Showing posts with label illusion confusion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label illusion confusion. Show all posts

The higher you stand, the further you see

Relativity, by M. C. Escher. Lithograph, 1953.Relativity, by M. C. Escher. Lithograph, 1953.
Most things seem big if you are very small. Most things seem small if you are very big.*

The extent to which information is tied to a local context determines the extent to which the information is universally true. You can't and you don't see the same thing from a worm's point of view as you can and do from a person's perspective, or a bird's, a dog's or a god's point of view. Which perspective is absolutely correct? None. Which is absolutely incorrect? None.

Examples follow. Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain... in Tanzania. For people without telescopes, the Earth is at the center of the cosmos. Food that humans call rotten or spoiled is a banquet for bacteria. Weeds are plants that humans don't like and/or can't use. One person's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter". The lemma is continuous and discreet. As realtors put it: location, location, location! Or in other words: context, context, context!

Context-free thinking, context-free language, and language-free conversation are prerequisites to universal understanding and universal communication. The higher you stand the further you can see. The higher you think, the more contexts/perspectives you understand. The higher the level of abstraction (meta) the more can be seen of the nature of reality.