The Nature of Natures

The Nature of Reality:
Quasi-Realism
Representational Realism
Existence and Natures
Knowledge of Reality
The Language of Reality

In the past, I’ve argued for the metaphysical theory of Representational Realism, the belief that Reality exists objectively, on its own, and that what we perceive is not reality, but a copy of reality constructed in our brains from the information provided by our senses. This raises the question, what is Reality really like? If our perception is just a translation of data from our senses and memories, prone to error and bias, how can we know what is really true?

Even though we can never directly perceive Reality, we can learn some things about it through reasoning. If something is objectively real, it must be well-defined. I don’t mean in terms of word definitions, but that it has a “way that it is,” also known as a nature. This is true independently of whether we know what it is or not, or even whether there is anyone in existence to do the knowing. The mysteries of science have an answer now, and that answer has always been true. Gravity followed Newton’s formula before Newton. DNA existed before Watson and Crick. The natures of things, even those which do not yet exist, are already set within Reality, and have been since the beginning of time.

So what are these natures, and what do we know about them? The most successful process for trying to figure them out is science, particularly modern physics. The nature of gravity is best described by General Relativity, and the natures of pretty much everything else in the universe, bar some as-of-yet unexplained phenomena like consciousness, are emergent from Quantum Field Theory. This is where we get the idea of the laws of physics, mathematical representations of the natures of real things. There are laws of physics for the fundamental level of nature, as well as approximations for larger systems like fluids, solids, electricity, and all kinds of stuff.

The Einstein field equation (top) and the Schrodinger equation (bottom) together describe almost all of physics as we know it.

When we talk about the laws of physics in the context of the nature of Reality, we mean the most fundamental. Quantum Field Theory and General Relativity work for the most part, but there are still places they don’t, like the centers of black holes and the first instant of the big bang. It is thought that at the base of everything there is a single true law of physics describing one all-encompassing nature of Reality, a Theory of Everything. The two major contending Theories of Everything right now are String Theory, which hypothesizes that all things are made of membranes of various dimensions and extremely tiny strings; and Loop Quantum Gravity, which hypothesizes that space and time are emergent from a certain type of mathematical connections. Neither of these theories has any evidence backing them up, so it is still an open question.

But let’s back up. How do we know everything has a nature? It may seem like I’ve sped through the logic and left a lot of room for error. So let’s think about what would happen if things did not behave according to their natures. It would mean that their existence, properties, and everything about them would be fuzzy and undefined. This is what I call quasi-real, the worldview, often unnoticed by those who have it, that reality only exists as it is understood, and anything outside of our understanding does not have a definite state of existence yet. In a quasi-realist view, scientists do not discover facts through their experiments, rather they conjure them into existence from a sort of fuzzy pool of potential realities.

One might ask whether quantum physics provides evidence of quasi-realism, and against the idea of natures. After all, you can do an experiment where you prepare two or more electrons or other particles exactly the same way, and end up with different results. But this apparent lack of a nature is just an illusion. Run the experiment enough times, and you will see that the results follow a clear distribution of probability. Take the famous double-slit experiment. When photons—light particles—are shone through two tiny openings, they will land on what seem to be random places on the other side, bending when they pass through the slits. But let enough photons through, and a clear pattern of alternating dark and light fringes appears. This pattern always appears when you shine enough light through two slits of the right size, no matter where or when you do the experiment. So although it may seem that there is something inherently non-natural about the unpredictability of individual photons, they are actually following their nature.

What about abstract things, like love, a symphony, or the appreciation of beautiful art? How can these things have a well-defined nature? The answer is tricky, because these words are used in ways that are not well-defined. But if you zoom in and isolate one concrete part of it, like how seeing the painting affects your brain and body chemistry, we can begin to see how it might be possible, that these abstract constructs are emergent from level upon level of complexity. We cannot describe a Shakespeare play at the level of quantum physics, not because it’s impossible, but because there is not enough computing power in the world to do it. The higher up the chain of emergence, the more difficult it is. When we talk about something that concretely exists, it is well-defined, whether or not its nature is possible to compute or understand in fundamental terms.

