"I think it's cleaner to build the foundation around the basic laws of physics." I think it's more honest to build the foundation on the observer, over the course of their life arc, encountering different experiences.

* hmm, there's this thing called language I'm speaking and this thing called thoughts I'm thinking. * hmm, there are these things called scientists, and this body of thought called science. This is what they've purported to discovery about reality. * hmm, these are the tiny handfuls of experiments I've done myself over the course of my life.

which apparently has for many lead to

* ... ... [death/permanent lack of conscious experience].

That's my interaction with science, and I think gives the scope of most or all of our interactions with science, and determining the nature of reality generally. Reality seems big and messy, internally and externally. It seems humans past and present have figured some (even many) things out about reality, but as an individual passing through we have limited opportunities to confirm these discoveries. There seems to be a strong motivation to express undue certainty about reality to increase one's status, as well perhaps to have strong belief in things just to ease one's mind or as an aesthetic, but that doesn't make the strong beliefs justified.

But that, not physics, seems to me to be the honest starting point. For Einstein, for Witten, for Eliezer, and for me.