I don’t follow why you claim that reductionism and realism are incompatible. I think this may be because I’m very confused when I try to figure out, from context, what you mean by “realism”, and I strongly suspect that that’s because you don’t have a definition of that word which can be used in tests for updating predictions, which is the sort of thing LWers look for in a useful definition.
Basically, I’m inclined to agree with you when you say:
Realism is neither true not false in any meaningful and universal way. You are free to state it to exist if you are going to use that statement for something. But if you just say it, as if it would mean something in and of itself, you are not saying anything meaningful.
This is a really good reason in my experience for not getting into long discussions about “But what is reality, really?”
I don’t follow why you claim that reductionism and realism are incompatible. I think this may be because I’m very confused when I try to figure out, from context, what you mean by “realism”, and I strongly suspect that that’s because you don’t have a definition of that word which can be used in tests for updating predictions, which is the sort of thing LWers look for in a useful definition.
Basically, I’m inclined to agree with you when you say:
This is a really good reason in my experience for not getting into long discussions about “But what is reality, really?”