What about free will? Doesn’t the existence of choice challenge the idea of natures? You might be surprised, but free will is actually an emergent property of determinism. Think about it, you never make a decision without a reason. Sometimes you don’t know the reason, and it was your brain and body working automatically in their deterministic way. Sometimes you have an idea of the reason, partially the values you were taught as a child, which you were reminded of by a stranger smiling at you as you walked past each other, and a thousand other things adding up. The often misunderstood point of free will is that we have the ability to do things for good reasons, not for no reason at all. Now you might say there is a loophole, as we choose between actions that have good reasons and those that have bad reasons. But this choice is also based on reasons. No matter how you slice it, it’s reasons all the way down. Of course I am not saying that we don’t have free will. I’m just pointing out that free will is not a basic-level principle of reality, and it has a well-defined nature.

Many people believe in the idea of the supernatural, a layer of reality that is not bound by natural laws, but nonetheless exists. This simply doesn’t make sense. Anything that exists must have a way that it is, which is another term for nature. The average person, however, does not think about the supernatural at the philosophical level, but rather uses it to describe a collection of phenomena like ESP, ghosts, demons, angels, and God. However, the line between the supernatural and the natural is arbitrary. Many things that were once called supernatural, like the weather and the motion of the objects in the sky, were later understood by science, and so lost their supernatural status. Nowadays, the ides of the supernatural is quite different from what it was back then, and I think it safe to bet it will be more different still in the future.

Anything that exists, whether you call it supernatural or natural, has a nature, a way that it exists and interacts with the rest of reality. This does not close the door to the possibility of God or demons; quite the contrary, it brings these things into the realm of serious consideration rather than quasi-realist speculation. I don’t disbelieve in the supernatural. Rather, I don’t see the division between natural and supernatural as having any meaning. It all comes back to the fact that anything that exists must have a way that it is, a well-defined nature. For each “supernatural” thing, we can ask whether it exists, and test it empirically just like every “natural” thing. And for each, there is a definite answer that is already true.

But enough of case examples, let’s get to the center of the issue. What would it mean for something not to have a nature? Remember, an object’s “nature” in this conversation means the “way that it is.” Suggesting that something exists without having a way that it is simply makes no sense. That would mean there is no true well-defined statement that you could say about it. For instance, does it explode when wet? If yes, there must be something about its physical properties that causes it to explode, which would be part of its nature. If it does not explode, that would also be explained by its nature. But what if it only explodes sometimes? Even then we will be able to calculate the probability of it exploding in a certain amount of time based on its nature. In order for it not to have a nature, it must not act according to probability, which means it should have the same chance of exploding in the next three seconds as it does in the next ten minutes or in the next hundred trillion years. This lack of probability would not be because of our lack of information, but inherent in the object’s very being. Of course, this would apply not just to exploding, but to turning blue, transforming into a pizza, growing arms and legs and break dancing, blowing up the Earth, and every other possible thing that can happen. All this because it would have no nature preventing it from doing so, because not being able to do something is a well-defined statement about the way that it is. The fact that we have a Universe where it is possible for things to make sense is evidence that everything has a well-defined nature.

But what if something had a nature that was not well-defined? Could something deviate from its nature in small amounts, following its nature most of the time, but just once in awhile doing other things? The answer is no, because as we discussed, even having a probability counts as a nature, so the real truth would be that we are wrong about its nature, and its true nature really does explain everything it does. Take gravity for example. Newton’s theory explained planets and moons most of the time, but not all of the time. Newton predicted that all planets should orbit the sun in perfect ellipses, but the planet Mercury’s ellipse swiveled so that the point where it was farthest from the sun moved each year. Then Einstein came along with his General Theory of Relativity, a theory of gravity which worked like Newtonian gravity in weak fields, but differently in strong fields. General Relativity predicted Mercury should precess exactly as it did. Ultimately, it wasn’t that Mercury behaved in a way slightly different from its nature, but instead we weren’t quite right about what its nature was.

