How much is "real" vs. just philosophy: Is the most important thing just finding what's most importa

ruggedraven36 said:No, you're the one missing it. What even is a horse-drawn carriage in a vacuum? Nothing. An object only exists as what it is because of its utility.

That's impossible. If you strip that away, then you aren't talking about those things anymore.

Exactly. You can't decouple what's "important" from the subject itself. Without a subject to care, nothing matters at all.

Ethan Gomez82 said:Exactly. You can't decouple what's "important" from the subject itself. Without a subject to care, nothing matters at all.

Sure—but I think you're blurring the line between the subject and subjectivity. Not every person out there is equally capable of figuring out what actually matters.

hiddenpuma75 said:Our learned colleague urbanwalker72 offered a subtle, pedagogical nudge to hiddenpuma75—something he likely didn't realize was actually quite profound.

Well, hiddenpuma75 fired back, and his response serves as the perfect gateway to this massive topic.
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Honestly, this question is so vital it deserves its own dedicated thread. My fingers are practically itching to start one myself, even though I’m currently lagging behind on my actual paid writing assignments.

To me—and hopefully to many others who aren't quite seeing what you see—could you please walk us through your logic?

Look, if physics is so "straightforward," then why does that very clarity come with about a dozen different interpretations? 🤔
If it were truly settled, there would be one single, clear interpretation.

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Could someone—anyone else besides me—please post that diagram showing all the various quantum physics interpretations? A single image really does say more than a thousand forum posts... 🙂

For instance, here is my little illustration of that famous quantum concept known as
Schrödinger's cat (the one stuck in a box where we can't tell if it's alive or dead).



And now, hiddenpuma75 is calling on urbanwalker72 to finally reveal the long-held secret.

Happy to help.

ruggedraven36 said:Sure—but I think you're blurring the line between the subject and subjectivity. Not every person out there is equally capable of figuring out what actually matters.

What does an individual's capability have to do with anything? What they deem important is important to them, period. That’s why I brought up my dog. He’s incapable of many things, yet he has his own priorities—his own version of "importance" that is entirely his own and completely authentic. No one cares about the same things, and there is no such thing as objective importance. This doesn't change the fact that, as social creatures, we can reach certain compromises or agreements regarding what we value. Ultimately, anyone can pass judgment on what is "important," but that personal verdict only applies to them, not anyone else. You can try to force your personal values onto others like trying to shove a wardrobe through a keyhole, but it never works. Usually, those attempts just leave a trail of bodies in their wake.

Ethan Gomez82 said:What does an individual's capability have to do with anything? What they deem important is important to them, period. That’s why I brought up my dog. He’s incapable of many things, yet he has his own priorities—his own version of "importance" that is entirely his own and completely authentic. No one cares about the same things, and there is no such thing as objective importance. This doesn't change the fact that, as social creatures, we can reach certain compromises or agreements regarding what we value. Ultimately, anyone can pass judgment on what is "important," but that personal verdict only applies to them, not anyone else. You can try to force your personal values onto others like trying to shove a wardrobe through a keyhole, but it never works. Usually, those attempts just leave a trail of bodies in their wake.

But I mean, what's even the point of talking about "objectivity" if you aren't looking at how relevant something actually is?

How do we even decide what counts as "objective"? At the end of the day, objective is basically just whatever the scientific community mostly agrees on. And scientists only agree on things they actually bother to study. Scientists study things they think are worth their time, right? So that’s the funny part about most Nobel Prize winners: it's not that their work is "objectively" wrong, it's just that it's irrelevant. Like, super unimportant. There could be huge parts of reality that we can't say anything objective about simply because nobody is researching them since they don't seem relevant. For something to become "objective," it first has to be important enough to enough people that they actually go out and study it to make it an established fact.

