Yes and no. It certainly isn't real in the way it seems to be. Reality isn't local, even the hardest material is mostly empty space, and unobserved quantum entities can literally be in multiple places at the same time. Even time isn't how it appears to be.mr brightside wrote: ↑01 Aug 2024, 06:57 The problem is that the world looks and feels very solid and real, so people have trouble getting to grips with the fact that it actually isn't. I like Heisenberg's summary of it, that matter behaves like a thought not a thing.
However, it is very easy to take this too far. If reality isn't local and a photon can be in multiple locations simultaneously, then is there an objective world at all? Or is there only subjective consciousness? Or can the components of conscious experience somehow objectively exist without an observer? I think that this is not a helpful rabbit hole to go down. We will never be able to agree on the answers to these questions. Wittgenstein described them as a sort of "ritual", whereby we exorcise our need to talk about metaphysics but end up talking nonsense.
The world is real in the sense that the range of possible future observations is finite. Even though the future is not fixed, our options are strictly limited. If I climb out of a 10th story window and try to fly then I will fall to my death. When we open Schrodinger's box, we may find either a living cat or a dead one, but we will not find a dog. Even if retrocausality is true and the past can change, it can only change in certain ways. In nearly all practical senses, that is surely real enough. I think the only reasonable explanation is that the world actually is real -- it's just non-local, and there's no point in speculating about "what it is made of", because it doesn't make any difference. The only thing that does make a difference is which of three possible groups of QM interpretations are true -- MWI, objectively random or hidden forms of causality masquerading as randomness. The answer to that question makes the difference between Ralph believing he's a meat robot and me believing in free will, but we're both still realists. I am just a realist about more things than he is.
To get this back on topic...the core argument here is whether is comes before ought, or ought comes before is. Wokeism could be defined in terms of the belief that ought comes before is. I am defending the claim that is must come before ought. So the gender ideologies believe that we should treat trans people as they want to be treated -- we ought to accept that trans women are women (and if we don't then we must hate them). Whereas I believe that "ought" is irrelevant, because men can't become women. "Sex" belongs to the world of "is" -- to reality. "Gender" belongs to the world of ought. This conflict is binary. One side is right and the other is wrong. There is no middle way, and that's why the culture wars are going to have to be played out to the bitter end.
