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Comment by b450 | Hacker News Reader

I think your post is good fodder for the "quantum formalism" described in the article, because it seems like you're getting pretty carried away with interpretation, what with terms like "metaphysics" and the conclusion that chairs are illusions. Some chairs may be illusory, but in general they would reveal themselves as such because you can't, for example, sit in them.

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Chairs are mostly space, but our interactions with them are solid. This is mostly known and measurable, though not always appreciated.

Models are not measurable.

All macro-sized things are mostly empty space.

Neutron stars are one of the few exceptions.

Oh right! The universe well and truly is an incredible place.

You don't actually know that. Neutrons are made of quarks, which are probably point like, i.e. the inside of a neutron is entirely empty space.

And if they're not, then eventually they're going to be made of something (that is going to be made of something and so on) that is pointlike. Very probably. If not, which will be a surprising result, then it's still going to be empty space.

Yeah, but they push the pauli exclusion principle to the extreme, meaning there's hardly anywhere within its structure for particles to not exist.

Not mostly empty space, entirely empty space. All fundamental particles are point like and have no physical size.

Except ..... that's not the right way to measure size, you measure the size of a particle by the forces interacting with it.

By that measure an electron has an infinite size (since an electric field is infinite), and a chair has exactly the size it appears to have, because that's the size measured when you interact with it electromagnetically.

Objects don't have one single size, their size varies depending on what tool you use to measure them.

What's the "size" of pressure and vibration?

All parts, remain as parts of the environment, the whole.

Is the suggestion that chairs are illusions because they appear solid but are not in fact? It would be more reasonable to say that chairs _are_ solid, and many solid objects, like chairs, are mostly empty space when considered at the atomic scale.

No, I believe the suggestion of illusion was to convey the fundamental point that the world doesn't exist in the classical objective sense as we are brought up to understand.

"Mostly empty space" isn't related, but is a valid point when considering the different matter (pun intended) of the solidity and physical character of macroscopic things like chairs.

Inquiry doesn't need to reinterpret facts.

Just pointing out two different things: chair mostly space (true) vs chair existing as an object "out there" in the clearly definable way we normally understand (false).

"Illusion" in its usage here referred to the latter.

Depending on reference, both are true, and false.

Logic is not probabilistic, but it is referential and not absolute.

It’s irrelevant to the argument and a strawman

Just because something isn’t the way we expected doesn’t imply that there isn’t an objective, underlying reality.

And that’s the heart of what nonlocal deterministic interpretations try to answer.

Given the chance.

Just because something isn’t the way we expected doesn’t imply that there isn’t an objective, underlying reality

"in the clearly definable way we normally understand"

Misquoting me and replying to that is the strawman approach, though I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you just misinterpreted me.

I didn’t misquote you.

That bit doesn’t add to the assertion that something isn’t real, or that there isn’t an underlying objective reality.

If something doesn’t exist in the classical objective sense, then it means that something doesn’t exist or have meaning outside of an observer. It’s not empirical nor measurable.

That’s not the same as saying that the building blocks are quite different from everyday experience. It’s still measurable, real, and well-defined. Just not in the ways that are intuitive.

I didn’t misquote you. That bit doesn’t add to the assertion that something isn’t real, or that there isn’t an underlying objective reality

Of course it adds to the assertion, I was careful to add it for that reason.

Again, assuming good faith (despite your original unnecessary "strawman" tone), I will assume you were just mistaken in your omission or misreading of it.

I think the point was that there isn't an objective world in the classically understood sense, and our refusal to accept that since it was discovered a century ago has no bearing on the truth of it; I'm not suggesting the language and imagery were perfect, but the chair example was clearly accompanied by an equally illusory "you" sitting on it.

There's just no contradiction. The deepening of knowledge doesnt't contradict prior observations. All hypotheses may and should be contradicted though.

Quantum mechanics pretty much overturned our understanding of the world; it produced a qualitatively different world view to that of classical theories (including GR), more than just a deepening in that sense.

Depends on who is understanding or not, if they reject it.

However, evolving perspective is good as we see past assumptions, not facts, are always wrong to some extent.

Not sure how QM changed who though.

That everything is interconnected and complex, is not new logic at all. Maybe this brings artifacts across scales too. However we only observe effects. Period.

Maybe what is needed is humility.

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