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Decius comments on The Useful Idea of Truth - Less Wrong
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Throwing the rock doesn't prove that the rock exists. By the time that you concretize to the point that you can talk about interacting with the world, you have already made some completely unjustifiable assumptions about how the world works. What premise allows you to make the jump from "I perceive that there is a rock there" to "There is a rock there"?
The hypothesis that reality is impermanent is nonfalsifiable; there is no way to show evidence for or against the theory that the universe came into existence already a consistent whole, including my memories of beginning to type this post. There is also no way to differentiate a universe which came into existence a moment ago and will pass out of existence in a moment from the persistent model that you use.
I never used the word "exist" in relation to physical objects once. Clearly you have sensory inputs which are best explained by the rock in question existing, though. As I said, reality is a useful model. The rest of your logic is pure strawman.
You seem to be getting this sort of response a lot. You should probably increase your credence in the hypothesis that you're being unclear, rather than that everyone is deliberately misrepresenting you.
Could you give me some feedback on whether this response contains a more appropriate description of your point? I've skipped over some important stuff at the end as for what exactly your model entails, but I believe with some more explanation you'd obviously describe things better than I currently could.
I certainly agree with your last paragraph.
Reality is only a useful model within the model of reality; outside of the model of reality, having models is in general not useful.
What makes the model of reality 'useful', as opposed to any of the models which are mutually exclusive with reality?
Huh?
If the world existed only as a suitably advanced hallucination, would your experiences would not be different. A hallucination which at this moment is remembered to have had followed certain rules is under no obligation to continue to follow those rules.
So much for pure empiricism, then. However, Best Explanation deals with that just fine.