The key to all this is the difference between knowledge and fact. It is easy to believe that we know a lot more than we do, and therefore the vast plunges of the unknown must be inherently unknowable. However, this can be overcome if we acknowledge that no matter how certain we are about what we think we know, there is always at least a small chance that we may someday find ourselves to be not quite right, and have to amend our beliefs to better reflect the truth. Fundamental facts about natures are always true, always have been, and always will be regardless of whether we agree about them, or if anyone knows them at all. It all comes down to one simple tautology, that everything that exists has a way that it is. Though true by definition, its vastly powerful implication for knowledge and understanding goes unnoticed by so many.

Learning by Unlearning – Deconstruction

What is Knowledge?

Toolbelt of Knowledge: Practices
Skepticism
Listening
Deconstruction
Rationality
Mindfulness
Steel Manning
Common Sense

What is a cat? A picture appears in your mind of a furry creature with pointy ears, a configuration of matter and energy that is “cat,” and outside of which is “not cat.” But these lines between “cat” and “not cat” aren’t as absolute as they may seem. A cat is made of trillions of cells linked together by common DNA, and even more cells, bacteria, with different DNA. Furthermore, it is constantly trading matter with its environment—shedding hair, flaking skin, breathing air—so that what is “cat” is constantly in flux. We have a common sense understanding of what things are, but when we try to find a basis for this common sense, we come up scratching our heads.

Back in ye olden days of philosophy, Plato tried to solve this problem with the idea of forms, perfect conceptual objects, which all real objects are replicas of. So even though all cats are different and each individual cat is always changing, they are all cats because they are modeled after the Platonic form of cat. The same would be true of pots, raindrops, hospitality, and everything else in the universe. The closer something is to its Platonic form, the more perfect it is.

However, the theory of forms breaks down when we consider that there are an infinite number of possible objects. New objects get invented every day. Is there supposed to be a Platonic form of an orange juicer? Does a door handle have a different form than a doorknob? What about the fact that a spoon can be used as a hammer, or a bucket as a stool? You can keep trying to fortify the theory of forms against these questions by coming up with more and more arbitrary rules, but a much simpler conclusion would be that a spade is a spade not because it has some special spade-ness to it, but because everyone who sees it agrees to call it a spade.

An alternative to Plato’s forms is social construction theory, the idea that objects and ideas are constructed in our minds as we learn about the world. That is not to say that things don’t exist, but that the way we think about and differentiate them is artificial. We use the words that our parents, teachers, and society give to us, and it would be possible to use a completely different set of words with different meanings to describe the same things, as evidenced by the fact that every language has its share of words that are not easily translated.

Over the last century, French philosopher Jacques Derrida developed deconstruction, the process of looking for assumptions and arbitrary decisions that our views of things are built on, and breaking them down to see reality in a more raw form. For instance, where is the edge of a cloud? If you look closely enough, you'll see it fades from opaque to transparent, but nowhere is there a definite boundary. With practice, we find that most of the words and concepts we have in our minds, or perhaps even all of them, are not fully descriptive of reality, but shortcuts to help us think and function. By understanding this, we can begin to glimpse the finer details of truth between concepts that first appeared to be black and white. Good and evil are positions on a multi-dimensional sliding scale, which looks different depending on where you’re standing. Gender (in the sociological sense) is not merely male and female, but a connected spectrum with two sharp peaks. Money has no intrinsic value, we just all agree to pretend it does. Ultimately, deconstruction is to recognize that everything is always more complicated than we think it is, and we ought to respect that.

Derrida also styled his hair like a supervillain.

For many people, it can be terrifying to entertain the thought that so much of what we take for granted, the basic things we rely on to function in the world, are a product of social construction. But on the other hand, seeing how far you can deconstruct ideas can be really fun. It’s not like the universe will stop existing if you think about it the wrong way. Reality is what it is, regardless of the concepts we construct surrounding it, and the deeper we go with deconstruction, the closer we get to the bedrock foundation of immutable bare Truth. Of course it’s not wrong to use social constructions—most of the time it is good for us—but by understanding that there are other ways to organize reality, we will open up new frontiers of knowledge, and power up our ability to imagine new ways, new constructions, to make things better.

