Musings
Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2012 12:47 am
I'm sure everyone is capable of musing and has done so before. Share some of your musings here. I am interested in reading your musings. This is not a discussion or debate thread. Do not tell others that their musings are wrong.
Here is mine to start:
Most of the time people are not willing to make a concession when debating. Pride and arrogance may play a part, but I think it is mostly from differences in perception. Differences in perception make different opinions on the same issues. When people are making decisions, they usually rely on past experiences because it is expected that whatever worked in the past will continue to work in the future. When developing ideas, people will use their memories to consolidate their ideas and expand them. People will have different experiences and different memories which result in different ideas and worldviews. It is extremely hard, if not impossible, to understand concepts that cannot be represented by physical manifestations or qualities that derive from the combination of such physical manifestations. Intuition exists, but there reaches a point where not even intuition could help us understand such concepts. How do people describe color to a person that cannot see? How do people describe sound to a person that cannot hear? If they had already seen and recognized color or heard sounds before, then explaining such concepts would be easy. But what if they had never experienced it? Born as deaf or born as blind. How would they ever understand? Well, people would describe it in terms of what they can perceive. A blind person would have to experience colors by using their other senses. Red can be associated with hot and blue can be associated with cold. They can give a new definition of color by connecting what they already know. We cannot really understand until we have experienced it or know more about something. A person may be logically correct in his/her perception, but only because he/she is missing information. We cannot be completely certain about anything we know, because we do not know the extent of our intuition or if our intuition is even correct. Perhaps a person on stage can be recognized as dead by a person. The person's reaction would be much different if he/she did not realize that the dead person on stage is actually acting.
There is no objective reality. Only subjective reality exists because whatever information people can perceive is filtered by our senses. Our senses are not the most accurate, so our perception of the world is muddied. The concept of an ultimate reality does not exist because whatever "ultimate reality" that people come up with can only be correct with their version of reality. I am not advocating solipsism. I am instead saying that objective reality cannot be observed. If we knew as much as we could on the universe, we would find out that most of our previous conclusions were false. However, within the context of what we knew, the conclusions would be correct. Our logic is correct only if we assume that we know everything that is necessary to make the "correct" conclusion. If we didn't know everything that was necessary to make the "correct" conclusion, then people could only have wrong conclusions.
The world is somewhat irrational and would never be completely predicted in all scales. If the world could be predicted, it would mean that there is only one fixed model of the universe. Every aspect of the universe would be predetermined because no other possibilities exist. One implies the other. This means that whatever thoughts I have or whatever I am writing right now, I only do because it is a necessity. The universe makes it so that I must do the things that I do. Choice does not exist in this model of the world; whatever I experience was meant to be. Assuming that people have built a strong enough machine that can predict everything in the world, can it predict itself? Did it predict that it would predict what it would try to predict? It leads to an infinite cycle. I don't know if such a contraption could exist.
Unfortunately, nothing is certain and I can only hope to be more accurate.
Here is mine to start:
Most of the time people are not willing to make a concession when debating. Pride and arrogance may play a part, but I think it is mostly from differences in perception. Differences in perception make different opinions on the same issues. When people are making decisions, they usually rely on past experiences because it is expected that whatever worked in the past will continue to work in the future. When developing ideas, people will use their memories to consolidate their ideas and expand them. People will have different experiences and different memories which result in different ideas and worldviews. It is extremely hard, if not impossible, to understand concepts that cannot be represented by physical manifestations or qualities that derive from the combination of such physical manifestations. Intuition exists, but there reaches a point where not even intuition could help us understand such concepts. How do people describe color to a person that cannot see? How do people describe sound to a person that cannot hear? If they had already seen and recognized color or heard sounds before, then explaining such concepts would be easy. But what if they had never experienced it? Born as deaf or born as blind. How would they ever understand? Well, people would describe it in terms of what they can perceive. A blind person would have to experience colors by using their other senses. Red can be associated with hot and blue can be associated with cold. They can give a new definition of color by connecting what they already know. We cannot really understand until we have experienced it or know more about something. A person may be logically correct in his/her perception, but only because he/she is missing information. We cannot be completely certain about anything we know, because we do not know the extent of our intuition or if our intuition is even correct. Perhaps a person on stage can be recognized as dead by a person. The person's reaction would be much different if he/she did not realize that the dead person on stage is actually acting.
There is no objective reality. Only subjective reality exists because whatever information people can perceive is filtered by our senses. Our senses are not the most accurate, so our perception of the world is muddied. The concept of an ultimate reality does not exist because whatever "ultimate reality" that people come up with can only be correct with their version of reality. I am not advocating solipsism. I am instead saying that objective reality cannot be observed. If we knew as much as we could on the universe, we would find out that most of our previous conclusions were false. However, within the context of what we knew, the conclusions would be correct. Our logic is correct only if we assume that we know everything that is necessary to make the "correct" conclusion. If we didn't know everything that was necessary to make the "correct" conclusion, then people could only have wrong conclusions.
The world is somewhat irrational and would never be completely predicted in all scales. If the world could be predicted, it would mean that there is only one fixed model of the universe. Every aspect of the universe would be predetermined because no other possibilities exist. One implies the other. This means that whatever thoughts I have or whatever I am writing right now, I only do because it is a necessity. The universe makes it so that I must do the things that I do. Choice does not exist in this model of the world; whatever I experience was meant to be. Assuming that people have built a strong enough machine that can predict everything in the world, can it predict itself? Did it predict that it would predict what it would try to predict? It leads to an infinite cycle. I don't know if such a contraption could exist.
Unfortunately, nothing is certain and I can only hope to be more accurate.