Seeing red

[bennyboy]

So our difference is not in what we think the bottom layer will be like.  At bottom, by its nature, there is only mathematics and abstracts.  The question is whether those abstracts refer to something concrete or not, and you can't look to the abstracts to decide that question because doing so is uninformative.  So the real question is why you have inferred that these abstracts don't point to something concrete?

Because something concrete must be able to be expressed unambiguously. If it is paradoxical or ambiguous in nature, it cannot be said to be a thing.

It can't be motivated by the fact that it's abstracts all the way down, that's just how models of reality work.  So what is your motivation for denying that these abstracts refer to something concrete, when all our experience gives the impression of something concrete?

Because all our experience does NOT give the impression of something concrete. QM particles, despite Rhythm's protestations to the contrary, are squirrelly little fucks. A photon, which is indivisible (quanta and all that) takes two paths. This is a paradox, and where there is paradox, a "thing" cannot be said to be concrete. Instead it is abstract, literally: ab + stract. Thus sayeth the Quantum: "I am that which, being indivisible, taketh two paths upon my journey. I am that which, being called 'stuff,' has no volume. I am that, which while being describable only in abstract statistical terms, establishes the foundation for a belief in a reality which is concrete, and is naught but concrete."

I guarantee that if you explain QM to a child, he's going to see through the Emperor's New Clothes right away.