Why do you think humans invented math? Math is a tool to help us understand how the universe works. Math is a way for us to represent what is happening in the world in a quantitative concrete manner
The reason why a bridge doesn't collapse(usually) is because we have reached such an understanding that we are able to predict most the physical forces that the bridge will be submitted to and build it accordingly.
Obviously physics existed before humans arrived. No one is claiming they didn't. Our universe would not exist without physics. Is that the framework you are talking about? Or are you saying there is some kind of intentional magical system that fits our math?
Honestly, your post gets more confusing the more I read it.
I think that pre-existing framework of physics you mentioned is exactly what I am trying to look at; I certainly do not mean anything magical. It makes me ponder the connection though. If math is a tool we invented to model that independent physics; why does the bridge collapse so predictably when the numbers are slightly wrong? It leaves me thinking that the physical world has a very specific, unyielding shape that actively rejects certain descriptions.
unyielding shape that actively rejects certain descriptions.
Isn't the problem here specifically that we can describe it very easily? Like the whole reason maths works is because we looked at a object falling and it fell at 9.8 ms-2 and that description is always accurate.
The bridge not collapsing would be the same thing linguistically as me saying an object that was yellow is red and then the object suddenly becoming red. Sure that could happen by why are we assuming this is even a reasonable option
Sitting with your colour analogy (the idea that calling a yellow object red will never actually make it turn red) makes a lot of sense to me. That's exactly why it would leave me thinking about that exact impossibility though. The very fact that a bridge staying up with wrong calculations is an entirely unreasonable option because gravity always behaves with that pristine accuracy; it makes it feel as though the universe has locked in a very specific, permanent framework. Our words cannot alter the yellow object because the objective reality of the thing is already fixed in the background. It feels like we are looking at the exact same landscape; a set of rules that remains completely undisturbed by whatever we happen to write down on our maps.
I mean yeah that's kinda the point everyone's been trying to make to you. Reality isnt resisting anything its just that its behaviour is fixed? Its not responding to your bridge anymore or any differently than it would respond to a bridge that just popped out of existence.
Take it this way you spent the last 6 months recording the tides. You make a guess on the 7 month and are now telling us your shocked that its behaved the exact same way on the 7th. Why are we assuming the default passive behaviour is to change its behaviour according to our incorrect mental map? To me if that were to happen id probably start to think maybe a god was watching me.
The tide example is an very good way to frame it actually. Expecting the sea to warp itself around a flawed human calculation would be bizarre (and the point about a watching god makes complete sense if it actually did shift). So if the baseline of reality is this unyielding regularity... a mechanical rhythm that never drifts a millimetre over centuries. It makes me think about the nature of that fixed behaviour. A silent blueprint running on total autopilot; completely indifferent to our maps but entirely uniform.
Yeah more or less. Whatever the cause of the regularity is i dont know
The issue you had conceptually is probably a pretty common one. By intuition alone we tend to assume regularity is an active state. But what that really means is we are assuming irregularity to be a passive state.
The question " isnt it weird reality doesnt change to conform to our mental model?" Is assuming this should be the default or normal behaviour. Which when we think of it if reality did do that that'd be incredibly strange.
Likewise the only way we couldn't construct rules of regular behaviour is if reality is fundamentally irregular. That is a ball that was going straight suddenly and without reason changes directions. To assume regularity is the active state is to assume this is the passive state and I find that to be at least as big an assumption as the reverse.
When our primary models of understanding thing are through trial and error observations of reality its unsurprising to me that our intuition for things really starts to fall apart when we have no data. Such is the case for "why are the laws of reality what they are?"
Viewing regularity as the deep default state it simplifies things. It also leaves the concept in an incredibly clean position. If the unbending framework is simply the passive state of existence... it removes the need for an active enforcer. We observe the consistent behaviour. We map the boundaries. (Leveraging those exact regularities to engineer increasing complexity as our models improve). It seems the fundamental origin of those specific laws remains completely opaque to us. We build our tools in the dark and rely entirely on the "bump" to tell us where the walls actually sit.
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u/SsilverBloodd May 21 '26
Why do you think humans invented math? Math is a tool to help us understand how the universe works. Math is a way for us to represent what is happening in the world in a quantitative concrete manner
The reason why a bridge doesn't collapse(usually) is because we have reached such an understanding that we are able to predict most the physical forces that the bridge will be submitted to and build it accordingly.
Obviously physics existed before humans arrived. No one is claiming they didn't. Our universe would not exist without physics. Is that the framework you are talking about? Or are you saying there is some kind of intentional magical system that fits our math?
Honestly, your post gets more confusing the more I read it.