The Case Against Reality

I've read this article twice now, and both times the same thought struck me. How much, really, are his "insights" much different from Plato's Allegory of Cave philosophy?

Plato has Socrates describe a gathering of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from things passing in front of a fire behind them, and they begin to give names to these shadows[1]

Yes of course the details differ and the physics have drastically changed (invoking QM's probability wave functions as the the basis of the "shadows on the cave wall."), but the idea that all we observe isn't a true representation of reality is one of the oldest ideas in all of western philosophy.

It reminds of that old quote from Alfred North Whitehead, a preeminent 20th century figure..."All philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato"

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

The guy on lsd still gets eaten by the tiger.

The point he makes is that those instruments and theories have an inherent bias to the kind of reality we perceive. That reality is a result of our evolutionary fitness and is not objective. Even the words we use to describe concepts are a function of the limitations our vocal cords and frontal lobe.

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM3CptVZDYU

This is a very nice argument!

Our senses are still only tuned in to detect portions of "reality" that are relevant to life on earth. For example, our eyes detect the band of EM radiation most useful during daytime on Earth. But even though are eyes are narrow band and highly non-linear sensors, they (+our other equally flawed senses) have served us pretty well as far as understanding the true nature of EM waves.

I guess my point is that our senses still aren't evolving to detect reality in some sort of true pure mathematical sense.

The idea that the world is "nothing like" the one you experience through your senses is completely ... stupid.

What you experience through the senses is a valid aspect of the world, which is incomplete, but accurate within its limitations, and largely non-conflicting with other ways of observing which reveal other aspects.

Physics, quantum or otherwise, doesn't flat-out invalidate what you see around you.

Besides, all scientific instruments translate deeper observations which we cannot make with our senses into a representation available to our senses. (In some cases, just numbers which can be visualized, and often direct visualizations). A scientific instrument is in the world, and I can experience its output with my senses.

> Suppose there’s a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop — does that mean that the file itself is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer? Of course not.

Of course not, because the file is blue, rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your desktop. (The desktop isn't to be confused with the computer).

This is real; the aggregate digital object which includes the icon position and color, as well as other information such as a name, modification time stamp and content, does in fact have among its undeniable attributes that it's in the lower right corner of a virtual graphically visualized space known as a desktop and that its color is blue. The position, shape and color are merely not a complete set of its attributes.