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Friday, March 1. 2024

Reality


Scott Adams claims that there is no reality accessible to humans. It's all narrative. 


OK, it is hyperbole but I am sympathetic to his point, being a pathological skeptic. Scott also likes to imagine that we live in a simulation, which is an interesting narrative.


Posted by Bird Dog at 13:37 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

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That's dormhall dope talk to the max. There was nothing even close to narrative as I skied down a slope here in Colorado this afternoon.

I'ma skip whatever Adams is smokin'.
#1 Mike Anderson (Link) on 2024-03-01 16:27 (Reply)
If I'm just a simulation, I wish they would simulate a skinnier me.
#2 Pod Hamp on 2024-03-01 17:03 (Reply)
If that skinnier deal pans out, hook me up!
#2.1 Mike Anderson (Link) on 2024-03-01 17:59 (Reply)
Reality is that which continues to exist even when you stop believing in it. So yes, there is an objective reality after all.
#3 Abelard Lindsey on 2024-03-01 18:52 (Reply)
Scott Adams is funny, promoting a simulation. He is either pulling our collective leg or he lives in too deeply in his cartoon.
Now I agree our culture is too closely involved in computer simulations -- computer games. climate computer simulation, AI, etc. But try asking the universe Simulators for anything. That will get you anything you want. ;-)
#4 Jan Peter Blickenstaff on 2024-03-01 21:15 (Reply)
I like reading Scott's Twitter feed and given he is only human there is an inevitable amount of BS

The question of whether we are able to access reality is a very old question in philosophy (let alone the gibberish of today's post-modernists)

To his point of our.living in a simulation I was joking the other day with a colleague that Kant, let alone Descartes, would have loved the movie "Matrix" and not just for Agent X and the kick-a** special effects
#5 Anonymous Mike on 2024-03-02 00:40 (Reply)
He does not believe in free will.
Ergo. He believes himself to be a program.
A programmed prophet.
#6 Matt on 2024-03-02 00:42 (Reply)
Framing the universe as a simulation makes Scott's views sound unusual. His claims it operates as though there are intelligent agent(s) behind the scenes.

A universe created by a designer and managed by intelligence is the more common framing.

Scott is all about framing.
#7 Old Dude on 2024-03-02 10:53 (Reply)
I am not sure what he means, exactly, and hope to find out more, but I think he means that in the world of Photoshop and current media of all kinds, you cannot have complete confidence in anything you hear or see outside of your own immediate experience, I.e., what you yourself can verify. So the experience of skiing downhill is exactly the kind of thing that is reality, your family is reality (hopefully), but it is a very limited and constrained world. Outside of that, who knows what is actually going on, or why. Basically, 1984 - a very glum and discouraging outlook. Even worse for young people who will believe anything.
#8 Thomas Gulick (Link) on 2024-03-02 13:54 (Reply)
We just gotta find the guy selling the cheat codes ...
#9 Thomas Doubting (Link) on 2024-03-02 16:56 (Reply)
I don't understand people who try to persuade me of a point of view by arguing that all points of view are equally valueless. They're sawing off the limb they pontificate from.

Adams did do a good job the other day exploring the absurd lengths to which the clueless class will go to avoid understanding the ascendancy of Trump in the polls.
#10 Texan99 on 2024-03-03 13:20 (Reply)

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