facts
take heed, ye weary traveler
a warning before we begin. the abyss of what we do not know is always magnetic and vertiginous. moreover, its exploration through text is never precise because words are never precise. they are granted expressive power through their variegated cloud of meanings. but this also generates confusion… even (especially?) if i title a page with something so seemingly objective, i will – as always – use this cloud of meaning to remain shrouded, somewhere in the darkness of the abyss.
a matter of time
but perhaps they are not so objective as one is made to believe. or at least perhaps not as fixed. this, i think, is at least one of the reasons why i was drawn to science. science, which has the power to re-draw reality in increasingly effective images. ever since anaximander removed the foundations on which the earth rested, copernicus launched it into the sky, einstein sewed the fabric of space time and darwin uncovered the connectedness of humanity, the fabulous strangeness and beauty of reality has been rapidly unveiled.
a matter of perspective
the fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indiciation of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
is this why we have probability? are we only starting to take all the relevant givens into account? or is it that nature leaps around?
does god play dice?
there is a solution, but it comes at a cost: no universal set of facts exists. there exists facts relative to yvr, and facts relative to sfo. facts relative to april 28 2019, and facts relative to september 19 2022. and in each case, the two do not match.
according to this perspective, both are real and the joint reality exists only when these two objects both interact with a third object which can check.
a matter of scale
this applies to elementary particles as readily as it applies to cats: an isolated object, independent of every interaction, has no particular state. at best, it has a kind of probabilistic disposition to manifest in one way or another. if we look for that object in itself, isolated from how we interact with it or how it interacts with others, we struggle to find it.
a matter of fact
in the end, the world is pretty simple. people are bad. people are good. inescapably there will be people who will disappoint you. people who define you, unravel you, inspire you.
these are facts.
in every culture, there is bread, and it is good.