5 ms·

But the quote is only great on one level. If we give it some thought it is not so great. Why? Because our mind evolved as a tool for survival of our self which

by quonn 3y ago

But the quote is only great on one level. If we give it some thought it is not so great. Why? Because our mind evolved as a tool for survival of our self which is to say as a tool for survival of that which may pass on the genes which create said mind. This mind is, by default, full of illusions, full of a particularly biased view of the world and the content of that view does not go away when we stop believing in it and looks to us just like reality. This is the whole point of meditation, but even if you do not believe in meditation yet, it can be observed in yourself and in others. In short the statement is only true for the rather small subset of things that can be scientifically investigated and on that level beliefs are not a category of concern anyway. It‘s a statement about the content of the world without an observer, but the observer-world interface is the more interesting part, the observer cannot be removed and any beliefs come from the observer in the first place.

hutzlibu 3y ago
"In short the statement is only true for the rather small subset of things that can be scientifically investigated" Which fundamental things cannot get scientifically investigated?
- quonn 3y ago
  Only physical facts that do not affect our subjective consciousness. For example if the earth is flat or round. Actually, let me make a stronger statement than before: Even for scientific facts the statement is weak. If I stop believing that the world is round, then what does it mean that the „roundness“ will not go away? From my point of view it certainly goes away and the world _will be_ flat. In order to accept that it is, objectively, not flat I have to accept other information, often information that I do not check or verify myself. But subjectively, if I really stop believing the world is round then for sure it will start to feel flat. So this criterion is not a good one. I think it only is useful in the world of „succeeding“. So for example I may believe that a vaccination is dangerous and as a consequence I may die if unvaccinated. This is an example of reality not going away. Or I may believe that I can pass a test without studying but then I don‘t and so that‘s reality, again.
  - simonh 3y ago
    That just means beliefs about things that do not or will not ever affect you, er, don’t affect you. It seems like a trivial point. You’re still accumulating risk though. You don’t know when a false belief will lead yo to make a consequential error, and also false beliefs could lead you to adopt faulty attitudes or ways of thinking that could lead you towards false beliefs in consequential ways. Or you could propagate such false beliefs to others, which may be consequential for them.
    - quonn 3y ago
      It‘s not more trivial than „Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.“ which is a useless criterion even for scientific facts. What you‘re suggesting about a false belief is an „unknown unknown“ so again the criteria of the quote is pretty useless in practice.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    > From my point of view it certainly goes away and the world _will be_ flat. No, it simply means that you will start to build on a flawed premise and will run into the limitations of your knowledge sooner rather than later. Being informed about the world allows you to make better decisions and to reach further in the achievement of your goals. That is why the scientific method is so successful and why science and not obstinacy has driven us forward further in the last 500 years than in all of the preceding millennia together.
- Ygg2 3y ago
  Things that can't be scientifically verified (i.e. can it make predictions and are predictions falsifiable), goes especially for things that require several test universes to test out. For example what is the purpose of the universe? Is this the only universe? Is it a simulation? Is everything predetermined?
  - sanroot99 3y ago
    I think one way to falsify simulation hypothesis, assuming universe running simulation have similar physics, is by finding limits of computation required to run the simulation, at some point we can find a bug or a glitch
  - hef19898 3y ago
    There are so kany religions to pick from, one of it will have the answers you seek.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    "Is it a simulation?" If it would be, we could scientifically test for the limits of the experimentation model. You can say, all of science is doing this effectivly. So far, no flaws have been found. If there were flaws, then within our models, so we adapt them, systematically approaching reality. Now sure, if there would be an allmighty god, we would have no chance proofing him or her, that is tautological. But if it would be "just" aliens of a higher level, doing rat lab experiments with our universe, we could figure that out eventually.
Ensorceled 3y ago
> It‘s a statement about the content of the world without an observer, but the observer-world interface is the more interesting part, the observer cannot be removed and any beliefs come from the observer in the first place. It’s literally a statement ABOUT the observer-world interface. In general, assuming anything from Dick is pedestrian is kind of foolish.
- quonn 3y ago
  Well that‘s exactly why I‘m criticizing that statement. It places an undue amount of trust in the state of our mind regardless of what that state may be at any time and calls that truth.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    The quote places absolutely no trust in the state of your mind. That's the point.
notrlyskeptik 3y ago
[dead]
ordu 3y ago
> a particularly biased view of the world We can safely drop "biased" from the quote, because an unbiased view is a mirror. A useless thing. > statement is only true for the rather small subset of things that can be scientifically investigated Science is not a reality, it is one more view of a reality. It is easy to see if you look at the history of science. Scientific beliefs come to be replaced by others. Phlogiston is not real, it existed as a scientific belief, but ceased to exist when the belief was debunked. > the observer cannot be removed and any beliefs come from the observer in the first place. Yes, we cannot talk about reality without being observers of reality. We cannot talk about reality itself, we talk about beliefs/illusions/whatever. > even if you do not believe in meditation yet, it can be observed in yourself and in others. I do not believe in it, I tried it and what I believe it is impossible and people fake it. It is real but as a myth: I do not believe in this myth but it exists nevertheless, so it is real. > the observer cannot be removed Doesn't it mean that reality doesn't exist without an observer?
- sanroot99 3y ago
  This thought echoes Pessimistic induction, one of the flaw in scientific method
- quonn 3y ago
  > I do not believe in it, I tried it and what I believe it is impossible and people fake it. It is real but as a myth: I do not believe in this myth but it exists nevertheless, so it is real. I agree with your second point, but not with the first point. How is it impossible? Just sit and observe. _That_ is certainly possible. So you seem to imply that the experience was not what you expected it to be so I need to ask: What did you expect it to be? > Doesn't it mean that reality doesn't exist without an observer? No, it only means that observations cannot be made without an observer.
  - ordu 3y ago
    > So you seem to imply that the experience was not what you expected it to be so I need to ask: What did you expect it to be? Something special enough so I would feel an urge to use a special word to describe it.
mnky9800n 3y ago
I suppose if you cannot imagine a world without an observer than there's not much abstractions within you.
- quonn 3y ago
  You cannot make observations without an observer. Furthermore any imagined world without an observer is necessarily largely shaped by that very observer who imagines it.
slushh 3y ago
>Because our mind evolved as a tool for survival of our self which is to say as a tool for survival of that which may pass on the genes which create said mind. Said mind is not only created by the genes.
- quonn 3y ago
  But?

