Nor am I saying that you presume solipsism, but that it is a consequence of the presumed primacy of experience. — Banno

I’m not arguing against the implication that ‘other people’ aren’t ‘real’ as such, because I don’t think it’s as important as you might think. I’m arguing that what IS ‘real’ with regard to the notion of ‘other people’ is merely evidence or measurements of their existence in potentiality: ‘other people’ exist and are useful (different to convenient) in this non-real, non-verifiable, conceptual or fictional structure in terms of how we interact with the world.

Real does not necessarily determine existence. This is outdated thinking. Energy and other people are far more complex than mere measurement/observation would suggest. Recognising this enables us to manage our uncertainty and prediction error. — Possibility

It's sort of important that they are real since it affects how we treat and regard them. A lot of bad has been done by those who have a habit of making others appear to be less than.

Real does determine existence and I don't know where you got this notion that it is outdated. Never heard anyone suggest that. I'm not even sure how you're dragging energy into this. What is real is what can be determined to exist, that's how we know dreams are not real and can safely dismiss a nightmare (well usually). — Darkneos

Who said anything about less than? I keep bringing up energy because it exists at the same level you are trying to dismiss as ‘less than’. You can try to ‘dismiss’ a nightmare, but it still exists as part of your experiences. What you’d be doing is trying to exclude, isolate or ignore the experience by devaluing the information it offers. — Possibility

When we read about a character, we treat them as MORE than the description we have. When we interact with a fictional character, we flesh out the limited information we have AS IF they were a living, thinking, feeling human being. — Possibility

The way I see it, ‘not real’ doesn’t mean ‘less than’. Real is a quality of existence, but not necessarily a value judgement. Treating the information we have about other people as ‘not necessarily real as such’, in this world of online forums, social media and AI, is arguably more accurate than being dismissive of any interaction unconfirmed as ‘real’. You can’t be certain that anything you read or observe here about me is ‘real’. I am a ‘useful fiction’ to you, whether you recognise that or not, as you are to me. For me, that means I treat you as MORE than the information I have about you, not less. — Possibility

Agreed Agent Smith!

I see no difference with small scale and the macro world in that regard. — invizzy

The electron cloud (?) represents, if anything, our ignorance. A particle can't be in two places at the same time, period! When someone's lost, his/her location is a fuzzy circle centered on his last known position, but that doesn't imply s/he is everywhere within that circle. Off-topic? The devil made me do it! — Agent Smith

Something I have wondering about recently is whether perhaps math is simply a better language to understand quantum mechanics than English, as English (and all other ordinary languages) are encumbered with too much normal macroscopic experiences and intuitions built into the way they are used. — PhilosophyRunner

Light and matter are both single entities, and the apparent duality arises in the limitations of our language. It is not surprising that our language should be incapable of describing the processes occurring within the atoms, for, as has been remarked, it was invented to describe the experiences of daily life, and these consist only of processes involving exceedingly large numbers of atoms. Furthermore, it is very difficult to modify our language so that it will be able to describe these atomic processes, for words can only describe things of which we can form mental pictures, and this ability, too, is a result of daily experience. Fortunately, mathematics is not subject to this limitation, and it has been possible to invent a mathematical scheme — the quantum theory — which seems entirely adequate for the treatment of atomic processes; for visualisation, however, we must content ourselves with two incomplete analogies — the wave picture and the corpuscular picture. — The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory - Werner Heisenberg

For a long time, understanding of negative numbers was delayed by the impossibility of having a negative-number amount of a physical object, for example "minus-three apples", and negative solutions to problems were considered "false". — Negative number, History - Wikipedia

That this subject [imaginary numbers] has hitherto been surrounded by mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill adapted notation. If, for example, +1, -1, and the square root of -1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative and imaginary (or even impossible), such an obscurity would have been out of the question. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

The math was entirely adequate but there was no natural picture, hence a lack of understanding. However, if negative numbers are thought of as the inverse of positive numbers, then they can be visualized. For example, credits and debits in banking. Or walking forwards and backwards. — Andrew M

I find language is often underestimated! Maths is good in its domain for sure, but I think true understanding only comes from the clarity of a well constructed sentence.

It is important, therefore , to analyse words like ‘to be’, ‘to cause’ and ‘to mean’ to see what they’re really getting up to! — invizzy

The issue of imaginary numbers is different though. It is an issue of there being two distinct conventions, yet each convention is correct in its own field of application. In the one case there is no square root of a negative number, in the other case there is. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is how the negative are conceived to relate to the positive, that creates the problem, i.e. it is not a straight forward inversion due to the role that zero plays. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think so. It remains true that negatives do not have *real* square roots, and that's the same as saying that if your domain is discourse is restricted to real numbers they have *no* square roots. The complex plane is a perfectly natural extension of the real line. — Srap Tasmaner

The issue of imaginary numbers is different though. It is an issue of there being two distinct conventions, yet each convention is correct in its own field of application. In the one case there is no square root of a negative number, in the other case there is. — Metaphysician Undercover

This means that there is two completely distinct ways of conceiving negative numbers, and not a simple matter of negative being the inverse of positive. It is how the negative are conceived to relate to the positive, that creates the problem, i.e. it is not a straight forward inversion due to the role that zero plays. — Metaphysician Undercover

There are also two distinct conventions for natural numbers and integers (which include negative numbers). With integers, a larger number can be subtracted from a smaller number. With natural numbers, it can't. — Andrew M

With complex numbers, the negative is still the inverse of the positive. — Andrew M

But negatives are not the inverse of positives — Metaphysician Undercover

In mathematics, the additive inverse of a number a is the number that, when added to a, yields zero. This number is also known as the opposite (number), sign change, and negation. For a real number, it reverses its sign: the additive inverse (opposite number) of a positive number is negative, and the additive inverse of a negative number is positive. Zero is the additive inverse of itself. — Additive inverse - Wikipedia

The problem is that zero occupies a position on the number line. If it was a simple inversion, the count would go from one to negative one, as the two directions would be the inverse of each other. But there are two spaces between one and negative one. So zero occupies a place in the count, it plays a real role, and this is why the negatives are not a simple inversion of the positives, because that would rule out a position for zero. — Metaphysician Undercover

See the mathematical definition below. — Andrew M

That's the "additive inverse". It does not mean that negative numbers are the inverse of positive numbers in a general sense, only in the operation of addition. Without that qualification it wouldn't make sense to say that a thing (zero) could be the inverse of itself, because there would be no inversion involved there. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you have a link to a definition? — Andrew M

but he knows what he knows. — Real Gone Cat

OED: invert: reverse the position, order or place of. — Metaphysician Undercover

Obviously, negatives are not treated as the direct inverse of positives, because two positives multiplied together produce a positive number, and the two negatives multiplied together also produce the same positive number. — Metaphysician Undercover

-3 * -2 = -(-(3 * 2))
        = 6