CCC comments on Beyond Statistics 101 - Less Wrong

19 Post author: JonahSinick 26 June 2015 10:24AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 29 June 2015 01:36:02PM 1 point [-]

I don't know what real-for-me means here. Everything that in principle, in theory, could be observed, is real. Most of those you didn't. This does not make them any less real.

I meant the "for whom?" not in the sense of me, you, or the barkeeper down the street. I meant it in the sense of normal beings who know only things that are in principle knowable, vs. some godlike being who can know how things really "are" regardless of whether they are knowable or not.

Comment author: CCC 30 June 2015 02:27:17PM 1 point [-]

Everything that in principle, in theory, could be observed, is real.

Well, that's where it starts to break down; because what you can, in theory, observe is different from what I can, in theory, observe.

This is because, as far as anyone can tell, observations are limited by the speed of light. I cannot, even in principle, observe the 2015 Alpha Centauri until at least 2019 (if I observe it now, I am seeing light that left it around 2011). If Alpha Centauri had suddenly exploded in 2013, I have no way of observing that until at least 2018 - even in principle.

So if the barkeeper, instead of being down the street, is rather living on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, then the set of what he can observe in principle is not the same as the set of what I can observe in principle.