Measurement systems and our perceptions of reality

[disorder2k8]

I came to the conclusion that we prove nothing except what we have created ourselves. Here is my reasoning;

In our world, we have created our own systems of measurement to predict and track the things we witness. We created calandars and
assigned the movements of the sun, moon and stars to them and we created centimeters, litres, microns, micrograms, hands, feet, inches
etc etc There is not one system of measurement, not one calandar, but many. These have changed throughout history and the reason
for this refinement is because we realise our measurements were wrong or we just adopted a system we were more comfortable with.

It might be reasonable to posit that our own measuring devices/calculations are wrong at all times and we really dont know what we're
doing, as our observations contantly have to be corrected by others and the bar raised when our systems of measurement adapted to fit
our new beliefs. On top of that most of our own measurements are tainted with our beliefs of how such-and-such a thing should be
observed based only on our own understanding, these things are never controlled and the outcome for another individual is usually always
different. This is why some people believe such-and-such and not others.

We are then, limited to own limitations of measurement and from this we can assume that a)anything we can see we can measure b)
anything we can't measure, must not exist, except only in theories and beliefs. c) observing an event or action multiple times, and
for many years, will create a 'proof' d) the proof is only in our own limited measurement, our measurement is updated and the cycle
repeats.

Scientific progress is made from peer review, a thing is measured, tested and studied. But the peer review system means that others
should also be able to measure, test and study and observe the same results. This is sadly not the case with many new age concepts,
like orgone.

But to be an enlightened person you can never stop at simply believing if something is true, we have to test it otherwise we just
rationalise and create a safety net that protects our cherished beliefs, for if one feels a thing is true then it simply must be and everyone
else that do not feel the same way, or do not understand what you do, is in error.


Now imagine another world filled with other beings, perhaps a larger planet orbiting a double star. Maybe these beings are 4 feet tall
and have hands that our more than double that of humans. It would be safe to theorise that these beings would have created their own
calendars and systems of measurement and what is true to them is totally within their own perceptions of reality.
Knowing this, we should then not keep trying to apply our beliefs, such as astral planes, energy, religion/gods/spirits, visions or
our personal ethics and morals to the galactic or universal level because they would simply not fit. Think of it as a trying to fit
the cube in the triangle hole.

When we come to learn that everything is never as we think, measure or observe, especially if you project these into realms we really
have no understanding of at all, then you have to come to the conclusion that we really don't know anything at all except what we
have created.

TY for reading

[thesloth]

Your concept of "measurement as a proof of existence" is interesting. Never thought about it like that. My initial comment is that it appears to look at only the physical plane. By the same criterion, it looks like "theories" and "beliefs" too can be measured, only we don't have the sophistication and tools to measure these. But we appear to be getting there, for things like emotions and values can be "measured" in a reliable (repeatable?) way.

But your final point overlooks the above with the comment, "...that we really don't know anything at all except what we have created." That's kind of unfair as it does not justify your original theory. It is one thing to say "we really don't know" and quiet another to say "we will never know"

[disorder2k8]

Your concept of "measurement as a proof of existence" is interesting. Never thought about it like that. My initial comment is that it appears to look at only the physical plane. By the same criterion, it looks like "theories" and "beliefs" too can be measured, only we don't have the sophistication and tools to measure these. But we appear to be getting there, for things like emotions and values can be "measured" in a reliable (repeatable?) way.

But your final point overlooks the above with the comment, "...that we really don't know anything at all except what we have created." That's kind of unfair as it does not justify your original theory. It is one thing to say "we really don't know" and quiet another to say "we will never know"

Wasn't it socrates who said "I know that I know nothing", I think he was being sincere.

But I wasn't trying to say that we will never know, but rather we will only know in our limited systems of knowing until those systems can be improved or extended to effectively measure the things we currently only believe.

Hope that clears things up a bit.

[omegasol]

When we come to learn that everything is never as we think, measure or observe, especially if you project these into realms we really have no understanding of at all, then you have to come to the conclusion that we really don't know anything at all except what we
have created.

Yes, i think this is the right approach. We will never be able to grasp the whole thing. We can only perceive and understand the world within our own boundaries (our given senses, the capacity and effectiveness of our brains, our socialitasion etc.) and we try to squeeze the world/ reality (everything that is outside our own mind) into that little box. we create systems that try to explain the world, but like you said, we only know and understand what was created by ourself.

[thesloth]

Hope that clears things up a bit.
Actually it does. If I understood correctly, the subtility in what you are saying is that the measurement systems are cooked-up by us, so we can never be sure if it's the actual thing we are perceiving. It's not the measurement itself, but what and how we choose to measure. For example... we can "measure" the temperature of boiling water by the sound of its bubbling or use a thermometer...

correct?

We cannot extend our measurement "apparatus" to things that we have little understanding of. We need to cook-up new ways of doing the measurements.

correct?

It's like light... we can only see a small spectrum, imagine if we could actually "see" the complete electromagnetic spectrum... maybe all that information will fry our brains.

[ellis_deatrip]

Space and time are indeed relative. and sometimes it seems the units we have created are too small when projected beyond the parameters of the part of the universe that we physically interact with.
Even less conceptual is that people in the states that have never left the country ,cant comprehend any explanation in meters . Nor can anyone that doesn't have a money tree fathom(pun int.) what $1 trillion is for example."Trillion" also represents a different value in european lands.
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j100/yoshi667/ComicSense_UFO_600.jpg
I knew we shouldn't have given them the Chemtrail recipe in METRICS!!!

[moving finger]

Actually it does. If I understood correctly, the subtility in what you are saying is that the measurement systems are cooked-up by us, so we can never be sure if it's the actual thing we are perceiving. It's not the measurement itself, but what and how we choose to measure. For example... we can "measure" the temperature of boiling water by the sound of its bubbling or use a thermometer...

correct?

We cannot extend our measurement "apparatus" to things that we have little understanding of. We need to cook-up new ways of doing the measurements.

correct?

It's like light... we can only see a small spectrum, imagine if we could actually "see" the complete electromagnetic spectrum... maybe all that information will fry our brains.

The measurement systems used have to be consistent & reliable or they mean nothing, ie absolute & objective, not subjective. I could hear a pan of boiling water, but that would necessarily mean that it is at 100 degrees Celsius, as some parts of the pan's water may be less than that, and the bubbling could be down to circulation currents from heating rather than actually boiling. You might detect the bubbling sound differently to me (you might have younger, better ears for a start!), or you might have a different definition of what 'bubbling' is.

The thermometer is the most reliable way of measuring that phenomenon when reporting it to someone else so that they can repeat the experiment.

It's also true that it's very difficult to measure something that we can't see or detect with our own eyes, but we can measure what it does. No-one can see magnetic fields, for example, but we can tell where they are and how strong they are by their influence on things that we can see (dials, meters and so on). A lot of chemistry is not observable directly, but we can still say what's happening because we have worked out how to measure it and describe it on paper.

It gets slightly trickier when we are dealing with matters that are way beyond what we can observe empirically. A lot of Geology, Physics and Astronomy is based not on direct observation but on the accumulation of evidence of indirect observations, and that's where you get debate & discussion.

We can't, for example, prove beyond absolute doubt that the landscapes of northern Britain were once covered in massive glaciers, but we can see other countries where glaciers are, observe what happens and what processes are involved, and infer from those observations what is most likely to have happened elsewhere.

The debate & discussion then centres around how accurate those assumptions are, and whether the inferences and extrapolations are reasonable. If they aren't, any scientist can challenge it by going through the same process of measurement, analysis & discussion.

Likewise we can't say what happened at the Big Bang or what the entirity iof the Universe is made of, but we can infer what we ought to be able to see if the theories are correct. The Large Hadron Collider is a brand new measuring tool that was built to look at that based on what the theory says we should see, and what the invisible particles we can't possibly see with our own eyes should behave like when subjected to a particular set of conditions.

Science. Marvellous.

[disorder2k8]

Actually it does. If I understood correctly, the subtility in what you are saying is that the measurement systems are cooked-up by us, so we can never be sure if it's the actual thing we are perceiving. It's not the measurement itself, but what and how we choose to measure. For example... we can "measure" the temperature of boiling water by the sound of its bubbling or use a thermometer...

correct?

We cannot extend our measurement "apparatus" to things that we have little understanding of. We need to cook-up new ways of doing the measurements.

correct?

It's like light... we can only see a small spectrum, imagine if we could actually "see" the complete electromagnetic spectrum... maybe all that information will fry our brains.

Yes, you can certainly know things, but those things are never an absolute certainty and if they are they are only certain in our 'cone of perception'. Like horse blinkers in a way.

The measurement systems used have to be consistent & reliable or they mean nothing, ie absolute & objective, not subjective. I could hear a pan of boiling water, but that would necessarily mean that it is at 100 degrees Celsius, as some parts of the pan's water may be less than that, and the bubbling could be down to circulation currents from heating rather than actually boiling. You might detect the bubbling sound differently to me (you might have younger, better ears for a start!), or you might have a different definition of what 'bubbling' is.

The thermometer is the most reliable way of measuring that phenomenon when reporting it to someone else so that they can repeat the experiment.

It's also true that it's very difficult to measure something that we can't see or detect with our own eyes, but we can measure what it does. No-one can see magnetic fields, for example, but we can tell where they are and how strong they are by their influence on things that we can see (dials, meters and so on). A lot of chemistry is not observable directly, but we can still say what's happening because we have worked out how to measure it and describe it on paper.

It gets slightly trickier when we are dealing with matters that are way beyond what we can observe empirically. A lot of Geology, Physics and Astronomy is based not on direct observation but on the accumulation of evidence of indirect observations, and that's where you get debate & discussion.

We can't, for example, prove beyond absolute doubt that the landscapes of northern Britain were once covered in massive glaciers, but we can see other countries where glaciers are, observe what happens and what processes are involved, and infer from those observations what is most likely to have happened elsewhere.

The debate & discussion then centres around how accurate those assumptions are, and whether the inferences and extrapolations are reasonable. If they aren't, any scientist can challenge it by going through the same process of measurement, analysis & discussion.

Likewise we can't say what happened at the Big Bang or what the entirity iof the Universe is made of, but we can infer what we ought to be able to see if the theories are correct. The Large Hadron Collider is a brand new measuring tool that was built to look at that based on what the theory says we should see, and what the invisible particles we can't possibly see with our own eyes should behave like when subjected to a particular set of conditions.

Science. Marvellous.

Very good points. What we come understand is only based on what we already understood, whether those events actually change our future understandings determines whether we will actually grow from them or not.

[ellis_deatrip]

The measurement systems used have to be consistent & reliable or they mean nothing, ie absolute & objective, not subjective. I could hear a pan of boiling water, but that would necessarily mean that it is at 100 degrees Celsius, as some parts of the pan's water may be less than that, and the bubbling could be down to circulation currents from heating rather than actually boiling. You might detect the bubbling sound differently to me (you might have younger, better ears for a start!), or you might have a different definition of what 'bubbling' is.

The thermometer is the most reliable way of measuring that phenomenon when reporting it to someone else so that they can repeat the experiment.


true. You could be on the top of Mt. Everest, and I could be in Death Valley , Ca. Water would 'boil' at different temperatures. you might get yours boiling faster , but your noodles would take longer to cook. :p

[thesloth]

Science. Marvellous.
I think what the OPer was referring to was "measurement" not so much as a "scientific" endeavor but measurement as an act of "perception".

Scientific measurements are not this this "scope". The OPer appears to have used the term "measurement" to mean "perception" by human beings. Hence {his|her} example of a being different than "human"

The "measurement-as-perception" is a result of our existence as human beings. We see things in a similar manner. I can measure (perceive) lots of things and understand these things as such that only a "human being" would understand. These things may not actually be "true" or the result of actual physical and metaphysical processes.

There may be "intelligent life" that perceive things different than we do. Light may be sound (in human terms). Taste may be "touch" (in human terms) etc.

All these are different aspects of physical phenomenon. So NO being may actually know the "truth."

Unless the being perceives everything that is to perceive as a "whole" i.e. "captures" the real (actual) physical reality.

- mvk