His polemical style reminds me too much of political rhetoric for my liking. It hooks too much into the us vs them psychology e.g. rationalists vs irrationalists.
“Finally, I am going to take a strictly realist perspective on quantum mechanics—the quantum world is really out there, our equations describe the territory and not our maps of it,”
Why isn’t this an example of the mind projection fallacy? I know you said to give you a break, but I really don’t like it when people contradict themselves.
Why isn’t this an example of the mind projection fallacy?
It is. I think Eliezer’s merely trying to drive home the point that Quantum Mechanics is the closest thing we have to the territory. More accurately, it’s the most accurate map. But it’s still a map. Classical mechanics might be like a Beck map, and this simple, high-detail geographical map might be virtually indistinguishable from the territory by comparison, but Quantum Mechanics fails to describe the world accurately in some respects. (Think General Relativity.) It’s a sad truth, but not one ignored lightly.
And, to be pedantic, even if we one day make a model that reflects reality exactly, our equations will still be describing the model first, and only reality incidentally.
His polemical style reminds me too much of political rhetoric for my liking. It hooks too much into the us vs them psychology e.g. rationalists vs irrationalists.
“Finally, I am going to take a strictly realist perspective on quantum mechanics—the quantum world is really out there, our equations describe the territory and not our maps of it,”
Why isn’t this an example of the mind projection fallacy? I know you said to give you a break, but I really don’t like it when people contradict themselves.
It is. I think Eliezer’s merely trying to drive home the point that Quantum Mechanics is the closest thing we have to the territory. More accurately, it’s the most accurate map. But it’s still a map. Classical mechanics might be like a Beck map, and this simple, high-detail geographical map might be virtually indistinguishable from the territory by comparison, but Quantum Mechanics fails to describe the world accurately in some respects. (Think General Relativity.) It’s a sad truth, but not one ignored lightly.
And, to be pedantic, even if we one day make a model that reflects reality exactly, our equations will still be describing the model first, and only reality incidentally.