[FRIAM] Objective Reality Doesn’t Exist. We’ve Known This for a Century. It’s Time to Embrace It and Move On. | by Casper Wilstrup | Machine Consciousness | Medium

[Prof David West]

As always, glen is far more diplomatic and philosophical than I.

My reaction to Nick's innocuous words was entirely visceral: I do not see the good/evil choice that he does.

If I am being charitable, each major candidate is a medium, channeling—
not so charitable, each is an effluent orifice, spewing—
    —ideas, and words, and actions to which neither can claim authorship.

If I examine the torrents, I do find that one contains more of that which I find personally offensive / personally harmful. But whichever stream I am forced to swim in, it is not as if I had a choice.

I am enough of a socio/psychopath that I feel no obligation to 'protect' anyone else from whichever stream they happen to find most distasteful.

davew


On Mon, Jun 3, 2024, at 1:33 PM, glen wrote:
> IDK. Were we to allow that
>
> a) X merely means a singular, mostly atomic, thing, and
> b) "determine" means what most of us think it means,
>
> then you'd be right. A better way to state it would be:
>
> In the US, our collection of mechanisms for selecting the most 
> powerful, but not all-powerful, person in our federa[l|ated] and 
> hierarchically composed government carries too much structural/systemic 
> bias for a reasonable person to describe it as "democratic". Nick's 
> gloss was way too vague for one to use that more refined statement to 
> contradict his. If we allow democracy to be a spectrum, some more, some 
> less, democratic, then Nick's statement stands well enough. But as my 
> Gen Z friends are telling me on a daily basis, they're not going to 
> vote in November because it doesn't matter. Biden and Trump are the 
> same person. Both lie. And even if/when they're not lying, whatever 
> they intend to do will be subverted by or enervated with the noxious 
> intentions of the oligarchs or self-aggrandizing agendas of the rest of 
> the politicians, including SCOTUS.
>
> But even that sentiment (that the whole system is Borked) contradicts 
> one of the normal interpretations of the word "determined". Such a 
> frothing mess my be deterministic. But if it is, it's chaotic; so much 
> so that morons like Trump wouldn't be capable of "determining our 
> common reality". And even if we broaden the conception of "determine" 
> out to mean something Rawlsian like the veil of ignorance, that which 
> of Trump or Biden is elected will (or not) somehow affect the power 
> status on the other side of the veil, my Gen Z friends would say it 
> does not. The Musks and Thiels will still be the most powerful people 
> on the planet come next year, regardless of who is elected. So neither 
> Biden nor Trump "determine" our common reality in any meaningful sense, 
> though they may well add a tiny little bias in some very large space.
>
>
> On 6/1/24 08:28, Prof David West wrote:
>> Nick said,
>> 
>> /"In democracy, we find  some way to blend our experiences into a common view."/
>> 
>> If the "democracy" of which you speak is that of the New England Town Hall, or that of tribal societies of long ago, you are probably reasonably accurate.
>> 
>> However, that sense of "democracy" no longer exists, at least here in the US. Regardless of how one votes, the result is absolutely and completely *assigning   X   the job of determining our common reality*.
>> 
>> davew
>> 
>> On Fri, May 31, 2024, at 9:58 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>>> This (see below) got served up to me out of the blue this morning.  The way it's put here, Frank and Bruce might actually agree with it.  Still, it's straight Peirce.  I have no idea who the author is; do any of you?
>>>
>>> Here's crucial passage.
>>>
>>> /Our understanding of reality needs a complete overhaul. Rather than viewing it as a fixed, external stage upon which events play out, we should consider it as a dynamic interplay between observers and their environment [/experiences/]. Reality, in this view, doesn’t reside out there, independent of us. Instead, reality is our interactions with the world  [/one another/], shaped and defined by our observations [/experiences/]. Reality is nothing but [/the telos of/] those interactions between subjects./
>>>
>>> I had to make those little changes because the author,  like so many aspiring monists, after arguing against observer independence for a hundred words, slips up by implying that the "environment" is anything but something else that we have to agree upon, if we are ever going to get on with life.
>>>
>>> By the way,  I stipulate that nothing in his argument has ANYTHING to do with quantum mechanics. The argument would be sound even if the idea of a quantum had never been thought.  However, I like the idea of physics as some kind of language of convergent belief.
>>>
>>> By the way,  In history there seem to have been two ways for people converge on a common experience, charisma and democracy.  In charisma, we pick some idiot (usually a psychopath) and share his or her experience.  In democracy, we find  some way to blend our experiences into a common view.  Sometime in the next few months we will decide which way we want to go.   Do we want to assign Trump the job of determining our common reality, or do we want to continue to work it out amongst ourselves through experiment and argument.
>>>
>>> Weather gorgeous here in the mosquito infested swamp.  Garden thriving.  A much better year.
>>>
>>> Watch that dry line in TX.  It's truly amazing.  Can it really be true that I am the only weather fanatic on a list that is devoted to complexity?   How can that be?
>>>
>>> NIck
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> https://medium.com/machine-cognition/objective-reality-doesnt-exist-it-is-time-to-accept-it-and-move-on-7524b494d6af <https://medium.com/machine-cognition/objective-reality-doesnt-exist-it-is-time-to-accept-it-and-move-on-7524b494d6af>
>>> <https://medium.com/machine-cognition/objective-reality-doesnt-exist-it-is-time-to-accept-it-and-move-on-7524b494d6af>
>>> 	
>>> Objective Reality Doesn’t Exist: It is Time to Embrace it and Move On <https://medium.com/machine-cognition/objective-reality-doesnt-exist-it-is-time-to-accept-it-and-move-on-7524b494d6af>
>>> The shift towards a unified, observer-dependent reality forces us to let go — once and for all — of the idea of objective reality
>>> medium.com
>
> -- 
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>
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