Tapping the Unconscious – The Secret to a Great Story

Meaning and Purpose:

Jungian Archetypes

The Most Important Question

Fact and Meaning

A good story requires good writing. That’s a given. But even with good writing, some stories are amazing, and some are just okay. This means that there must be something else at play, but what? The answer lies in how writing transports us into other worlds, stimulating our imaginations to take us somewhere else so vividly that we can forget where we are.

When it comes to perception, our mental wires are tangled up in a messy web. Colors feel warm or cold. Musical tones feel like emotions. Shapes will make us wary or put us at ease. Everything we sense or experience is connected with all kinds of other things, most of which have no connection in the outside world. This is how metaphors work. If a writer says the sky is smooth as glass, it creates a picture in your mind of cloudless blue, even though the sky and glass have nothing in common.

Can you guess which of these shapes is called a "kiki" and which is called a "bouba"? Around 90% of people choose the same thing, regardless of native language.

The best stories are those that resonate with us, tickling these crossed wires so that we get to things that are deep and meaningful. It is one thing to talk about human nature analytically, and another entirely to learn about it through the guided experience of an artist’s hand.

Back in the early days of psychology, Sigmund Freud modeled the mind as three layers, the conscious, which is where our thinking and perceiving and everything that we are aware of takes place, the unconscious, a vast ocean of ideas, beliefs, and calculations we are completely unaware of, and the subconscious, which lies between the others, and takes things from the unconscious and brings them to the conscious.

Freud’s contemporary, Carl Jung, added to this with the idea of the collective unconscious, a commonality of the unconscious minds of all of humanity. He came to this idea by looking at mythical archetypes, characters, events, settings, etc., that appear in stories all over the world. For instance, there is the hero, who does grand and difficult things for the good of their community; the mentor, who helps the hero reach their potential; the trickster, who manipulates everyone for their own ends; and many more. It is a common misconception to think that Jung meant everyone’s minds are connected. What he really meant is that humans have a lot of the same stuff in our unconsciouses, just like we all have two hands and two eyes.

Influenced by Freud and Jung, mythologist Joseph Campbell came up with the idea of the monomyth, also called the Hero’s Journey, which is a structure that the most powerful stories in human history, the ancient myths from all over the world that have survived until today, adhere to. The monomyth has several stages, including the call to adventure, crossing the threshold, death of the mentor, figurative or literal death and rebirth of the hero, ultimate triumph, returning home with the prize, and others. Few stories have all of the monomyth’s elements, but most of the great ones have some. It is also worth mentioning that there are other story formats that resonate besides the monomyth.

Star Wars: A New Hope is often hailed as the modern representation of the monomyth.

The fact that tales from all over the world follow this structure suggests that the secret ingredient that makes stories great is when they resonate with the collective unconscious. You may have heard writers say that the story already exists, and they are just putting it to words. Back in the day, there was an idea of a personal genius, a spirit that gave creative people inspiration for their work. It turns out this is not merely superstition; the subconscious mind functions just like a personal genius, bringing forth the best ideas from the reservoir of the unconscious. When creators follow the guiding of their genius, it is an expression of the unconscious, and when this expression resonates with lots of people’s unconsciouses, it is a great story. True art appears when the artist looks inward and lets their heart guide them.

Listening

What is Knowledge?

Toolbelt of Knowledge: Practices
Skepticism
Listening
Deconstruction
Rationality
Mindfulness
Steel Manning
Common Sense

One undervalued resource on the quest for understanding is learning from people with views different from our own. We usually spend our time around people who agree with us on most topics, and we avoid talking about what we disagree about. But this is not a productive way to live. When people who agree get together, they move toward more extreme versions of what they already believed, and when people who disagree get together, they mellow each other out and move toward the middle. Because of this, it is important to have uncomfortable conversations with people we disagree with.

Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris, and Eric Weinstein, discussing free will, religion, and other topics on the Waking Up Podcast.

What makes these conversations so uncomfortable? It is because when we hear statements we disagree with, we feel disgust. Pay attention to what you are feeling when you read the following words: capitalism, socialism, climate change, abortion, gun rights. Chances are, you felt something uncomfortable stirring inside you from at least one of these things. Don’t worry, I won’t talk about any of them today. I just want to show you what I mean, so that when you feel it during a discussion, you can recognize it, put it aside, and focus on the logical points of the discussion rather than your discomfort.

