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pixl97today at 3:47 PM2 repliesview on HN

So you build a machine that kills all tigers and now you don't have to worry about belief.

The problem with objective reality is 1. it changes. 2. it can be different for different people in different places.

If I live in rural India, there is probably not a tiger behind the bush. If I live in downtown Chicago there is almost certainly not a tiger behind the bush. This leads to the hard problem of probabilistic thinking which requires a lot more energy than black and white thinking.

Lastly, humans are real, and even incorrect belief systems create a reality you have to live in. God, for example, is almost certainly not real. Saying that in a forum will have some percentage of people downvote you and try to reply with a relatively poor argument. Saying it in the wrong place and time outside of the internet can most certainly get you killed. So just because something isn't real doesn't mean you should open your mouth at an inopportune time and learn the reality it created.


Replies

asdfftoday at 7:18 PM

Conscious probabilistic thinking is perhaps more demanding of energy. But all animals engage in subconscious probabilistic thinking. That gut feeling you have for example is your inner bayesian logic refined from millions of years of natural selection. The child being afraid of the dark is demonstrating deeply ingrained probabilistic thinking and assessing survival risk in real time. The higher order abstractions modern language and modern structured society saddles upon us often get in the way of how our mind actually works, as they are far younger than the mind. Poke a bug with a stick: it runs away. Poke a lizard with a stick: it runs away. Poke a human with a stick: it runs away. This example is an ancient survival mechanism all shared by the common ancestor of the human, the lizard, and the bug, which is probably half a billion years old or more. And we won't necessarily get any better with the demands of modern language and society either, as these are under far weaker selection pressures (if any) than these other highly conserved behaviors.

sorokodtoday at 6:21 PM

This leads to the hard problem of probabilistic thinking which requires a lot more energy than black and white thinking.

You are overthinking this. Reality exists in a point in time and space, same point where you are. That is the only problem you face.