Thanks for engaging on this—I’m finding it educating. I’ll try your suggestion but admit to finding it hard.
So, there’s a Chinese rocket-maker in town and Sir Isaac Newton has been offered the ride of his life atop the rocket. This is no ordinary rocket, and it’s going to go really, really fast. A little boy from down the road excitedly asks to join him, and being a jolly fellow, Newton agrees.
Now, Newton’s wife is pulling that funny face that only a married man will recognise, because she’s got dinner in the oven and she knows Newton is going to be late home again. But Newton is confident that THIS time, he’s going to be home at precisely 6pm. Newton has recently become the proud owner of the world’s most reliable and accurate watch.
As the rocket ignites, the little boy says to Newton, “The vicar told me that when we get back, dinner is going to be cold and your wife is going to insist that your watch is wrong.”
Now, we all now how that story plays out. Newton had been pretty confident about his timepiece. 99.9999%, in fact. And when they land, lo and behold his watch and the church clock agree precisely and dinner is very nice.
Er, huh?
Because in fact, the child is a brain in a vat, and the entire experience was a computer simulation, an advanced virtual reality indistinguishable from the real thing until someone disconnects him.
That’s the best I can do without breaking the taboo.
Reading between the lines a little, you seem to be suggesting that if Newton says “It’s true that we returned in time for dinner!” that’s just an attempt to assert the privilege of his beliefs over the boy’s, and we know that because Newton is unaware of the simulators.
Yes? No? Something else?
If I understood that right, then I reject it. Sure, Newton is unaware of the simulators, and may have beliefs that the existence of the simulators contradicts. Perhaps it’s also true that the little boy is missing two toes on his left foot, and Newton believes the boy’s left foot is whole. There’s undoubtedly vast numbers of things that Newton has false beliefs about, in addition to the simulators and the boy’s foot.
None of that changes the fact that Newton and the boy had beliefs about the rocket and the clock, and observed events supported one of those beliefs over the other. This is not just Newton privileging his beliefs over the boy’s; there really is something (in this case, the programming of the simulation) that Newton understands better and is therefore better able to predict.
If “reality” means anything at all, the thing it refers to has to include whatever made it predictably the case that Newton was arriving for dinner on time. That it also includes things of which Newton is unaware, which would contradict his predictions about other things were he to ever make the right observations, doesn’t change that.
Thanks for engaging on this—I’m finding it educating. I’ll try your suggestion but admit to finding it hard.
So, there’s a Chinese rocket-maker in town and Sir Isaac Newton has been offered the ride of his life atop the rocket. This is no ordinary rocket, and it’s going to go really, really fast. A little boy from down the road excitedly asks to join him, and being a jolly fellow, Newton agrees.
Now, Newton’s wife is pulling that funny face that only a married man will recognise, because she’s got dinner in the oven and she knows Newton is going to be late home again. But Newton is confident that THIS time, he’s going to be home at precisely 6pm. Newton has recently become the proud owner of the world’s most reliable and accurate watch.
As the rocket ignites, the little boy says to Newton, “The vicar told me that when we get back, dinner is going to be cold and your wife is going to insist that your watch is wrong.”
Now, we all now how that story plays out. Newton had been pretty confident about his timepiece. 99.9999%, in fact. And when they land, lo and behold his watch and the church clock agree precisely and dinner is very nice.
Er, huh?
Because in fact, the child is a brain in a vat, and the entire experience was a computer simulation, an advanced virtual reality indistinguishable from the real thing until someone disconnects him.
That’s the best I can do without breaking the taboo.
You’ve mostly lost me, here.
Reading between the lines a little, you seem to be suggesting that if Newton says “It’s true that we returned in time for dinner!” that’s just an attempt to assert the privilege of his beliefs over the boy’s, and we know that because Newton is unaware of the simulators.
Yes? No? Something else?
If I understood that right, then I reject it. Sure, Newton is unaware of the simulators, and may have beliefs that the existence of the simulators contradicts. Perhaps it’s also true that the little boy is missing two toes on his left foot, and Newton believes the boy’s left foot is whole. There’s undoubtedly vast numbers of things that Newton has false beliefs about, in addition to the simulators and the boy’s foot.
None of that changes the fact that Newton and the boy had beliefs about the rocket and the clock, and observed events supported one of those beliefs over the other. This is not just Newton privileging his beliefs over the boy’s; there really is something (in this case, the programming of the simulation) that Newton understands better and is therefore better able to predict.
If “reality” means anything at all, the thing it refers to has to include whatever made it predictably the case that Newton was arriving for dinner on time. That it also includes things of which Newton is unaware, which would contradict his predictions about other things were he to ever make the right observations, doesn’t change that.