Reality, or Flawed Knowledge of Reality?

"Reality is an illusion brought on by a lack of alcohol." _{- Anonymous Poster #0}

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

A. Einstein

"I reject your reality and substitute my own." -- Adam Savage from Mythbusters.

That's quite a head full! I'll have to watch it again.

It first got to get weird with his reference to Simpson's paradox.

Here's a diagram I ran across that explains Simpson's paradox:

Simpson's paradox for quantitative data: a positive trend (red and blue lines) appears for two separate groups, whereas a negative trend (dotted line) appears when the groups are combined.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

When you have only incomplete information where probabilities are involved, all sort of paradoxes can occur. Another example that comes to mind is intransitive dice:

the dice use values 0 to 6. Each die has values:

Blue: 3 3 3 3 3 3
Magenta: 2 2 2 2 6 6
Olive: 1 1 1 5 5 5
Red: 0 0 4 4 4 4

If you figure the probabilities, blue will beat magenta 2/3 of the time, magenta will beat olive 2/3 of the time, olive will beat red 2/3 of the time, but red will beat blue 2/3 of the time.

So Blue > Magenta > Olive > Red > Blue

http://grime.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/

You can buy some of the dice if you have some gambling friends with some extra money. Let your friend choose a color first, then select the one that beats it!

https://mathsgear.co.uk/products/non-transitive-grime-dice

May I suggest that you pickup some health insurance first before you pull this dice trick on a friend who knows the routine.

Yeah, for the record, it was just said in jest. I'm not into gambling (or violence) and would only play for fun. There's enough cheating going on in the world.

Yes cheating. Have you heard the latest scam ? Apparently many politicians, once they have left office, are using unspent campaign contributions to feed their exotic lifestyles. Headline story in today's Press Enterprise.

Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock.

If all are to be rolled, magenta looks pretty good.

Magenta has the highest average pip count. If you roll all four dice and count one point for each win against another die then Magenta should win. Here is a plot of 1000 rolls of all four dice:

Comparing the dice on a 1 to 1 basis for 100000 trials for "Blue", "Magenta", "Olive", and "Red" yields the following matrix:

Reality? After many years I have come up with this little antidote when asking people about vocal technic.

I first ask the driver of a Ferris wheel at a fair ground; in what direction does it rotate when running? He answers clockwise.

Next I move to the left side and ask a person standing there, in what direction does it rotate when running? He answers it rotates upwards.

Continuing around the wheel a person at the rear said anti clockwise, and a person on the right side, answered, it rotates downwards.

So my antidote is, reality is when you understand why people give you different answers to the same question.

A friend of man was bitten by a snake,and I called the doctor,he said give him an antidote,so I sat there and read from the Readers Digest till the rescue squad got there but it was too late.

That is when I learned the difference between Antidote, and Anecdote.

Thank you.

I'm hope the $65 you made for you submission to "Life in These United States" helped ease the pain of your loss.

Does Reader's Digest still pay $100 for submitted joke's they print ?

Good answer. A great metacdote.

Just think about how bored we will all be when we know all there is to know about all there is to know about.

I already know too much for my own good and I'm not very good.

Yeh! I agree with you, I think no one can know about everything, Everybody has knowledge a particular field. I have knowledge of iTunes Error 56

There's your problem.

One bad apple.

Well you really put it in a nutshell!

As we learn more about a particular subject,it always generates more questions than answers.So the more we know,the more we realize what we don't know.

Our answers are always subjective,not objective;how can they be otherwise? We are constrained by our senses,and our sensibilities and tend to accept as fact those things that "feel right" to our common sense.

To be truly objective is impossible for any mortal being.

Some come close,as for instance, Einstein.

As I said in a previous post about the Schrodinger's cat paradox:We can't know what we don't know.

The state of the cat is fixed,and it is our knowledge of it's state that is the variable,called "probability", which is in agreement with the link in the original post.

Perhaps it should be called an "Ignorance Wave" instead.∗

I had never heard of this guy till a couple of days ago,and it is interesting that he thinks in the same vein as I on certain things.

He is far more intelligent and eloquent than I will ever be,and I am not putting myself on his level by any means;It is only that on some points our thoughts hit an intersection,like a Lissajous pattern.

As we say down south,"Even a blind pig will sometimes root up an acorn."

∗ "It isn't what we know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so."

---Artemus Ward

IMHO:

Everyone's reality is subjective.Take the Shrodinger's cat for instance.

Imagine that the box is being viewed by two different people via a fiber optic cable.

One of the cables is 1 light year long,(first observer)and the other is two light years long for the second observer.

The collapse of the cat into one or the other state will happen at different times for each of the observers.

It will remain in a state of superposition for one year,referenced to the first observer,and two years for the second observer.

But the reality of the cat's state is not ever in a superposition,it is fixed before it observed,it is only the knowledge that is in a state of superposition,simply put,we cannot know what we don't know without information on the state of the cat.

The cat's fate would be the same if there were no observers.

