AI and cognitive psychology rant (getting more and more OT - tell me if I should shut up)

[Robin Becker]

In article <2askpv0sqrv7k9hbpis3ig4iqclpl24ojc at 4ax.com>, Stephen Horne
<steve at ninereeds.fsnet.co.uk> writes
>Even if this was not the case, you have not proved that reality is not
>real. Of course perception still varies slightly from person to
>person, and more extensively from species to species, but it is not
>independent of reality - it still has to be tied to reality as closely
>as possible or else it is useless.
Actually it was not my intention to attempt any such proof, merely to
indicate that what we call real is at the mercy of perception. If I
choose to call a particular consensus version of reality the 'one true
reality' I'm almost certainly wrong. As with most of current physics we
understand that 'reality' is a model. An evolution based on low speed
physics hardly prepares us for quantum mechanics and spooky action at a
distance interactions. For that reality, which we cannot perceive, we
employ mathematicians as interpreters (priests?) to argue about the
number of hidden dimensions etc etc. Even causality is frowned upon in
some circles.

What we humans call 'reality' is completely determined by our senses and
the instruments we can build. How we interpret the data is powerfully
influenced by our social environment and history. As an example the
persistence of material objects is alleged by some to be true only for
small time scales <10^31 years; humans don't have long enough to learn
that.
-- 
Robin Becker