there’s something extremely funny to me about claiming there is no such thing as reality, while using a device made of sand we convinced to do math and display pictures.

do y’all have any idea how mandatory it is to modern engineering that there is a unified reality with compressible models that can be converged on from any starting point? do y’all have any idea just how ridiculously many converging lines of evidence are behind the act of turning sand into high frequency mixed signal very large scale integrated circuits?

this shit isn’t fucking magic, it doesn’t happen because of vibes. it happens because tens of millions of engineers and technicians in a couple of dozen different disciplines understand the absolute shit out of reality. specifically, they understand the absolute shit out of a teeny tiny slice of reality, and if they weren’t all working on different slices of the exact same reality, none of this shit would ever function.

but carry on i guess. the sand that does math will keep doing it regardless of whether you believe in it.

@AvengingFemme

You mentioned learning thermo, and thermo has a history of having extremely bad mental effects on scientists who really understood it. Basically, it's all vibes.

(this is not a serious take)

@AvengingFemme I'm sure the principle of relativity has something to do with this.
@AvengingFemme > "sand we convinced to do math and display pictures"
Well, we are also continuously pushing lightning through it at a very high frequency.
@AvengingFemme I'm currently reading "Reality+" by David J. Chalmers and the abuse of science, math, etc. as he tries to argue we're living in a simulation is just terrible. I'm reading on a Kindle Scribe I just bought, which lets you write your own notes, but if I did they'd all say "this is just solipsism with extra steps". 😛
@AvengingFemme same thinking, but try 'love' or... 'money'.
@AvengingFemme Meanwhile, they’re all discussing it through the math-sands.
@AvengingFemme Ha! I've spent quite a bit of my life wondering what I want to be when I grow up. Seems to me that "*understanding the absolute shit out of a teeny tiny slice of reality*" would be a pretty great thing to do 😃
@AvengingFemme "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick
@AvengingFemme I'll admit it's quite an impressive coincidence
@AvengingFemme The modern version of Samuel Johnson kicking a rock and saying "I refute it thus".
@AvengingFemme Where do you tend to hear the most talk about there being no reality?
@AvengingFemme Best description of the shared consensual hallucination that we convince ourselves is real that I’ve seen in a long time.
@AvengingFemme You have to admit once we get to quantum physics, it gets weird.
@AvengingFemme You may not believe in reality, but reality sure as heck believes in you.

@AvengingFemme , to be fair, on the deepest level it appears that reality ("local realism") is incompatible with quantum theory. This has been verified experimentally. In a fundamental sense, we don't have any idea what is going on with the universe. Hence the stalemate between interpretations of QM, none of them making testable predictions which could resolve the question.

And, that being said, I'd guess that 99.99% of those saying the world isn't real aren't talking about Bell's Inequality. 🙃

@AvengingFemme

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn't go away.” – Philip K. Dick.

@AvengingFemme and don’t forget the cow parts used to paste it all together!

@AvengingFemme Alternatively, nothing is real and we're (I'm? you're?) simply being deceived by some messed up almighty demon who is faking all impressions just for the hell of it.

Honestly, if this demon is truly that wicked, adding smartphones to the simulated universe seems pretty in character.

@AvengingFemme yeah it’s a case of “understanding reality” doesn’t exist