Sean Carroll: Perception vs Reality
00:00:00.000 | - So one interesting philosophical point
00:00:03.620 | that quantum mechanics bring up
00:00:05.160 | is that you talk about the distinction
00:00:07.440 | between the world as it is and the world as we observe it.
00:00:12.300 | So staying at the human level for a second,
00:00:17.160 | how big is the gap between what our perception system
00:00:20.520 | allows us to see and the world as it is outside
00:00:24.080 | our mind's eye, sort of?
00:00:27.120 | Sort of not at the quantum mechanical level,
00:00:29.000 | but as just these particular tools we have,
00:00:33.520 | which is the few senses and cognitive abilities
00:00:36.200 | to process those senses.
00:00:37.980 | - Well, that last phrase,
00:00:40.000 | having the cognitive abilities to process them
00:00:41.920 | carries a lot, right?
00:00:43.440 | I mean, there is our sort of intuitive understanding
00:00:47.080 | of the world.
00:00:48.440 | You don't need to teach people about gravity
00:00:50.540 | for them to know that apples fall from trees, right?
00:00:53.260 | That's something that we figure out pretty quickly.
00:00:55.380 | Object permanence, things like that.
00:00:57.320 | The three dimensionality of space,
00:00:58.960 | even if we don't have the mathematical language to say that,
00:01:01.680 | we kind of know that it's true.
00:01:03.760 | On the other hand, no one opens their eyes and sees atoms,
00:01:07.600 | right, or molecules, or cells for that matter.
00:01:10.200 | Forget about quantum mechanics.
00:01:11.720 | But we got there, we got to understanding
00:01:15.800 | that there are atoms and cells using the combination
00:01:19.400 | of our senses and our cognitive capacities.
00:01:22.760 | So adding the ability of our cognitive capacities
00:01:26.200 | to our senses is adding an enormous amount.
00:01:28.760 | And I don't think it is a hard and fast boundary.
00:01:31.400 | You know, if you believe in cells,
00:01:33.560 | if you believe that we understand those,
00:01:35.160 | then there's no reason you believe
00:01:36.640 | we can't believe in quantum mechanics just as well.
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