" He is far more intelligent " indicates that you have a great degree of humility, which, by itself, is very honorable.

Remember what Else Einstein always said about her husband :

The professor does not drive, it is much too complicated for him.

Everyone has islands of ignorance and knowledge,separated by an ocean of mystery,and to traverse the gap is sometimes very hard,and some get lost at sea.

I have seen many examples of people with lots of "book sense" that could not tie their shoes,or button up a shirt.However,they were very gifted in many other ways.

I firmly believe that we all have a purpose in this universe,and some are put here to test us and that our knowledge flows from an ocean of all knowledge,and we each have a channel which we receive and are "tuned ".

Some people,through accident or a stroke of misfortune get "bumped" off of their channel,such as happens when people have a gift after recovery that they never had before,such as a musician or artist,or speaking a foreign language.

There are many examples of this that have been publicized.

To me that hints that the Buddhists may be right;that we have within us access to all knowledge if we can adjust our channel properly.

I try to keep all channels open,but it is like a radio scanning through the channels;

a brief flash of inspiration that quickly disappears before I can fully grasp the

content or origin,and I go back to feeling like a tiny island in a lake,on an island in a

lake on an island surrounded by an ocean (which may really be only a lake).

I gotta go,this is getting a bit too deep for me.

I think most of us have had an epiphany now and then. I find it often happens early in the morning in the shower. I could probably accomplish a lot more with a larger water heater!

It sure seems that ideas must come from somewhere else, but I think that most of the brain's processing is unconscious and that the conscious mind is more a narrator that comes up with an explanation after the fact.

(But that's just my conscious mind coming up with an explanation after the fact.)

Man creates nothing.We are simply discovering what is already there.

All of our known physics are discoveries of principles that have been established since the beginning of spacetime.(Big Bang,Bubble,Membrane,String,etc.,etc,ad naseum).

As the old saying goes"There is nothing new under the sun."

And as Carl Sagan said:"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch,first you must create a universe.

We have no "scratch " to work from;we just happened to drop in when the universe is in it's current state and all actions are actually reactions;Even the electro/chemical ones in our brains that compose our thoughts,with the chain of events going back to our birth.

It is hard to argue that we do not have free will,but at least we have the illusion of free will,and that is good enough for me.

Even Einstein said that reality was an illusion.

And he was much smarter than anyone I know of.

You are right, the physical laws have been around much longer than we have, and we just discover them. But there are not locomotives, automobiles, airplanes, etc. until someone (or a number of people) figure out how to apply the laws of physics to accomplish a useful task.

I'm not exactly sure what "free will" is. It doesn't mean doing something completely random. I think the brain operates as any other machine (or computer) with responses that depend on inputs and past inputs (experiences) from the environment, mostly at a subconscious level. The conscious mind doesn't have a clue where these decisions come from, and so attributes it to "free will".

My own thinking is that there may not be "free will" but that doesn't mean we should open the prisons and let the felons out. I think that instead there is a "free won't". The actions are initiated by subconscious "urges?" that percolate up to the conscious where they may be vetoed, similar to ideas that are originated by a company employee that can be vetoed by the company president. This "free won't" is programmed into peoples brains by the process of education in a civilized society. It's pretty much the definition of civilization.

The idea that decisions are initiated in the subconscious is supported by experiments carried out by Libet, where subjects wearing brainwave reading devices were asked to watch a clock and at some point decide to push a button, remembering the reading on the clock when the decision was made. It turns out there is a brainwave signal (Bereitschaftspotential or "readiness potential") consistently preceding the conscious decision by a couple of tenths of a second.

Libet's experiment: (0) repose, until (1) the Bereitschaftspotential is detected, (2-Libet's W) the volunteer memorizes a dot position upon feeling their intention, and (3) then acts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

Man creates nothing.We are simply discovering what is already there.

A lot like an artist such as Michelangelo's, David.

David was always in the marble,... Michelangelo just freed him.

The Bhudists think that when we are born,we know everything,and as we grow,we forget,then spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of our lost knowledge.

They try very hard to be objective and let nature take it's course without interference.

But even they cannot achieve complete objectivity due to the limitations of our physical bodies.

Imagine how differently a tetrachromat sees the world!

How different it would be if we could see the full Electromagnetic spectrum!

Link to Tetrachromat:

httpshttps://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-found-a-woman-whose-eyes-have-a-whole-new-type-of-colour-receptor

Imagine how differently a tetrachromat sees the world!

I suspect that colors on TV and computer monitors and printed pictures might look "wrong" because these technologies have been designed to mimic the color vision of trichromats, especially for skin tones. The fourth cone may respond differently to objects in real life than the color reproduced on a monitor, photograph, or printed picture. A person who was a tetrachromat would probably not even notice this if she had experienced it all her life.

Soon after the blue & black / white & gold dress hit the internet, an online tetrachromacy test made the rounds. Color computer displays only generate combinations of the three primary colors, so apparently, this test would not work.

https://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/tetrachromacy.asp

How different it would be if we could see the full Electromagnetic spectrum!

