223 Comments - Last post 43 minutes ago by magicmase
519 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by OddDo
46 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by m0r1arty
12 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by Gamy7
239 Comments - Last post 13 hours ago by y2
43 Comments - Last post 15 hours ago by malkavian1331
16 Comments - Last post 22 hours ago by Tenn
33 Comments - Last post 4 minutes ago by Vincenzo77
18 Comments - Last post 4 minutes ago by Calibr3
135 Comments - Last post 46 minutes ago by quinnix
2,967 Comments - Last post 59 minutes ago by Bum8ara5h
318 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by Doshmaku
8,854 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by ayuinaba
5 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by Hawkingmeister
We are all wrong from time to time, even on matters about which we have absolute confidence, alas. In your lifetime there can be any number of occasions on which you may be absolutely certain and yet absolutely mistaken. Thus I posit.
If you were held captive by a malign fiend which deceived your senses, of what if anything could you be certain?
If you inaugurate a method of doubting everything, you could thus be reduced to the simple conclusion that because you are concious, and aware of your own thoughts, you could not plausibly doubt your own existence. You see its a simple "I think, therefore I am.", it sounds so trivial, until in context.
"I'm real! I exist! And upon that rock, I shall build an edifice of reason!"
But I digress, in this case, my point is truth is slippery. Although that slipperiness is a disadvantage in some situations, it is also vital to the way we live. The wrong truth at the wrong moment causes housing markets to plummet and nations to growl at one another.
But to make matters worse, I suggest now that human beings are incapable of knowing truth, or anything at all, in an absolute sense of course.
We believe. We theorise. But we have no direct perception of whether our belief is matched by the objective universe.
But, what if this is a role we fill?
If the Heisenberg stuff is literally true, we as conscious beings have a sort of role in the ongoing creation of the universe. We cause tiny indecisions to go one way or another, just by looking at them. So the one has to ask:
If we learned to appreciate the universe directly and without the possibility of error, would we inaugurate a cascade?
What if our way of existing is contingent on these little uncertainties in the fabric of out world? And thus, what if knowing this entails knowing that, which implies that, and so on and so on until there are no open questions any more, and every choice is made as a consequence of every other, and finally we become little clockwork people. And wouldn't that rather mean the extinction of intelligence?
Comment has been collapsed.