Reality, life, the world, the universe… Call it what you will. How much do you really know about it?
I’d like to keep the question as general as possible, so it would be intensely philosophical.
Okay, I’ll help you. What do you know, that you haven’t been told? (no semantics please, you know what I mean here) Take electricity for example.
[Yes, I know that I’m not really asking a question here, but I think it’s fun stuff!]
I know that my electricity bills are high, when I was told they would be low.
I believe Einstien was very much one for intuition about the nature of the universe (intuition that he later successfully backed up with experiment and calculation)
I remember working out for myself (at the tender age of 13 or so) that traffic behaved like a fluid; I thought nothing much of it at the time, but now it’s all the rage.
Not such a great strategy once you get into quantum physics, though.
I believe my sig sums it up.
No one on this board knows much about me, and I am infinitely lost in reality. Though I did figure ou Avograd’s Number all by myself (6.02*10^23). Other than that everything else has been taught or never explained.
Myst, if you haven’t already, you might read “Illusions” by Richard Bach. It is a short read with alot of perspective on reality.
All I have to say to this one is “42”.
Apparantly I know enough to not only survive but enough to thrive.
Marc
Chivalry, that has been my standard answer for questions like this for years when I don’t have the time to actually sit down and discuss.
Bravo!!!
THATS A GREAT BOOK SERIES!!!
I only know what I can sense, imagine and remember. I have learned one hell of alot when my personal “models” of the way the world works have been blown apart by hard reality and I have had to work through tremendous disillusionment. Regarding knowledge of the Universe, I don’t know squat that I haven’t been told. Even with what I have been told, my imagination is not capable of truly comprehending the vastness, complexity, and apparent randomness of the universe.
check my sig line.
I think we try to do the best we can with what we’ve got.
I think that Science is the best method/tool for understanding reality, particularly given that it acknowledges that knowledge is incomplete, that errors happen…and that it seeks out errors in understanding & ways to correct them. No final verdict is given.
What more can we expect?
Do you mean, what do we know to be absolutely correct by means of personal faith/revelation? That seems to be an inconsistent & unreliable way to understand reality. Perhaps that means of understanding is best left to the supernatural or the spiritual (whatever that may be). But so far, we have not uncovered any non-anecdotal evidence of supernatural processes in reality. Although there are certainly some amazing natural processes! [:)]
HairyPotter understood what I was talking about.
You don’t know the earth is round. You don’t know that there’s electricity.
It happens to me a lot when I’m on the bus. I ask myself, “What if the bus windows were actually screens, and the bus itself was just a shaky metal box, and when you reach your “destination” it’s the surroundings that have changed but I have not travelled a single inch?” The answer is that if that were true nothing would be different than what I currently believe is happening. (i.e. I rode the bus to another place) Note that I’m not saying that it’s true, but it’s enough to prove my point that there’s no way of actually knowing.
Well now you are. 
Um, I think you need to weigh the evidence for & against such conclusions. Critical thinking is the key to human survival. Well, that and sex.
Is that so? How do you know that I don’t know?
You don’t exist anyway, but I’ll humor the thought… 
You can’t know that you know, you can only think that you know. See, you think you know but you have no idea. (this is the diary of Britney Spears, next on MTV)
Myst,
Pardon the hijack, but I have a theory about you:
You are about 18 years old, and have just read Descartes for the first time.
Confirm or deny?