On the Fundamental Nature of the Universe | Hacker News Reader

On the Fundamental Nature of the Universe

markpneyer.com

18 pointsmarkpneyer10 comments

No. As poetry, this is fine. From a rationalist point of view, this is muddled. As science, this is not much less naive than, say, What the Bleep Do We Know. You seem to be motivated, ahead of time, to arrive at a conception of the universe that is inspiring, and makes you think life worth living. This is a sure path to rationalization. You shouldn't expect, ahead of time, that whatever the truth of reality is will turn out to be steeped in redemptive qualities. This will cheat you out of the chance to be ok with whatever is true, because it is true, and not because you find it conforms to your wishes after all.

Recognizing that everything has a wavelength is science. Interpreting the interactions of those various wavelengths as "music" (rather than merely "noise") is poetry.

That interpretation is neither muddled nor naive. It's just not science.

What's unscientific about seeing beauty in the way reality actually works as described by science? They seem entirely orthogonal to me. Beauty is a subjective human trait -- i.e., a property of wetware running in the meat computers of bipedal apes. So it's silly to expect subjective judgments about beauty to be held up to a rationalistic/scientific standard.

But axioms are by definition unsupported :)

Also, the universe does not follow mathematical rules. Mathematics, like Plato's Forms, only exist in our minds, and are simply attempts at categorizing our perceptions.

We have to create meaning for our lives because there is no inherent meaning or purpose in it. We have a biological imperative to make up these kinds of stories to keep ourselves sane, whether it be that our goal in life is to make a difference, get rich, or gain knowledge. The problem is that people try to impose their story onto the world when in reality there is no story. That is what this guy is doing, keeping himself happy by deluding himself, he's just more advanced than most people.

> in reality there is no story

Please provide an experiment that lets us verify the truth of this statement.

Seriously, while the scientific method is extremely useful there are still large areas of human existence that it does not cover. The author seems to have made a personal realization that using poetry to face these facets of existence is more satisfying. He also observes that while his view is not provable it also does not contradict with the current accepted body of scientific knowledge.

Your argument tries to use logic to rain on his parade. However, I see no arguments that are any more provable than what the original author postulated.

You're never going to scientifically prove a philosophical stance, it would be circular. Philosophy is the foundation of science, not the other way around. My view is unprovable just like his, people have to pick the one that seems right to them.

No experiment can verify the truth of any statement.

My personal take on this: just do whatever makes you feel good and don't worry about the bigger picture because the big picture sucks.

This excellent piece by Sagan, Feynman, et al. also addresses these questions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk

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