 4y ago
> The notion of ‘truth’ belongs to the conceptual framework of knowledge Or, as I believe the OP is trying to point out, truth is what is. Just because people used to believe that maggots spontaneously generated doesn't mean it was true. The knowledge was false because the reality did not behave in accordance with the supposed knowledge. > you realize that the objective, material world as such does not have to contain true or false statements about itself. It does though. Gravity is stable on earth for the foreseeable future. Therefore, if I jump off a cliff, I will fall. This is true. It doesn't matter what flawed knowledge I gather that says otherwise, that would conflict with the reality. Reality is truth. The material world consists of truth simply by existing, and falsehoods arise when people try to conform reality to an idea that is wrong.
- seventytwo 4y ago
  Yes, this is what I was getting at.
- datadata 4y ago
  In the gravity example, you have a clear way to make a prediction and test it. The concept of gravity can clearly map via perception to reality, and thus the truth. Most of the questions in this article given as examples of massive disagreements however are not like this. They hinge on interpreting the definitions of concepts we have invented that do not map so clearly to reality. The debate is often entirely over the definitions of the concepts themselves, not over reality or truth. It is more about language than physics.
- mistermann 4y ago
  > Or, as I believe the OP is trying to point out, truth is what is. Just because people used to believe that maggots spontaneously generated doesn't mean it was true. The knowledge was false because the reality did not behave in accordance with the supposed knowledge. This is problematic for a few reasons I can see: 1) we often do not have access to 'what is' (and worse: sometimes we do not or can not realize it) 2) because of the ~"cultural unacceptability) of (1), we often define truth ~"colloquially", or by 'consensus' (although, it isn't necessarily actually based on consensus), and the public is often not notified 3) A philosophical definition of Truth is typically Justified True Belief, and the True part is often taken for granted (because of (1), or otherwise) as True (or is colloquial/consensus 'Truth') while people are focused on the Justified part 4) There is Objective Truth and Perceptual Truth (which can be planted), and as the saying goes: Perception is Reality 5) For certain topics, many people seem to lack the ability to desire to know what is True (typically: matters of War, Gender, Religion, Sexuality, Morals, Operating Systems, etc etc etc) 6) Linguistics, semantics, semiotics, etc - there is an infinite amount of complexity across the entire pipeline >> you realize that the objective, material world as such does not have to contain true or false statements about itself. > It does though. Gravity is stable on earth for the foreseeable future. Therefore, if I jump off a cliff, I will fall. This is true. It doesn't matter what flawed knowledge I gather that says otherwise, that would conflict with the reality. Speaking of (6) above: the claim was "does not have to", and you rejected it with a single instance of a single scenario where a true statement is possible (it is not possible in all scenarios) - one experiment can disprove a theory, but one experiment cannot absolutely confirm a theory is true. And this is on Hacker News, which is populated by genuinely smart people. > Reality is truth. Portions of it are, but far from all of it is. Consider the beliefs of Trump supporters, conspiracy theorists, etc - these are a part of reality...the beliefs may not be True, but they are Real...and, they can exert a force that is both Real and True (despite what underlies being only Real). Thus, the (seemingly) unreal/untrue has a way of "seeping/morphing" into Reality, and Truth (in a sense). > The material world consists of truth simply by existing, and falsehoods arise when people try to conform reality to an idea that is wrong. Material/physical reality is only a portion of the whole: there is also metaphysical reality.

datadata 4y ago

There is an objective truth for the physical reality of things, but that truth immediately gets murkier as you step away from physics or into more abstract concepts. It is important to establish that objective truth is out there, but it is not sufficient, as many of these questions (from the article) can't be directly answered by reality: "Covid-19 escaped from a Chinese laboratory." is something that could be answered by reality one way or another, with a hypothetical perfect observer. A single fact could answer this question. "Climate change demands a radical transformation of modern lifestyles." This question is about the future, rather than the past, so it depends on our ability to assess the truth about predictions of objective reality, rather than merely to analyze objective reality directly. Reality can help us build better predictive models, but it can't decisively say if this statement is true or not. You could say that the future is part of the objective reality, but here we are forbidden from being able to perceive it at all. Finally, "Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to get elected." This one concerns only past events, it could definitely be resolved with knowledge about some specific fact from objective reality. However, in the absence of such a fact appearing we are forced to make decisions about the intents of people to make a judgement. I have trouble with the idea that this could be mapped directly to objective reality, ie something like collusion is an objective state of the brain that could be perfectly classified in theory. I think that our concept of "collusion" here is the problem-- it is simply not well defined enough to be used in a way that is not fraught with disagreement. Put another way, it is entirely possible that perfect observers of Trump and Putin would not agree with each other on this question, and that is a problem. To summarize, objective reality is important, it really exists and can of course be used to find the truth in many ways. But we are stuck with concepts that are not part of objective reality, when those concepts show up in questions, objective reality might not be of much help.

hotpotamus 4y ago
Your last point resonates with me. In objective reality, Donald Trump publicly asked Russia to hack Clinton's emails. I'm told this could be evidence of collusion or a joke, and honestly that does track because I often have trouble telling if reality is just an elaborate prank on me.