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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

The physical world is a persistent system that exhibits highly consistent behaviour. Because the behaviour is consistent we can describe it in a highly consistent formal language, mathematics.

What Plato called forms are just descriptions. We have a description of what a circle is, and anything that matches that description is a circle.

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Highly consistent!? Not really. Some things are, but like OP just said, those are the ones we glom onto. But don't mistake some things for every things, there's a whole big wide world out there. We can hardly describe a ripple in a stream let alone why I've had the 5th argument in five weeks about the order I have to fix the kitchen with me wife, yet my intuition told me it was a comin.

So you consistently perceive streams, the world, have a body, a life, a wife, a kitchen with a flaw that has persisted over time, an order in to fix it. Also the world is consistent enough that you could predict that argument in advance. That sounds like an awful lot of consistency :)

Yes, I've already conceded that some things are consistent. Will you concede that we tend to glom onto them or will I interpret your reply where you once again glommed onto them as a concession? ;)

It's not glomming on when these things are basically the core aspects of reality.

You haven't really come to grips with what a world that was mostly inconsistent would look like.

> what a world that was mostly inconsistent would look like

Probably one that had trouble evolving high-order lifeforms, aka anthropic principle.

> The physical world is a persistent system that exhibits highly consistent behaviour.

Thats because chemicals shape/influence our personalities and emotions. You'll see the same consistent behaviours in animals as you do in humans, when given the same chemicals.

Dont know why this got down voted.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/RS01....

Your mobile phone can be used as a weapon against you, triggering calcium waves in the body which could be harmful to your liberty and your life.

I know because I've had it done to me!

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