Great A'Tuin?
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
218 points (96.6% liked)
Funny
11137 readers
1345 users here now
General rules:
- Be kind.
- All posts must make an attempt to be funny.
- Obey the general sh.itjust.works instance rules.
- No politics or political figures. There are plenty of other politics communities to choose from.
- Don't post anything grotesque or potentially illegal. Examples include pornography, gore, animal cruelty, inappropriate jokes involving kids, etc.
Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
turtles all the way down
we know math, 1+1=2, 2+2=4
really hard if not impossible to convince people otherwise
once you've set the axioms of math, everything else follows
Math is not really "knowledge of the universe" though, it's just the symbols and syntax we use to help map it when we try to understand the universe (through physics, chemistry, biology, etc.). Now, the maps that we have through maths can be extremely useful and very accurate to/representative of reality, certainly.
Ah yes solipsism, the principle that we cannot actually know... anything at all... beyond knowing that we ourself exist in some form because we are presently thinking about it, be it as an algorithm running in a simulation, or a brain in a jar being tortured with hallucinations on some 5th dimensional being's shelf.
I remember chuckling to myself upon learning that the answer to this situation is just don't think about it because it isn't productive.
Problem with that is It seems like a perfectly rational argument against the pursuit of productivity.
ALL NIGHT LONG
I am a Boltzmann Brain and there is literally nothing anyone can do to convince me otherwise...jk
For the moment
Btw, for those saying solipsism, yes, it is a thing but it's not represented here. Frank didn't say "this is my higher being's dream and you're all part of it", he said "we are all in a lower level of reality to that of the external Creator". It's closer to Abrahamic monotheism than solipsism! 😅
If you can't tell the difference, does it matter?
