The sky is not blue (pardon the obviousness)

post by banev · 2022-11-13T10:49:05.071Z · LW · GW · 6 comments

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You do not know what the reality is. It's damn multidimensional and complex.
On one system level it can be described as the interaction of human beings. On another (parallel) level - as the interaction of collectives of various scales. On the third (parallel) - through the interaction of atoms and molecules. On the fourth (parallel) - through string theory. On the fifth (perpendicular) through the psychology of crowds. On the sixth (perpendicular), through the influence of culture. On the seventh (perpendicular), through the influence of the weather. On the eighth (perpendicular) through the influence of the second law of thermodynamics. And so on.

Any model of reality is a priori an incomplete slice of it in several of an infinite number of dimensions, useful for something to the one who made this model and presents it to others.

And from this it follows directly that one can speak of truth, as Tarsky does, only in limited application to a particular tangible case that is practically verifiable and useful for some purpose to you (or the group of people around) right now. The case of the diamond in the box is fine; also the case of causality with important consequences is perfectly fine: if you go out the fifth-story window, you will die. But to say that something (especially intangible) is true in principle is wrong. Because it isn't the truth, but only a small slice of it, a slice in one person's (or a group of people in this time and place) perception, in his terms, in his ontological space of concepts and connections between them, in his life experience, etc. 

// This is different for the case of scientific experiments, which are conducted in a pre-agreed terminology and repeatable. Here we can talk about truth for a group of scientists who have certain knowledge and use certain terminology^[1]. Case with a fifth-story window goes into that basket of experiments.//

But most of the time in real life we don't conduct scientific experiments in a pre-agreed upon terminology, we apply our notions of "truth" to how we see some intangible aspects of reality around us (is the sky blue? exactly? for everyone?) and, even worse, clash with other people who see that same reality differently.

"Blue sky" version of Litany of Tarski is wrong in principle. 
"If the sky is blue" is a meaningless phrase, and you can't draw a meaningful conclusion from a meaningless phrase. 

1. ^{^}

   That there is now the only scientific method generally accepted by all scientists as an ideal for conducting experiments in physics or other exact sciences, as well as the only Aristotelian logic invented thousands of years ago, and no other options are searched for (or I'm wrong and they do it now?), doesn't that strike you as somewhat, um, a little overconfident? 

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