[HN Gopher] Known Unknowables
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Known Unknowables
Author : diodorus
Score : 44 points
Date : 2023-02-05 21:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (aeon.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
| piva00 wrote:
| A book that I really enjoyed on the same topic was "The Outer
| Limits of Reason" by Noson Yanofsky [0].
|
| [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17841838-the-outer-
| limit...
| O__________O wrote:
| TLDR: "Since different things affect us differently, there is no
| way to know what the existing things are like independent of any
| human perception."
|
| ____________
|
| Related physics topics on known unknowable true state of the
| universe:
|
| - https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrodinger%27s_cat
|
| - https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_problem
|
| ____________
|
| Related, but not cited quote: "Reports that say that something
| hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know,
| there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also
| know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are
| some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns--
| the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout
| the history of our country and other free countries, it is the
| latter category that tends to be the difficult ones."
|
| source:
|
| - https://wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_unknown_unknowns
|
| ____________
| n4r9 wrote:
| > Related physics topics on known unknowable true state of the
| universe
|
| I'd argue it's an open question whether this is related,
| depending on which interpretation you prefer :)
| O__________O wrote:
| Agree, though struggle to find any of the alternative
| interpretations as plausible, though it's obviously still an
| open question pending actual proof.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Maths fundamental flaws
|
| https://youtu.be/HeQX2HjkcNo
| qsort wrote:
| I quickly skimmed it. It seems like a very decent introduction
| to the topic for a non-technical audience (it even points out
| the relation between TMs and Godel's first), but I can't for
| the life of me figure out why every pop-culture presentation of
| this topic talks about it like we found out a CVE in math or
| something.
|
| It's a property of how logical systems work; there are no
| problems with math, I promise.
| a-saleh wrote:
| I think it is more along the lines of how some people reacted
| to the theory of relativity with moral panic :D
| shanebellone wrote:
| "To our modern minds, scepticism is normally associated with
| frustration and sceptical conclusions are usually taken to be
| disturbing because they seem to stand in the way of certainty
| about the world and our place in it."
|
| Say cognitive dissonance without saying it.
|
| "But we might be tempted to say that the appearance of the
| majority is to be preferred: if the majority finds honey sweet,
| or finds hemlock poisonous, shouldn't we just trust them? Sextus
| answers negatively. He argues that we cannot prefer the majority,
| because the perception of the majority of Greeks is often
| different from the perception of the majority of, say, the
| Persians. We must avoid making any judgments and withhold our
| assent. We must be sceptics."
|
| Interesting argument regarding democracy and virtue being
| mutually exclusive. Societies often conflate quorum with moral
| authority.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > Say cognitive dissonance without saying it
|
| It appears related to cognitive dissonance, but not quite the
| same.
|
| Cognitive dissonance is when you hold simultaneously
| conflicting or contradictory feelings or opinions about
| something. For example, you might believe that you care about
| animal welfare, but simultaneously eat meat indiscriminately.
| Both of these things fulfill an inner need, but their
| combination gives rise to a level of discomfort.
|
| The quotation refers to the wilful avoidance of doubt and
| complexity. The analogy here would be taking a position like
| "It is fine to eat animals because they obviously don't think
| or feel". This makes various presumptions about what thinking
| or feeling is, and the moral status of those concepts (or their
| negation), while dismissing the idea that this is up for
| debate. Again, this fulfills an inner need, but without the
| conflict and discomfort.
| shanebellone wrote:
| "the wilful avoidance of doubt and complexity"
|
| That precisely describes the typical conflict resolution
| process. We almost always take the path of least resistance.
|
| Cognitive dissonance causes the behavior described.
| bena wrote:
| The fact that we may technically perceive things differently
| doesn't matter.
|
| If the blue I see is not the blue you see, it doesn't change the
| fact that we both agree that other things we see like that are
| also perceived as blue.
|
| When this isn't true, that's when we discover certain things
| about our biology. Color-blindness, for example.
|
| So the question of what are things like "independent of any human
| perception" is kind of a non-starter. They are almost always
| exactly like they are when being perceived. A tree falling in the
| forest does everything necessary to create sound. Whether it
| makes a sound or not depends on how you define sound. If you
| define it as the various vibrations in the air, then you could
| say it does. If you define it specifically as those vibrations
| being received by something capable of interpreting those
| vibrations, then it doesn't.
|
| The only counterexample is the double slit experiment. However,
| at that level, our observation is no longer technically passive.
| So it is possible that our observation is the element that
| changes the behaviour of the particles.
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