by quonn 3y ago

hutzlibu 3y ago

"In short the statement is only true for the rather small subset of things that can be scientifically investigated" Which fundamental things cannot get scientifically investigated?

quonn 3y ago
Only physical facts that do not affect our subjective consciousness. For example if the earth is flat or round. Actually, let me make a stronger statement than before: Even for scientific facts the statement is weak. If I stop believing that the world is round, then what does it mean that the „roundness“ will not go away? From my point of view it certainly goes away and the world _will be_ flat. In order to accept that it is, objectively, not flat I have to accept other information, often information that I do not check or verify myself. But subjectively, if I really stop believing the world is round then for sure it will start to feel flat. So this criterion is not a good one. I think it only is useful in the world of „succeeding“. So for example I may believe that a vaccination is dangerous and as a consequence I may die if unvaccinated. This is an example of reality not going away. Or I may believe that I can pass a test without studying but then I don‘t and so that‘s reality, again.
- simonh 3y ago
  That just means beliefs about things that do not or will not ever affect you, er, don’t affect you. It seems like a trivial point. You’re still accumulating risk though. You don’t know when a false belief will lead yo to make a consequential error, and also false beliefs could lead you to adopt faulty attitudes or ways of thinking that could lead you towards false beliefs in consequential ways. Or you could propagate such false beliefs to others, which may be consequential for them.
  - quonn 3y ago
    It‘s not more trivial than „Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.“ which is a useless criterion even for scientific facts. What you‘re suggesting about a false belief is an „unknown unknown“ so again the criteria of the quote is pretty useless in practice.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > From my point of view it certainly goes away and the world _will be_ flat. No, it simply means that you will start to build on a flawed premise and will run into the limitations of your knowledge sooner rather than later. Being informed about the world allows you to make better decisions and to reach further in the achievement of your goals. That is why the scientific method is so successful and why science and not obstinacy has driven us forward further in the last 500 years than in all of the preceding millennia together.
Ygg2 3y ago
Things that can't be scientifically verified (i.e. can it make predictions and are predictions falsifiable), goes especially for things that require several test universes to test out. For example what is the purpose of the universe? Is this the only universe? Is it a simulation? Is everything predetermined?
- sanroot99 3y ago
  I think one way to falsify simulation hypothesis, assuming universe running simulation have similar physics, is by finding limits of computation required to run the simulation, at some point we can find a bug or a glitch
- hef19898 3y ago
  There are so kany religions to pick from, one of it will have the answers you seek.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "Is it a simulation?" If it would be, we could scientifically test for the limits of the experimentation model. You can say, all of science is doing this effectivly. So far, no flaws have been found. If there were flaws, then within our models, so we adapt them, systematically approaching reality. Now sure, if there would be an allmighty god, we would have no chance proofing him or her, that is tautological. But if it would be "just" aliens of a higher level, doing rat lab experiments with our universe, we could figure that out eventually.

