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eujay comments on Closet survey #1 - Less Wrong
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I am an atheist Platonist. I believe that ultimate reality is mathematical / tautological in nature, and that matter, mind, motion are all illusions.
Is this belief falsifiable? If not, is it meaningful?
Not falsifiable, but more parsimonious than thinking that something 'acts out' the reality that we see. Other explanations of reality leave behind a material residue. A bit like saying that water is made of wet stuff, fire is made of hot stuff, etc. True explantions 'destroy' the things that they explain. And I favor the theological argument that the foundation of reality must be something necessary. Mathematical Platonic reality does the job perfectly.
Well, the bit about platonism may be. Tegmark, I believe, came up with a notion along the lines of "well, if all mathematical structures are in some sense 'real', then we just need to somehow parameterize the set of all mathematical structures that could contain beings 'like us', then compare our observed universe to the 'most average' structures. If we differ significant'y from that, it's evidence against the proposition."
What do you mean by illusions? If matter, mind, and motion are our subjective perspective of stuff that reduces completely to a timeless mathematical object (I suspect it probably does), I don't think it follows from that that we can say it isn't real.
Like I said above, fire is not made of hot stuff, water is not made of wet stuff, etc. The 'atoms' that make up our subjective reality would not themselves be in motion or be conscious. But yes, consciousness is odd sort of 'illusion' in that it creates a subjective reality. Would it make sense to think of levels of reality, with some being 'more real' than others? Or maybe we can think of certain levels being 'dependent' on lower / more fundamental levels? Consciousness would then be located at a very high level, far from the 'foundation'. (Which is part of why I am an atheist.)
Oh, I should also add that I am a communist (ironically, 'converted' while in the Army).