[_lc1i]

It is completely unfair to dismiss Rand for any one thing she says or believes. Like any philosophy, the good come with the bad, and Rand has some very thought provoking, if not indisputable, good.

And objective reality is not so unintelligent or undebatable to be dismissed at the whim of one sentance.

[nandemo]

On HN of all places, I expect that most people would agree that there's an objective reality.

I wonder if greenlblue stopped watching because she was talking about something so darned obvious.

[greenlblue]

No, I stopped watching because she was talking about something so obviously wrong. The amount of processing your brains does to fill in details and recreate memories from sparse details is quite amazing and this is enough evidence for me to throw out objective reality. Also, I don't understand how HN influences people's philosophical views or why anyone with an HN account would be pro objective reality.

[SwellJoe]

The flawed human brain and its ability to remember is merely evidence of a flawed observer, and not evidence of a flawed reality.

The processing your brain does to fill in details is irrelevant when there are multiple methods of observation and multiple observers, and all agree with reasonable precision. When multiple observers can measure an object and find that it has volume and mass, we can all agree that the thing exists. We might disagree on what to name it, or what it "means", but it'd be pointless to argue that it might really not be there.

While one could argue that everything, including all the other observers, are a product of my imagination, it isn't productive to do so. Whether it is all in my head (or in a supercomputer and I'm really just a simulation) isn't a useful theory. I can't do anything with that theory. It is untestable, and thus is mere superstition.

In short, objective reality is a good model for...reality. And, so, it makes sense to behave as though jumping off of a cliff will probably end ones existence.

I believe the notion that someone on HN would be "pro objective reality" (whatever that means...I'm not sure there is any way to win against what is, so why fight against it?) comes from the fact that we are all mostly nerdy, science-oriented, and we tend to be more likely to know how things (where "things" can be mechanical, biological, electrical, etc.) work. We know that when you feed voltage into a particular semi-conductor, the same thing happens every time...so, we tend to be less likely to fall into the trap of thinking things happen because of magic or because we imagined they happened or whatever.

In short, I reckon accepting objective reality has a net positive value in my life. I'm not sure how denying reality would do me any good. I'm pretty pragmatic, and I like having some level of control over stuff in my life, so I reckon I'm a believer.

[greenlblue]

Whoa, nobody said anything about denying that things exist but what I did deny was the fact that it was objective. Objective only makes sense if you know what subjective means and since all I know are subjective states of being it does not make sense for me to say there is something else that I can not make any sense of that is as real as anything I feel. All I can say is that there is a patchwork of things that my brain puts together and that thing is what I call reality but to jump from the patchwork to the existence of a completed whole is in my opinion a mistake.

[SwellJoe]

You said something about denying that things exist. You said that "objective reality" is a myth, and you said it as though people who believe in objective reality are simpletons.

If there is no objective reality, one person can say, "There is a car in my garage." and someone else can say, "There is a dragon in your garage." and both will be equally correct (because there is no objective way to determine otherwise). But, because objective reality does seem to be an accurate model for our universe, other observers can look in the garage, and see that, yes, there is a car (or dragon, as the case may be) in the garage. You can take a picture of the car (or dragon) in the garage, you can measure it, you can hop in (on) and take it for a drive (flight), you can touch it, etc. While your perception and your recollection may have gaps, we have scientific tools to remove the ambiguity of faulty perception and memory. With enough measurements, recordings, and photographic evidence of something, we can know it pretty darned objectively.

My point is that it's simply unproductive to deny that there is an objective reality. The world behaves as though there is objective reality. My house has never turned into a turtle, and my dog seems to be a dog every day no matter how much she might want to be a cat. I may not remember all the details of each of these things, but that doesn't mean they aren't what they are. The "patchwork of things" that my brain puts together about the world can be made to match the patchwork of things that other brains put together by using tools to measure and record those things, even while understanding that no one will ever have a complete grasp of the entirety of reality (it's pretty big, and even one single pebble, is too much for a single human to grasp in its entirety, when you start thinking in terms of atoms and particles and such).

Basically, I think you've decided that "objective reality" means humans can be all-knowing and perfectly observant...but that's not what anyone else means when they use the term.

[RevRal]

Oh the frustration, eh? And it gets more annoying every time.

I still don't have a clear idea on how one can reject objective reality, or reject what is real.

There have been some simularities between all my confrontations over the years: the people don't make very much sense; they demand respect for their "opinion;" and, they attribute arrogance to believing in an objective reality.

Somewhere, they learned the wrong thing. And I think I've deduced part of the problem: they take the subjectivity of some definitions as a sort of proof that an objective reality doesn't exist, and at an intuitive level, they don't accept reductionism.

Definitions being a form of reductionism. That is to say, at a very fundamental level, they take issue with you saying "this orange weighs .3kg ." They won't confront you for saying that, but if they happen to like the movie Joe Dirt, and you say "Joe Dirt is a bad movie," watch out. You are now offending their reality and it is now very personal.

