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Another example has to do with what we could call the “hard problem” of existence itself: why does the universe exist, and why this universe in particular? Ple
by felipeerias 3y ago
Another example has to do with what we could call the “hard problem” of existence itself: why does the universe exist, and why this universe in particular?
Plenty of theories have been proposed. Maybe the universe expands and contracts again and again, each time with slightly different cosmological constants. Or maybe there are infinite universes and, unsurprisingly, we happen to exist in the one which was suited to our existence. Or maybe everything is just one giant simulation.
What I find fascinating is that, once you remove the culture-specific veneer, these questions and our tentative answers are part of the same pursuit that centuries ago would have taken the shape of philosophy or theology.
- akomtu 3y agoThe universe might not exist objectively, but it gains existence only in our eyes. For example, natural numbers is an abstraction that has no meaning by itself, but each number can be interpreted as a state of the "game of life" and a sequence of numbers - as an evolution of that game. This meaning is a fiction that arises when abstract number are seen thru our consciousness. When the same numbers are seen thru another consciousness, the game of chess is brought into existence. So the universe might be such an abstraction that could be anything, but only when its seen thru a particular consciousness, it appears as the universe we know. Taking this idea further, the entire game of life is still too complex, so smaller consciousnesses filter that complex reality into smaller realities and so on.
- felipeerias 3y agoAs the story goes, Dr. Samuel Johnson challenged the claim that all of reality was just an illusion by kicking a rock while proclaiming "I refute it thus."