My concept of a meaningless claim is a claim that can be substituted for any alternative without any change to anticipated experience. For example, the claim ‘Photon does not exist after reaching the Event Horizon’ can be substituted for the claim ‘Photon exists after crossing the Event Horizon’ without bringing any change to anticipated experience. Thus, it is not rational to believe in any of the alternatives. What is your practical definition of ‘meaningless’?
This is fine, but notice that “photon never existed at all” is also perfectly consistent and doesn’t change your anticipation, as long as “I will have experiences as predicted by this map that contains a photon” is assumed.
In general, “map X predicts my experiences” and “map X predicts my experiences and in addition map X is true/X exists in reality/etc” have exactly the same predictions, and my claim is that the former is simpler and that the latter is incoherent. No need to go past the event horizon.
But how can I believe that the photon-containing map predicts my experiences without implicitly believing in the existence of photons? Why should I believe in the success of the Photon-Containing map without believing in the existence of photons?
More to the point, the models that contain photons that behave “realistically” sometimes lead to unsuccessful predictions (e.g. the double-slit experiment), and models that consistently give successful predictions include photon behavior that seems “unreal” to human intuition (but corresponds to experimentally-observed reality).
My concept of a meaningless claim is a claim that can be substituted for any alternative without any change to anticipated experience. For example, the claim ‘Photon does not exist after reaching the Event Horizon’ can be substituted for the claim ‘Photon exists after crossing the Event Horizon’ without bringing any change to anticipated experience. Thus, it is not rational to believe in any of the alternatives. What is your practical definition of ‘meaningless’?
This is fine, but notice that “photon never existed at all” is also perfectly consistent and doesn’t change your anticipation, as long as “I will have experiences as predicted by this map that contains a photon” is assumed.
In general, “map X predicts my experiences” and “map X predicts my experiences and in addition map X is true/X exists in reality/etc” have exactly the same predictions, and my claim is that the former is simpler and that the latter is incoherent. No need to go past the event horizon.
But how can I believe that the photon-containing map predicts my experiences without implicitly believing in the existence of photons? Why should I believe in the success of the Photon-Containing map without believing in the existence of photons?
All models are wrong, some models are useful.
The soft sciences use models for prediction all the time without believing that the model reflects reality.
>Why should I believe in the success of the Photon-Containing map without believing in the existence of photons?
Because doing that in the past has worked out well and led to successful predictions. You don’t actually need to assume realism.
More to the point, the models that contain photons that behave “realistically” sometimes lead to unsuccessful predictions (e.g. the double-slit experiment), and models that consistently give successful predictions include photon behavior that seems “unreal” to human intuition (but corresponds to experimentally-observed reality).