I have a thermal camera that plugs into my cell phone. It's interesting to experience the world in the 5 to 15-micron range.

"The Bhudists think that when we are born,we know everything,and as we grow,we forget,then spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of our lost knowledge."

Reminds me of the ending of the movie 2001-A Space Oddessy.

People start as aged adults, and regress to childhood and infancy.

Now that would be great:Start life as a feeble,toothless,slobbering,helpless old man and end it as an orgasm! What a way to go!

They may have the right idea, but off a bit on the timeline. Just ask my 14 year old daughter- she knows EVERYTHING and as for me, well...I'm way down the road chasing lots of lost knowledge.

Typical teenagers have all the answers,but don't know all of the questions.

I remember my teen years, and how simple the world seemed to be.

I but wish it were really that simple.

When they age a bit,and somewhere around the 25 year mark,they begin to wonder how their parents and grandparents learned so much so fast.

Someone once said that the difference between school and life is that school gives the lesson first,and the test afterwards.

Life works in the opposite direction.

That's interesting. Am I understanding you correctly in that you are asserting greater range of sensory perception ia correlated with propensity for objectivity?

Close,but not precisely.

I am saying that increased senses bring us closer to objectivity than lesser senses.

Consider what the universe would seem to be if everyone were blind,deaf,and mute.

We all are,to some extent blind,deaf,and mute.

We see and hear in a narrow spectrum,we cannot express all emotions and feelings.

Our senses constrain our reality to a narrow subjective point of view.

Certainly,we can convert X ray into a visible representation,but we cannot see in that spectrum;we can convert ultrasound into something audible,but it is still within our sensory limits,so we do not know how it really sounds.

Some mammals only see in black and white,having no color receptors in their retina.

How amazed they would be to suddenly see the world in our color spectrum!

How amazed and overwhelmed we would be if we could see the full electromagnetic spectrum!

Thus it is impossible for us as humans to be totally objective in our view of the universe.

Remember, baryonic matter is only a small percentage of the matter in the universe.The rest is unseen,and only detected by it's gravity.

We are merely "ghosts in the machine."

An interesting perspective. I get where you are coming from. I'm not so sure about one particular assertion.

"... We see and hear in a narrow spectrum,we cannot express all emotions and feelings.

Our senses constrain our reality to a narrow subjective point of view..."

Sure, our senses are more narrow than the whole of all impinging energetic spectra. I am not certain that using a more narrow range makes a view more subjective or less objective, especially when considering ranges intentionally utilized for communicating things like emotions and feelings.

Is a black and white photograph fundamentally less capable of conveying emotion than a color photograph?

Actually that question might not be fair. Using a yardstick of 'feelings and emotions' might be leading us astray. Conveying 'feelings and emotions' might not be a good measure of objectivity.

Consider the range of symbols used in contemporary written English language. The range of binary is far more narrow, yet anything written in contemporary English can be translated objectively into binary.

Those who are color blind and those who experience synesthesia also are interesting to consider in light of this discussion.

Can you objectively interpret the message above? If so you are probably color blind. This measage is incoded such that more information (range) obscures the message.

Synesthesiacs (?) see numbers and or letters as colors and can pickout easily shapes within images encoded specifically to diagnose this condition. Is this increased ability to 'see' increased objectivity or aligned subjectivity?

Those who are color blind and those who experience synesthesia also are interesting to consider in light of this discussion.

Those that are color blind excel with other characteristics, such as low light vision but lack picking out shapes. It has to do with the relationship of the number of between the cones and rods of the eye.

"There are two types of photoreceptors in the human retina, rods and cones. Rods are responsible for vision at low light levels (scotopic vision). They do not mediate color vision, and have a low spatial acuity."

"... but lack picking out shapes. ..."

Except for the image posted (a reverse color blind test) it is the color blind person who easily can see the encoded image, not the normally sighted.

Well, this is conflicted stuff coming from me....

I had originally thought that being color blind they could easily pick out shapes, and posted so,... but I read the definition and it was different, so I changed it.

My experience, I worked with a fellow at the shape ship yard (1990's), we were repairing one of the CNC Routers when it broke done cutting Aluminum. I dropped a special fastener about 5/8" long by about 1/8" diameter. It dropped in about 6" of aluminum shavings from the machine. I thought it was lost.

The operator told me to back away, I got about 15 feet away, and this guy stood about 8 feet away, and spotted and picked out this fastener in this pile of shavings.

I had read that in the Vietnam war, that they would put people like that on point, just because they could distrusted shapes out of the bush.

IMHO:everyone lives within a bubble,a construct created by their inputs from the subjective world.

I suggest you read this link for a more eloquent discussion:

https://aeon.co/essays/what-really-happens-in-schrodinger-s-box

Basically,it boils down to the question"To beable or not to beable" :

That is the question.

(google: beable+Physics)

I waited for Saturday night to share this ole gem..