Ethan Gomez82 said:What does an individual's capability have to do with anything? What they deem important is important to them, period. That’s why I brought up my dog. He’s incapable of many things, yet he has his own priorities—his own version of "importance" that is entirely his own and completely authentic. No one cares about the same things, and there is no such thing as objective importance. This doesn't change the fact that, as social creatures, we can reach certain compromises or agreements regarding what we value. Ultimately, anyone can pass judgment on what is "important," but that personal verdict only applies to them, not anyone else. You can try to force your personal values onto others like trying to shove a wardrobe through a keyhole, but it never works. Usually, those attempts just leave a trail of bodies in their wake.

Well, if you actually believe what you're saying isn't objectively important, then there's really no point in even commenting.

ruggedraven36 said:Well, if you actually believe what you're saying isn't objectively important, then there's really no point in even commenting.

It’s objective, sure, but it doesn't matter to anyone but me (and maybe a few others). I certainly am not writing this for the sake of people who couldn't care less.

James Lee77 said:But I mean, what's even the point of talking about "objectivity" if you aren't looking at how relevant something actually is?

How do we even decide what counts as "objective"? At the end of the day, objective is basically just whatever the scientific community mostly agrees on. And scientists only agree on things they actually bother to study. Scientists study things they think are worth their time, right? So that’s the funny part about most Nobel Prize winners: it's not that their work is "objectively" wrong, it's just that it's irrelevant. Like, super unimportant. There could be huge parts of reality that we can't say anything objective about simply because nobody is researching them since they don't seem relevant. For something to become "objective," it first has to be important enough to enough people that they actually go out and study it to make it an established fact.

"Objectivity" isn't some fragile thing that gets damaged by being ignored; whether people care about it or not is entirely up to them. There is so much scientific consensus out there that most people couldn't care less about, yet they obsess over trivialities instead. At the same time, ignoring the 99.9% of the population doesn't hurt the facts at all—the interest of the remaining 0.1% is more than enough to drive research and establish what is objectively true. We are living through a massive fragmentation of interest and perceived importance that is unprecedented in human history. In the past, because information was scarce, most people focused on the same core truths. Today, in this era of information overload and total fragmentation, that shared reality has completely vanished.

Ethan Gomez82 said:It’s objective, sure, but it doesn't matter to anyone but me (and maybe a few others). I certainly am not writing this for the sake of people who couldn't care less.

It isn't objective because it's just plain wrong—and truth actually matters. Saying something is "important to someone" doesn't make it objective; you can't derive "importance" from the mere existence of a person. That's why we bother with actual arguments instead of just stating that someone happens to care about something.

Ethan Gomez82 said:"Objectivity" isn't some fragile thing that gets damaged by being ignored; whether people care about it or not is entirely up to them. There is so much scientific consensus out there that most people couldn't care less about, yet they obsess over trivialities instead. At the same time, ignoring the 99.9% of the population doesn't hurt the facts at all—the interest of the remaining 0.1% is more than enough to drive research and establish what is objectively true. We are living through a massive fragmentation of interest and perceived importance that is unprecedented in human history. In the past, because information was scarce, most people focused on the same core truths. Today, in this era of information overload and total fragmentation, that shared reality has completely vanished.

I mean, you're totally right—you can separate relevance from objectivity, but let's be real, in the real world, a group of people basically decides what's objective. Like, something is considered objective if the p-value is lower than a certain number, but the scientific community is the one that actually agrees on what that number should be: http://www.sciencealert.com/lowering...unter-argument

And they'll make those calls based on their own ideas about what's important—like, they're actually suggesting changing the threshold for the p-value just because it would be useful to... whatever. So, I guess this whole idea of objectivity is pretty much an unavoidable human thing in practice, even if the ideal is to cut out the human element as much as possible. Since it is, just like everything else we do, it ends up being subject to how people decide to rank importance.

I’m convinced that importance and pragmatism are essentially two sides of the same coin.
The ideas or interpretations that actually work in the real world—the ones that hold water—are the only ones truly worth our time.

Science stays pragmatic when it stops chasing ghosts and refuses to give any weight to theories that can't be proven.