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.
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.