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This. I believe most people don't act as if objective reality matters, hence their worldview can be arbitrarily aligned to the demands of their social context.

Suppose these two premises are true: 1. Objective reality exists. 2. There's a model and corpus of data that converges to approximate reality better than any other model.

Now, suppose we train different models with data sources restricted to different tribes/ ideologies/worldviews. Can we discover how their internal representations differ from each other, and from objective reality? What would we do with that knowledge?

by schiffern16 hours ago|

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  >There's a model and corpus of data that converges to approximate reality better than any other model.

How you define "better" exactly is where you smuggle in your messy human value judgements.

I say "better" models are ones which more efficiently convert the entire world to my particular brand of evangelical Christianity. And who are you to say otherwise??? :-/

"No no, I mean accurate not better." Sure. And your model inaccurately denies the existence of Yahweh...

by UltraSane8 hours ago|

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Better means smaller gap with reality. Science works because it is basically a negative feedback control loop to minimize this gap.

by schiffern7 hours ago|

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Thesaurus whack-a-mole, lol.

Who decides what "reality" is, and how big the gap is? Will Exxon permit you to decide reality on climate change? Will the Catholic Church let you decide reality about abortion?

Humanity can't even agree on the existence or non-existence of various Gods, so we're far from a universally agreed "objective reality" to compare with. Inevitably the most powerful forces will get their way (Exxon etc), regardless of any idealistic notions of truth-seeking.

This is what happens when we defund (and worse, devalue) soft sciences like Philosophy class: a bunch of people making the same 300 year old mistakes all over again! :-\

by UltraSane4 hours ago|

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"Who decides what "reality" is,"

Repeatable scientific experiments. Trying to argue objective reality doesn't exist is logically incoherent.

by VSerge2 hours ago|

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And to Account39's point, or my representation of it at least: all these tribes with wildly different worldviews still agree trees have roots, fire is hot, shelter is helpful, if you jump off something you will fall, etc etc. The parts there are disagreements on are built on a mountain of shared representations of reality, and gods or politics are just tiny pieces of this world model. We tend to focus on them and fight about them, so they are important, but nonetheless they are a tiny minority of how we all understand and represent reality.

by throw837393018 hours ago|

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> have the same ability of self deception as humans do

There is universal objective truth, and different opinions or world views are just "tribal membership". If onlymother tribes understood that!

by UltraSane18 hours ago|

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Objective reality exists. Nobody has a car that doesn't need gas or electricity.

by Lerc15 hours ago|

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Three things here, first of all, there are a few cars in existence that do not need gas or electricity. Compressed air for example. I hear that researchers are doing anazing things using combustible materials to utilise the phase change that water undergoes. It may soon lead to a wonderous age powered by heating water until it can be used as a high pressure gas.

Objective reality does not imply consistent measurement of that reality.

Objective reality may not actually exist. Once you start throwing around relativity and quantum effects things get weird, getting them to play nicely together might be even weirder,

by UltraSane13 hours ago|

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Nobody has a working car that doesn't need energy. I almost changed it to energy but figured nobody would not get the point.

"Objective reality does not imply consistent measurement of that reality."

Yet global science converges on a consistent world view. Everybody's telescopes all see the same things.

Modern technology only works because there is a objective reality.

by throw837393012 hours ago|

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Several working cars do not need gas or electricity (or other source of energy).

Museum piece for example. Or super sports car that was bought as an investment and just sits in garage. Or junk car that is used as a source of spare parts. Or crash test vehicle (it is propelled with catapult). Or toy car. Or bus used for living...