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Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Neil deGrasse Tyson's Solipsism.

Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted:

If your Personal Beliefs deny what’s objectively true about the world, then they're more accurately called Personal Delusions
to which I off-handedly replied:

  Objectively true in your solipsism; to the rest of us just another belief outside our own minds...
Then I realized few would understand what I said. Let me give you a concrete example:

Neil looks at a science-driven gauge that reads "7.0" units.

I look at the same science-driven gauge and I read "7.0" units as well.

Fact A: Gauge represents an objective transformation of a set of physical laws working in the universe to a reading of a representative scalar value.

Fact B: Science-driven gauge represents reality to Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Fact C: Science-driven gauge represents reality to me.

No matter how accurate nor precise the science-driven gauge is, I can't use it to prove the existence of Neil deGrasse Tyson. Nor can he prove mine. Standing in front of each other though we may be looking at the same gauge, I could be part of his "inception-like" dream about reality around himself.

Science-driven gauge exists in two realities but we can't use those facts, demonstrate they are, the same. This is the heart of solipsism. People assume it must be so because we can understand so much of the universe. But we are still using the old wet ware. It can be fooled and that's been proven.

Since he can't prove my existence using anything but his senses (even if he were to use a sensor he is still reading the dial with his own vision), then my existence can only be a belief he holds about the world around himself.  He can't know I exist outside what his brain provides.

Let me spell it out clearer still: belief in Jesus, or Buddha, or Santa Claus is just as uncertain as belief in a person standing beside you.

There is no tool nor technique that can confirm we exist outside our minds to date. Because we still interface through our senses. This is an open question.

So when he points out that beliefs - and by those he means ideas/memes like religion that are based on superstition, tradition, ancient folk stories, etc. - are better defined as delusions, he does not realize perhaps that we might just be delusions in other people's minds.

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