5 ms·

Very tangentially related, but we rewrite the past all the time.

• mr90210 4y ago
  Wouldn’t that be a matter of perception and written history rather than the factual past?
  • a_c 4y ago
    Maybe perception IS reality.
    • danjoredd 4y ago
      Thats pretty dangerous thinking though. Adolf Hitler famously said "a lie told often enough eventually becomes the truth" and then used that way of thinking to commit horrible atrocities.
  • karpierz 4y ago
    What is the factual past? It's the extrapolation of models that we've created in the present, but those models are only our best guess at the truth. They may be revised in the future or simply not hold for the past.
    • yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      What? No. The factual past is what actually happened. Don't mistake the map for the territory.
      • mistermann 4y ago
        Can you point us to The Territory please? You see it, I presume?
        • yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
          My eyes are a fairly reliable map, but they're still not the territory. That we are only able to perceive reality by proxy doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, though, it just means that we have to get used to using maps, while remembering that they can be flawed.
          • mistermann 4y ago
            > My eyes are a fairly reliable map, but they're still not the territory. This seems.....paradoxical...ironic? > That we are only able to perceive reality by proxy doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, though.... True, but potentially misleading/misinformative. > ...it just means that... Are you sure? Are you referring to the territory here, or the map? >...we have to get used to using maps, while remembering that they can be flawed. We've been using maps since the dawn of man, and a lot of people have substantial, abstract knowledge that this is what we're doing....and yet, look at the mess all around us, and the conversations we have about that mess (though: during these conversations, are the participants discussing the map, or the territory: a) in fact? b) in perception?).
    • nyc_data_geek1 4y ago
      The factual past is what actually happened, history is what we wrote down. Perception and reality are not in fact the same thing.
      • CalRobert 4y ago
        To be fair there is some disagreement over what exactly "the past" _is_. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwzN5YwMzv0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwzN5YwMzv0 discusses this a bit.
      • karpierz 4y ago
        Can you show that there is a factual past without parsing it through your perception? It was factual that the earth was 6000 years old, until it wasn't.
        • yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
          > It was factual that the earth was 6000 years old, until it wasn't. This is the opposite of the example you seem to think it is. The Earth has always had the same actual date of origin. If it is not factual now that the Earth is 6,000 years old, then it wasn't before either. The whole argument here is that people's perceptions and reality can in fact be different.
          • karpierz 4y ago
            > The Earth has always had the same actual date of origin. Maybe, but I'm asking: can you show that peoples' perceptions match/differ from reality, without relying on perceptions being factual/reliable? If not, then how do you know that reality is fixed?
        • danjoredd 4y ago
          I would argue that factual past is unprovable without some sort of visual evidence, and even that can be manipulated...especially with AI on the rise. The problem with your point is that EVERYTHING is parsed through your perception, and you can just as easily make the point with the same logic that you can't prove that what you are currently experiencing is present reality. What actually happened is unprovable without some layer of trust once the event leaves the affected. For example, I ate a grapefruit for breakfast. That is a fact. However, I have tossed the peel away and I am communicating that I ate it with a stranger over the internet. For all you know, I could have eaten cookie crisp. If you and enough people get together and collectively believe that I ate cookie crisp, the public belief will be that I ate cookie crisp. However, that does not change the fact that I ate a grapefruit.
    • mr90210 4y ago
      Let’s say that you are convicted as a criminal, and allegedly you were in a certain location and committed the crime. If you were not there and didn’t not commit the crime, is that past to which used to determine your conviction factual? Whether later you are proven not guilty, the past didn’t change, but rather our perception of it.
      • karpierz 4y ago
        You're begging the question. You started with: assume there is a factual past of where you were. And then argued: there is a factual past. I'm not enough of a skeptic to say "don't trust the models of the past"; memory turns out to be a pretty good model. So does carbon dating. But the reason you say "you were not there and did not commit the crime" is because you don't remember being there. Maybe you even remember being elsewhere. But that doesn't mean it's true, memory is fallible. You might say that you even have photos of yourself somewhere else at the time. But if there were photos of you at the crime scene, would that change what the past was? Maybe your memory is shoddy, or maybe the photos are fake.
• sjkoelle 4y ago
  but what is the metric signature???