On the flip side, we are delighted to hear ideas and opinions we agree with. It is like eating something delicious. These two emotions push us into confirmation bias, where we pay attention to evidence that supports ideas we agree with, and ignore and avoid evidence that supports ideas we disagree with. Confirmation bias is one of many cognitive biases, shortcomings in our brain that motivate us to believe things, or continue believing things we already believe, for bad or insufficient reasons.

Even if you train your mind to reason and recognize cognfirmation bias, you aren’t immune to it. There is only one inoculation, and that is to seek out people who think differently from you and listen to what they have to say. Your beliefs might seem airtight, but that might be because there is something you are overlooking, which somebody else knows. These beliefs might be anything—religious, political, scientific, philosophical, moral, practical, etc. As knowledge seekers, we wish to mold our beliefs to Reality, not try to will Reality to conform to our beliefs. To best do this, we need to practice listening in the right way, looking out for special signs, and remembering that our goal is to enrich ourselves, not to change somebody else’s mind.

The first thing to have in mind is that people assume that those they are talking to are on the same page. This is by no means true. Try talking to someone from a religion you don’t belong to, and it sounds like pure gibberish. When you converse, make sure to ask questions like, “what do you mean by this?” and “could you explain that in another way?” Not only will this help you understand the other person, but it may prompt them to think of their own beliefs in ways they never have before.

Dennis Prager of Prager U, Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report, and Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society discuss the relationship between God and morality.

If you want to explain your point of view to someone who disagrees with you, you want them to be open and willing to listen. The first way to do this is to treat them respectfully, showing that you value them as a person and don’t belittle them for their opinions. This is necessary if you want to get anywhere at all. After that, an extremely powerful tool is called the steel man argument. In contrast with the straw man fallacy, a steel man is where you explain someone else’s view in a way that they wholeheartedly agree with. Once you have done this, they will be more likely to be open to your counterarguments.

Many times, when we disagree with something the moment we hear it for the first time, it might be because if it were true, it would mean something else we believe is not true. Usually, we don’t consciously know which belief is being threatened, but have only a vague sense that something is wrong. This makes us uncomfortable, but instead of a mere distaste like we talked about earlier, we get a headache. Trying to hold two ideas in our head at once that contradict each other gives us physical pain. This phenomenon is called cognitive dissonance.

Though cognitive dissonance is painful, we should train ourselves to embrace it, because it is a beacon that points to a deeper knowledge of the Truth. If we follow it, we will find ourselves weighing the new things we learn against our deep convictions, and sometimes, if the evidence is strong enough and we’re humble enough, we allow our convictions to change.

Taking your deepest convictions from their sacred pedestal and opening them up to be tested and possibly falsified can be frightening. When I first questioned the foundation of all my knowledge, and it crumbled before my eyes, I almost shut down. What kept me going was the hope that even though I was wrong about everything, there was a Truth out there somewhere, and I could stumble my way toward it by building up a set of tools to lay a new foundation that could endure or adapt to anything that was thrown at it.

Professor of Psychology Jordan Peterson on the Joe Rogan Experience

It’s tempting to think to yourself, “I already know this, but this other person I know really needs to hear it.” But we all need to hear it, and we all need to keep practicing listening. You’ll find that if you are good at listening, it does not bother you as much if other people are not.

It is okay to let somebody else be wrong, even about facts. We have an inbuilt desire for everyone to accept what is true, especially if they are someone we respect and care about. However, we must remember that there is nothing magical about facts that make them believable by themselves. We need the broader context and critical thought to see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Sometimes our brains fail us, or we fall to biases, or we simply don’t have enough information to figure out the answer. The poet Alexander Pope once wrote, “To err is human.” Remember that you are talking to this person to learn from them, not to persuade them of your own beliefs.

The last important part of listening is knowing when not to listen. It may be uncomfortable to hear someone’s point of view if they disagree with you on certain issues, or if they are not good at having productive conversations, but these conversations are still worth having. But there will be times when someone is not interested in having an honest conversation with you, and their aim is to insult or to get you to spend money. When you sense this, there is nothing for you to learn from them, and you can walk away.