First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)

[Pyrrho]

[JuliaL]

We should be content to know what we can know, and recognize our limitations.  That ultimate explanations are not needed is proven by the fact that we presently don't have them, and yet science continues to progress anyway.

My bolding.

My agreement is boundless and, I hope, my intellectual humility is prominent and appropriate.
I find the problems of solipsism and the failure of inference to be, at least currently and probably eternally, insoluble.
If there is a way to tell that the outer frontiers of the known have nothing beyond, I cannot see what it could be.
Even were that the case, then reflection would have to be turned inward to see if repeated examination of the 'known' yielded the same results as previously or have things changed.
So I am resigned, comfortable and even somewhat encouraged to there always being new knowledge to seek.
My fear of heaven is that at some small fraction of eternity progress would stop and nothing new would ever be found despite sound argument that it could be there.
This is my horror of omniscience and the basis for belief that a hypothetical all-knowing God would create man out of an agony of boredom.
We're fun to watch.

[Alex K]

Pyrrho,

I'm not saying we want ultimate truth. But do the explanations which we take from theories not tell us something true about the world. I think even you make that assumption regularly and that one can't do entirely without.

[Pyrrho]

[JuliaL]

The less obvious point is that it does not matter.

That might be true and in your hypothetical you can force it to be true.
But in our possibly simulated life, there are some unknowns which could be critical.
Suppose the computer is about to run out of batteries or fail in some way that you could avoid if you just knew how.
This is the scenario that the Matrix movie fleshed out in which the 'real' world was one where machines ruled and it was in Neo's best interest to wake and revolt.
What they missed was that this only popped the reality stack one level.  I see no way to determine how deep the turtles go.  My avatar is a screenshot from that movie in the scene where Morpheus offers Neo the Red or Blue capsule.  Red to be shown the truth, blue to remain ignorant.  In my graphic, there is a crude edit to show a brush painting the red capsule which had previously been blue.

In your 'she loves me - she loves me not' story, the difference in the two scenarios lies not in yourself, but in your wife.  To you there is no difference.  To her there is.  Now the question becomes whether you can grant agency to your collection of experiences, intuitions and emotions labelled your wife.  In some scenarios your wife could be real and independent in others she could be simulated.  A question rapidly approaching is, "If simulated, does she still have agency?"

Replace the programmer with God. Now it is of critical importance to know if the victory conditions for life do include Her good will.  Again, we only experience one level in the reality stack.  I don't see any evidence there are others though I can't preclude the possibility.  It is a matter of laziness and parsimony that I don't seek evidence of more. No one has presented me with an acceptable argument as to why God would not be the next level in the stack and for ultimate reality, we'd have to continue to seek .  Hence my sig.

[Longhorn]

The conversation is getting too intellectual to make lame jokes

[Alex K]

A neutrino and an anti-neutrino walk into a bar...

[Longhorn]

I tried googling neutrino, but my brain blacked out after two sentences

[Alex K]

So you don't know what a neutrino is? We have to remedy that!

[Longhorn]

EXPLAAAAIN

but in a way that doesn't make my brain explode