Illusory Coherence

Interesting post from Dave Pollard (hat tip to Euan Semple) on the illusory nature of all those coherent structures that enable life, the universe and everything to tick along as if “business as usual”.

Those coherent structures cover everything from politico-economic structures of mutual governance, down to apparently fundamental physical and cosmological models – and necessarily all the complex, compound, global eco-systems of systems in between. The point is that such things are not (identical with) what they appear, but as of now, they’re the best we have. Denying or rejecting them as not being “real” isn’t necessarily better – nihilist or anarchist – than evolving them to something better.

Obviously however, being too attached to the appearance of coherence as reality is a barrier to that evolution, so it’s healthy to spread the understanding.

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