Ensorceled 3y ago

> It‘s a statement about the content of the world without an observer, but the observer-world interface is the more interesting part, the observer cannot be removed and any beliefs come from the observer in the first place. It’s literally a statement ABOUT the observer-world interface. In general, assuming anything from Dick is pedestrian is kind of foolish.

quonn 3y ago
Well that‘s exactly why I‘m criticizing that statement. It places an undue amount of trust in the state of our mind regardless of what that state may be at any time and calls that truth.
- thfuran 3y ago
  The quote places absolutely no trust in the state of your mind. That's the point.

notrlyskeptik 3y ago

[dead]

ordu 3y ago

> a particularly biased view of the world We can safely drop "biased" from the quote, because an unbiased view is a mirror. A useless thing. > statement is only true for the rather small subset of things that can be scientifically investigated Science is not a reality, it is one more view of a reality. It is easy to see if you look at the history of science. Scientific beliefs come to be replaced by others. Phlogiston is not real, it existed as a scientific belief, but ceased to exist when the belief was debunked. > the observer cannot be removed and any beliefs come from the observer in the first place. Yes, we cannot talk about reality without being observers of reality. We cannot talk about reality itself, we talk about beliefs/illusions/whatever. > even if you do not believe in meditation yet, it can be observed in yourself and in others. I do not believe in it, I tried it and what I believe it is impossible and people fake it. It is real but as a myth: I do not believe in this myth but it exists nevertheless, so it is real. > the observer cannot be removed Doesn't it mean that reality doesn't exist without an observer?

sanroot99 3y ago
This thought echoes Pessimistic induction, one of the flaw in scientific method
quonn 3y ago
> I do not believe in it, I tried it and what I believe it is impossible and people fake it. It is real but as a myth: I do not believe in this myth but it exists nevertheless, so it is real. I agree with your second point, but not with the first point. How is it impossible? Just sit and observe. _That_ is certainly possible. So you seem to imply that the experience was not what you expected it to be so I need to ask: What did you expect it to be? > Doesn't it mean that reality doesn't exist without an observer? No, it only means that observations cannot be made without an observer.
- ordu 3y ago
  > So you seem to imply that the experience was not what you expected it to be so I need to ask: What did you expect it to be? Something special enough so I would feel an urge to use a special word to describe it.

mnky9800n 3y ago

I suppose if you cannot imagine a world without an observer than there's not much abstractions within you.

quonn 3y ago
You cannot make observations without an observer. Furthermore any imagined world without an observer is necessarily largely shaped by that very observer who imagines it.

slushh 3y ago

>Because our mind evolved as a tool for survival of our self which is to say as a tool for survival of that which may pass on the genes which create said mind. Said mind is not only created by the genes.

quonn 3y ago
But?