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biophile's picture

Interactions between things change the things themselves

At times I wonder why people find the fact that the outside world is most probably different from the world we perceive to be surprising. I mean, think about information transfer at a very basic level, like converting an old record to a CD. The music on there will not exactly be the same because you lose something in the process; the music is changed. But that's alright, because now it's in a usable format. Of course the picture we have in our minds will be different; think about all of the elements involved in sense-perception and information processing. The interactions and loops and inhibitions and excitations going on are mind-boggling. How can we ever hope to map them and neatly explain why someone views reality in the way that they do? I'm actually kind of surprised by how much we can agree on. Granted, there's no way to view the world through someone else's eyes, but there is a general consensus on how humans view the world. Given how complex we are and how much could go awry in the process of our development and functioning, I wonder why more people do not have physiological differences that result in a radically different way of interpreting reality. This isn't to say that the differenes we see between individuals and between cultures isn't interesting, though. I just wonder what social or physical factors really matter in the process.

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