Re: virus: <Reality>

Eva-Lise Carlstrom (eva-lise@efn.org)
Tue, 23 Sep 1997 09:40:52 -0700 (PDT)


On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, Robin Faichney wrote:

> I though some of you might be interested in this:
>
> "There is no deep reality" represents the prevailing
> doctrine of establishment physics.
>
> [Niels] Bohr [who takes this position] does not deny
> the evidence of his senses. The world we see
> around us is real enough, he affirms, but it floats on
> a world that is not as real.
>
> A couple of quotes, out of order, from Nick Herbert's
> Quantum Reality.
>
> So what does "real enough" mean, and what can we
> make of the assertion that this "real enough" world
> "floats" on one that is not as real?
>
> As regards consistency, BTW, it seems conspicuously
> lacking at the quantum level.
>
> Robin

This makes me think of a couple different analogies.

1.) In a video game, there is a "real enough" world to provide sufficient
illusion for the context. One layer down, it's all code and pixels, but
that doesn't matter for the purposes of the game. {I realize that the
underlying structure in a video game is well ordered; my point is that the
exact nature of that underlying structure is unimportant to someone
using the interface. All that matters is the result at the level we deal
with it at.}

2.) In a pointillist painting, most of the dots could probably be slightly
different places and/or colors and still present fundamentally the same
image. The image, which has meaning and order for the viewer, "floats"
on a substrate of painted dots, which don't (and which are individually
unpredictable). The order arises from the average placement and color,
not, in general, from individual dots being placed in very specific spots.

Eva