[HN Gopher] Truth, Math, and Models (Part 8 in a series on the s...
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       Truth, Math, and Models (Part 8 in a series on the scientific
       method)
        
       Author : lisper
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2024-05-27 22:28 UTC (31 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.rongarret.info)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.rongarret.info)
        
       | sillysaurusx wrote:
       | > I can't show you "green" unless I show you a green thing.
       | Adjectives have to be bound to nouns to be exhibited, but that
       | doesn't mean that "green" does not exist in objective reality. It
       | does, it's just not a thing.
       | 
       | I disagree. Green is quite literally a figment of our
       | imagination. It has some shared properties (e.g. humans can
       | perceive green better than red or blue) but to say it "exists in
       | objective reality" implies that it's not subjective. But it is;
       | there's no way to know whether how I see green is how green looks
       | to you. All that we can say is that we can distinguish green from
       | other colors at similar rates.
       | 
       | I don't think this is a small quibble. It's the fundamental
       | problem of trying to pin down philosophy too precisely.
       | https://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
       | 
       | > "Much to the surprise of the builders of the first digital
       | computers," Rod Brooks wrote, "programs written for them usually
       | did not work." [6] Something similar happened when people first
       | started trying to talk about abstractions. Much to their
       | surprise, they didn't arrive at answers they agreed upon. In
       | fact, they rarely seemed to arrive at answers at all.
       | 
       | > They were in effect arguing about artifacts induced by sampling
       | at too low a resolution.
       | 
       | > The test of utility I propose is whether we cause people who
       | read what we've written to do anything differently afterward.
       | Knowing we have to give definite (if implicit) advice will keep
       | us from straying beyond the resolution of the words we're using.
        
         | drewcoo wrote:
         | >> I can't show you "green" unless I show you a green thing.
         | 
         | > Green is quite literally a figment of our imagination
         | 
         | All words are made up, so in that sense "figments of
         | imagination." Green is a shared concept. Like cold. Or love. Or
         | justice.
         | 
         | And to address the author, just like those other non-concrete
         | things, green is literally a noun.
        
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