Reality is absolute, our understanding or perception of reality is not.
Luckybit is that what you meant?
Reality is not absolute. Reality is a matter of probabilities. Nothing is absolute.
Are you absolutely sure that nothing is absolute?
We aren't absolutely certain about whether this universe is the real one or some virtualized simulation running on a multiverse computer. We don't know if the universe is a hologram or not.
We don't know if the universe is "real" or not because our only means of determining what is or isn't real is very limited. We basically use math and logic to try to determine what is or isn't real, and ultimately the only reason something is real is because the probability of it being fake is statistically not likely. The concept of real and fake, and trying to determine what is real in the absolutely sense of the word, is something which you cannot prove.
You ultimately end up relying on perceptions, on mathematics, on logic, but you don't have the kind of certainty that is absolute.
What you have said above is reliant on perceptions, mathematics, and logic. I suppose you believe that to be absolutely true. Or do you not?
Truth is absolute, our perception of truth i not. The world is the way it is, regardless of how we understand it.
What way is that, and what are we? You have to know yourself before you can even answer the kind of questions you're trying to ask, and honestly the quality of your answer depends on the quality and structure of your question. If the universe is a computer, then it can compute, and we can compute along with it, but it doesn't tell you why, it doesn't give you any absolute truth, there is no absolute truth so far that we have beyond the mathematics which are notoriously uncertain.
I'm no mathematician but I know enough about quantum physics to know there is no absolute truth on the quantum scale. What is absolute reality?
You see Luckybit, you are making several assertions and you are hoping that those who read them will agree with you, but at the same time you are saying that nothing is absolute (which I am guessing you are including your own assertions). If what you are arguing for is not absolute, at least in your mind, then why should we even listen to what you have to say?
I don't believe everything you say is wrong, for I've read many of your posts and you make a lot of sense. But when you say that there is no absolute truth then that strikes a wrong chord with logic.
Logic is undeniable, for anyone who tries to refute it must first use it and thereby is affirming it. It's like saying "I can't speak a word in English." What's wrong with that sentence? Obviously, in making that statement, the statement itself has been negated, because the speaker had to speak English in order to communicate the idea that he or she couldn't speak English. It is a self-refuting affirmation. "I don't exist" is another example, for one has to exist in order to make the statement.
The statement "truth isn't absolute" is making an absolute statement of truth, which makes it a self-defeating statement.
Reality are just probabilities. That is all reality is on the quantum scale.
You see you are making two absolute affirmations here, "just" = just that, nothing else, and "that is all reality is" = "it can't be anything else".
Please think about this. Your post contains several absolutes and yet you negate that there are absolutes. Your are engaging in double talk or contradiction.
So when someone says they know there is an absolute truth, how can you know that when on the quantum scale it looks like the universe hasn't decided on that? From what I know if a decision is made, it happens at the collapse of a wave function, if you would even want to think about it as the universe making a decision to solidify reality.
I am sorry I don't understand what you are saying here.
When I say we don't have certainty I mean based on our current understanding we don't. When I say we don't have an absolute truth I'm basing it on my philosophical interpretation.
There are many things we can be certain about, there are also many things we are not certain about. For example, we are certain that 2+2=4, and all mathematics and deductive logic give us certainty. But when we delve in the realm of science, for instance, I agree with you that "we don't have certainty ... based on our current understanding".
We can't be absolutely certain about anything. I suppose if you want to be absolutely certain about something you can be certain that you exist, but you can't really be absolutely certain about anything else (solipsism). Trying to rely on absolute certainty you will quickly find isn't very practical, because even the laws of physics itself have probabilities, our entire universe out of the multiverse exists as a phase space on a mobius strip. If you're familiar with the work of Mag Tegmark then I suggest you look up his work, and you can see that in mathematics you can use logic to prove things which you can't observe, you can show for example that it's not feasible for our universe to exist unless it's part of a multiverse due to the probabilities, and numbers like the cosmological constant.
Then you have fractals, and all sorts of theories involving an infinite multiverse, or is it finite? In either case we don't have the answers. And there are other problems too such as how with black holes classical physics break and no one knows why, you end up dealing with infinities again. So to say logic and mathematics is absolute, it's only a language and it doesn't do anything but try to define reality.
Jürgen Schmidhuber[8] argues that “Although Tegmark suggests that ‘... all mathematical structures are a priori given equal statistical weight,’ there is no way of assigning equal nonvanishing probability to all (infinitely many) mathematical structures.” Schmidhuber puts forward a more restricted ensemble which admits only universe representations describable by constructive mathematics, that is, computer programs. He explicitly includes universe representations describable by non-halting programs whose output bits converge after finite time, although the convergence time itself may not be predictable by a halting program, due to Kurt Gödel's limitations.[9]
In response, Tegmark notes[3] (sec. V.E) that the measure over all universes has not yet been constructed for the String theory landscape either, so this should not be regarded as a "show-stopper".
Tegmark's response in [10] (sec VI.A.1) is to offer a new hypothesis "that only Godel-complete (fully decidable) mathematical structures have physical existence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesisSo you cannot be certain whether or not the universe is real. Logic makes sense in the context of a very deterministic and finite universe. In an infinite universe you don't have the same powers of logic. From our current understanding the universe is finite, and all energy is finite, so it's all finite, so logic can work and you can compute stuff.
But that doesn't mean this universe is the only universe, or that everything can be computed. It just means you can compute everything on a finite computer using the logic of that finite computer.
As far as semantics, I might use language which sounds certain, but the fact is the experiments and sources I cite who are experts in knowing how to phrase their sentences on these topics, are aware that there isn't the kind of certainty to reality. Sure, in a finite computer following certain rules, all derived from logic, all predetermined, then yes you can have a level of certainty because it's all deterministic, decidable, and you can prove stuff.
But when you're dealing with infinite, or with problems which aren't as bounded, and you don't have an infinite amount of time to compute it, now you run into problems. It's going to be very difficult to prove for example whether or not our universe is a simulation, or whether we are in a multiverse or not, but if either of these turn out to be true then all of our certainty would only apply to our own little phase space in our deterministic universe.
More resources:
http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Homotopy-Type-Theory_Univalent-Foundations-of-Mathematics.pdfSimulation hypothesis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqULEE7eY8MCounter to the simulation hypothesis by Richard Dawkins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYx30T9mHLoTed talk on simulation hypothesis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chfoo9NBEowOriginal simulation argument by Nick Bostrom:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs