The Fabric of Reality

In principle, one could imagine a species whose genes were unable to replicate, but instead were adapted to keep their physical form unchanged by continual self-maintenance and by protecting themselves from external influences.

They cared where the planets really were, and they wanted to understand the planets through explanations, just as Galileo did.

The user can reach out and pick up a simulated object, and it feels real because the effectors in the glove generate the ‘tactile feedback’ appropriate to whatever position and orientation the object is seen in.

despite your being sure that I would float, you wouldn’t understand why. Knowing is not the same as understanding.

Penrose’s world is fundamentally very different from what existing physics describes.

Thus the laws of physics impose no limit on the range and accuracy of image generators.

Since in such an experiment we never observe two of the detectors going off at once, we can tell that the entities that they detect are not splitting up.

We can give a definition of adaptation directly in terms of knowledge: an entity is adapted to its niche if it embodies knowledge that causes the niche to keep that knowledge in existence.

the Inquisition were realists. Yet their theory has this in common with solipsism: both of them draw an arbitrary boundary beyond which, they claim, human reason has no access – or at least, beyond which problem-solving is no path to understanding.