And just to further clarify, when I say "the subjectivity of some definitions," I mean the various degrees of allowed interpretation of ideas. There are different degrees of subjectivity to different ideas: people have an amount of leeway to define some things for themselves, such as love, as it is not very well understood anyway. However, some ideas are very close to a real, concrete, one-to-one, definition of reality.

Yet these people have it in their head that they can make up whatever they want with anything, even though they don't normally execute this power to make up whatever they want. But they do get caught up on their right to make up whatever they want, which boils down to rejecting objective reality. I think there's some kind of empowerment high and self-consolation that "opinions" hold merit by merely existing, even for concepts that aren't lenient with subjectivity.

This submission is pretty much dead but I hope you read this comment since I had this Aha! while reading your comment. This is a rough sketch of something I'm going to expand upon, but hopefully I explained it well enough for now.

[volodia]

You're contradicting yourself. If you don't believe in objective reality, you can't use biological arguments involving the brain. If you doubt objective reality, then you have to doubt all those observations about the brain you mention. (Natural) science presupposes the existence of an objective reality you can measure. If you don't believe in that, then you have to doubt all observations you make about that "reality".

[greenlblue]

Ya, let me cover my eyes and ears and tie my hands behind my back as well since I disagree with some persons view of what things are. Grow up.

[Tycho]

Why would your memory disprove objective reality? Does a painting of a garden disprove the garden existed?

Did you mean, objective perception?

[greenlblue]

No, I meant reality. Unless you give me a means of separating my perceptions from the reality then there is no useful distinction to be drawn here.

[RevRal]

Confusing the map and territory needs to be classified as a psychological disorder, where sanity is below a minimum threshold.

This kind of thinking is too easy.

This is basic stuff, and you call it "obviously wrong." That's an indication that you haven't thought about it enough; there is very little which is "obviously" this or that. You must examine an idea and it's surrounding evidences, or established ideas.

If you're going to state something as "obvious" in the sense that it's axiomatic, that's fine if you are treating it as a temporary variable and examining its implications and drawing it out to conclusions.

The mistake at this point is noticing that, after treating objective reality as axiomatic, the world you see is congruent with your internalized map and therefore that is "how it is." This is a functional facade. An illusion, and you've been tricked.

The world is not very colorful in an objective reality.

\/@greenlblue: Sorry, I have a bad habit of submitting comments then editing the rest into it, so I don't know where into my editing you read. Anyway, from my experience, there's no use in carrying a conversation about "objective reality." I just had to say a little bit since I wouldn't feel right not giving some direction.

[RevRal]

Crap.

The world is not very colorful in an objective reality.

The world is very colorful in an objective reality, is what I meant.

[greenlblue]

Making vague analogies with no relevance should be one as well. When you figure out a way of putting my perception, the map, and "reality", the territory, side by side on the screen then you can call me crazy for denying its existence. Until then be a little more courteous and respectful of other people's opinions and don't accuse them of confounding variables.

[Tycho]

One word: corroboration. You know reality from hallucination/dream because one survives objective verification, the other does not. Let me turn the question back on you: what use is there in NOT drawing this distinction? (ie. what use is denying that there is a knowable reality, and then our interpreted knowledge. territory/map)

[tokenadult]

I used to have occasion to read transcripts of first degree murder trials when the convicted murderers appealed their convictions to my states's Supreme Court, where I was a judicial clerk. It is a fact that when people are put on oath to testify at trial, and subject to cross-examination, their memories will be both faulty and internally contradictory. But that doesn't mean that nothing they report happened. The jury's job at trial is to figure out which partial, or biased, or mistaken recollections best correspond to what happened, but something happened.

What do you say is what to hold on to after you "throw out objective reality"?

[T_S_]

There is only a Rashomon-like reality and it is getting worse thanks to compressed sensing technology. Just kidding I think. There are generalizations like mathematics that are objective, at least until we try to apply them to the world.

I always find it interesting that she says many of the same things that an anarchist of the left would say yet they would both hate to be identified with the other. It also seems to be impossible to bring about and maintain the systems objectivists, libertarians or anarchists advocate without a widespread shift in morality if not human nature itself.

[thaumaturgy]

(I haven't watched the interview.)

I suppose that whether reality is objective or subjective is both one of the greatest questions in philosophy, and one of the most useless. But, what you're talking about is the difference between reality, and perception of reality.

I happen to think that reality is pretty objective, various nuances of quantum mechanics aside. I certainly think that reality existed long before we as individuals or as species appeared on the scene, and I think it extends far beyond our relatively meager sphere of perception.

[greenlblue]

I'm not dismissing a person. I'm sure in her time she was a nice and friendly person but that doesn't stop me from rejecting her philosophy.