I like your response, I don't think it was bitchy or whatever, you just seem rather passionate about what you're saying. Passion like that can lead to a bitchy response I suppose, but it doesn't always... I digress. I disagree with some of the conclusions you come to, but not necessarily the base assertions, facts, and "truths" you use to come to said conclusions. I really get where you're coming from with the idea of subjective reality and what not, but my point about it is to gauge how useful that line of thinking is. Granted, how useful something is doesn't mean it's right or the truth either, which is why I think you have to strike a proper balance between how pragmatic a way of thinking or specific beliefs are compared against how true they may or may not be.
Also, quick note about your question about trying to answer such an absurd question... I think the results of this thread should speak on their own about that. A few people believe the universe can't exist without observers, and a few believe it can. In turn, as long as none of us get really angry or refuse to continue meaningful discussion, we can potentially have our perspectives change. I think that's worth something, personally.
Anyway, I have to wonder how far the rabbit hole goes when you believe the outside existence is really there beyond our perception of it. The idea is that the idea necessarily has limits and reduces everything it experiences into symbols with contextual meaning that can change based on associations with other stimuli. You can say we can't actually know anything using this idea, and on that matter I agree. Strictly speaking, everything we know is a reconstruction of the outside world that is subject to interference, any kind of noise, oddly behaving neurons, or malfunctioning/defective cells can result in a wholly false perception of the outside world. Given this, how can you make a statement about anything? You also bring up how everything is a relationship between the measureer (wait, that's how you actually spell that?) and the measured, which is true of even perceiving anything in the first place. Everything we experience is an approximation, and you can say that, as a result of this knowledge, nothing has meaning beyond what you experience and give it... in a sense, the only kind of meaning something can have must be assigned to it. This too is true. Where I start to diverge from this line of thinking is that we can't trust anything; the knowledge we have about how wrong the perception of reality generated by the mind can be, we can't trust any conclusions we come to whatsoever other than to possibly quote Descartes and say "cogito ergo sum". Even that can't really be sure unless you define existence, and that requires a little more technical skills... including but not limited to using something as inherently flawed as language to apply descriptions of existence is like. The only thing prescriptive we have here explaining existence is that something must "be", but we don't even have a good idea of what not being really entails to understand what to be really means in the purest sense. Again, we just make an approximation.
However, through the development of a structured and methodical approach to exploring the world around us, we can lower just how much information about something is approximated. We really can be reasonably sure of things, otherwise we couldn't communicate with one another or be taking part in a structured society with developed technology. Truly, you can say none of this is real if you want, but the fact of the matter is that you're here. You do exist, and you live your life as if you do. Even if it's a falsehood, it's logically consistent enough to a healthy individual, based on knowledge passed down through the generations, that it is difficult to say none of it is real without purposefully holding on to a belief that limits your ability to learn. Other than the loads of empirical evidence we may have supporting a phenomenon, we also know that it must be true based on our ability to use the knowledge surrounding this phenomenon to make predictions and apply the knowledge to make things. This is a very compelling reason to ditch the idea that nothing is real beyond your perception; it only holds you back, and needlessly so. It may be the only thing you can be sure of, but again, I don't think you can even say that. Your experience of the world around you may be as unreal as there being an objective reality. All you can say for certain is that you exist in some way. Going off of that idea, you can't say anything exists at all other than yourself, which also implies anything you perceive to be utterly non-existent, something totally generated. You have no basis saying it exists at all, let alone that it only exists because you or others perceive it. This is why I entertain this notion in the back of my mind, but choose to dedicate my actual beliefs to something that allows me to grow.
The very end of your post is a reflection of an idea that I just don't understand choosing to believe. Overall, yes, it may be absurd and useless in any sense beyond yourself to try and understand anything, but is it any more absurd than doing nothing and learning nothing? You could probably justify both if you wanted to, but in my opinion, the one that allows progress to be made is the better doctrine to go with. And again, a point I made in another post: even if you can only be certain you exist, why do you believe that's the only case that can be? Your experience is so limited that you can't know anything for sure, right? For all you know, there is an objective reality. Limiting all possibilities to being equally likely in that manner is disturbing to me, because it's like saying Santa Claus could exist and the probability of his existence being 50/50. You're only working with two sets of information; you know you exist, and that a supposed Santa Claus could exist. You have no business making a conclusion either way about his existence in such a scenario, because the amount of reasonably reliable information you have is limited to you and Santa Claus. We can say, using the concept of the universe I support, with a much greater degree of probability, whether Santa Claus does or really could exist. This is because we can rely on evidence, even if they are approximations. That's the purpose of getting a wealth of evidence built up using all the different senses, etc. In the end I could be lying to myself about all this or deceiving myself, but given the probability of things based on the ideals it sounds like you believe, my beliefs, overall have just as much chance as being the case. Now, since we're talking about all kinds of knowledge, that number goes down considerably, but that's the point of learning about the natural world in the first place.
One last bit about categorization and measuring things and further categorizing them... these are the only real tools we have to understand anything. You do it because it's all you can do. To do any less means not being able to function. You will necessarily die within the time it takes you to starve or die of dehydration, because if you truly believe it is an absurd and pointless task to do these things, you wouldn't do them any more. The fact you participate in life, even if just to avoid pain and discomfort, means you utilize the same methods you bemoan for their absurdity. If you're truly committed to your own ideas in this regard, never get out of bed and let yourself die (please don't do this). If you aren't, don't you think you owe it to yourself to believe you aren't the end-all-be-all of existence? Unless of course this whole discussion is up to a matter of semantics, and what you mean to say by the universe exists because you observe it is that the universe you perceive exists only because you perceive it, and I'm just misunderstanding you. I've kind of said it already, but I agree with that idea, it just says nothing about the universe itself (as opposed to what and how I perceive it).
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