Um okay? But do you have anything to say about the topic at hand

🤷🏼‍♂️ That question goes above my pay grade

Well yeah...that’s the million dollar question isn’t it.

If the universe objectively cares about life - or even more so - if the universe objectively cares about life capable of being curious about the universe..

Well, I think the profundity of the implications there is self evident

I can fully agree with all of that as long as it’s clearly noted that you’re using “proven” as a word in the context of language and not at all as a mathematical statement

Math proofs are either true or not true. There is no almost. I think that distinction is very significant

It isn’t though. There is no clear definition of an observation in quantum mechanics. That’s the only whole paradox of Schrödinger’s cat being both dead and alive. Is the observation when the instrument inside the box records the value, or does the observation occur when the box is opened and the value can be read? There’s no way to know

I could definitely have misinterpreted the author’s intent, but don’t think so. I think all three of us mostly agree, we’re just calling it different things,

“There is [no/some] [omitted context: direct/circumstantial] evidence of UFO’s”

That’s my best understanding of how he argues that fact is constructed

We both agree that some evidence exists, but no direct evidence. Yet we still have been debating it because using the fact metaphor, as he calls it, has lead us astray. Actively looking for differences instead of common ground.

NDT is saying there’s no direct evidence of UFOs.

But it’s interesting you say credible, which describes a subjective evaluation if trustworthiness

This context about different types and strengths of evidence is the omitted context

To some people those bits of circumstancial evidence may be significant enough to say that there is some evidence that supports UFOs. That determination is subjective and it can still be true even if UFOs don’t exist

Not at all.. of course bullshit is still bullshit

But, yes, alternative facts are a thing that genuinely exist

Fact: it’s daytime and winter

Alternative Fact: it’s dark out and summer

These are both equally true to different subgroups of people

Yeah, everyone can see the tweet but the reactions to and interpretations of it can be wildly different and any discussion around it quickly devolves into tribalism. That’s all he’s saying

This isn’t a political post so I’ll keep political debate out of it, but minimum there’s surely truth in saying that American manufacturing can’t compete with Chinese manufacturing

I’m really struggling to see anything here that you could object to. Do you remember the public discourse around Trump’s tweets being civil and open-minded?

How so? That’s kind of one of the core tenents of science, is it not

Debated for sure. Scientists never imagined they’d ever need the philosophers’ help to do science, but they do

What does it truly mean to observe? And does it require consciousness?

Woah, yeah, I looked him up and it seems like he nailed it

I don’t think anyone can. It seems like even to the physicists it is extremely awkward that our best, most tested scientific theory of understanding of the universe… somehow implies physical reality is directly effected by a conscious mind

Surely it could only improve the quality of public discourse to collectively admit that having a debate doesn’t mean one side is right and the other wrong

Possibly, yeah. When going thaaaat deep I can only guess blindly at answers

Well quantum physics would suggest that absent an observer, there is no reality at all

I’m curious, yes… though a black hole that becomes more irresistible the deeper I go, until there’s no going back, sounds like something inconvenient to my life atm haha

If the universe collapsed in on itself and was reborn in a new big bang which resulted in a universe with laws of physics completely different than they are in ours.. the value of π would still be the same. Even there’s no intelligent agent that ever calculates it

I don’t hate the idea of thinking of God as being one and the same as Math. Kind of elegant really

Math doesn’t exist in the same way as anything else exist

Here, this can probably explain what I mean way smarter than I can:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/#ObjMatPla

The difference is that philosophy only exists because humans exists. Math doesn’t need us

Language is tricky, yeah. It’s how we think so how can we think about language objectively

I don’t know.

But if you need something to ground yourself, consider that the only way we’re able to have this conversation with each other right now is because mathematical truth is so rigid and unambiguous that we are able to build computers. Just by alternating high and low voltages in a circuit. 0’s and 1’s

All of those are only ways we’ve come up with to help better describe abstract mathematical concepts.

But if I’m picking one - well, if there’s any book that talks about truth more than my Discreet Mathematics textbook from college ..well I can’t imagine it lol, literally describing truth with spreadsheets

edit: I just noticed that truth tables were invented by Wittgenstein lol. I never even heard of him until this blog post

There is one language we speak that we know for a certainty describes Truth accurately and unadulterated: that’s mathematics

Even an all-powerful God wouldn’t have the power to make math untrue

Yeah for sure. It’s certainly not comprehensive. Definitely going to look more into Wittgenstein

But I think for such a brief read this post is pretty good value epistemologically

I thought of it like..

If the moon is shining through my window and I hold my fist up to it and compare - I can objectively say that my fist is bigger than the moon. I could probably even get a ruler and take some measurements to prove it. So I can say that it’s a Fact that my fist is larger than the moon. The context I’m omitting here, obviously, is that the moon is 200 thousand miles further away. That’s why you need the trust part. You have to trust that the curator of a fact has omitted context that frames truth in a way that is useful and enlightening instead of obfuscating

That doesn’t mean truth is relative, but observations and measurements definitely are