But your original post implied a sort of scientific nihilism.
>That is, no matter what I believe about the world, it will always be just the way it is regardless of how I feel about it or how I want it to be.
Your beliefs affect your actions, even if it’s so small that it’s hard to register. Being a skeptic in anything may make your face contort in such a way that it resembles incredulity; changing how others view the topic and how the talker responds to you. I think what you really mean is that you have better understood the order of magnitude that your beliefs have on the world. Where previously, you may have believed that thinking something will have great affect on the world, you now realize that thinking something will have a small, but still existent, effect on the world.
Alas, I can’t cram a full understanding of the world into just a few short sentences, and the moment I say anything at all I necessarily say something wrong.
Yes, what I present above emphasizes a particular aspect of our existence. As you say, how I feel about things and how I want things to be are real processes in the universe that have downstream effects. It’s also true I can’t make a cake appear before me by closing my eyes and wishing really hard that I had a cake.
But your original post implied a sort of scientific nihilism.
>That is, no matter what I believe about the world, it will always be just the way it is regardless of how I feel about it or how I want it to be.
Your beliefs affect your actions, even if it’s so small that it’s hard to register. Being a skeptic in anything may make your face contort in such a way that it resembles incredulity; changing how others view the topic and how the talker responds to you. I think what you really mean is that you have better understood the order of magnitude that your beliefs have on the world. Where previously, you may have believed that thinking something will have great affect on the world, you now realize that thinking something will have a small, but still existent, effect on the world.
Alas, I can’t cram a full understanding of the world into just a few short sentences, and the moment I say anything at all I necessarily say something wrong.
Yes, what I present above emphasizes a particular aspect of our existence. As you say, how I feel about things and how I want things to be are real processes in the universe that have downstream effects. It’s also true I can’t make a cake appear before me by closing my eyes and wishing really hard that I had a cake.