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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

Any question I could come up with has probably been asked already, but here goes:

How do we know anything in the past actually happened? We are 100% reliant on memory, but an equally plausible explanation is that we materialized 1 nanosecond ago, pre-loaded with memory and state. And in 1 nanosecond we will cease to exist, but at any point in time we will never know if that is true.

Science and repeatable experiments, models of the universe etc. refute my statement, except science is based on the assumption that my statement is false, so it is a circular argument.

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The question "what is truth?" is as old as time, and so important that we've created a system to analyze it and attempt to come to a consensus[0]. If an idea is untestable, it is logical and good for your sanity to assume that it is false until proven otherwise.

We assume that certain aspects of reality are real because they are testable and repeatable. We say gravity exists because every time we drop something, it falls down towards Earth, and if we apply other assumptions while looking out in the sky, we see other objects falling towards each other. The assumption is logical and testable.

It is impossible to test whether we just materialized, therefore it's safe to assume it did not happen unless repeatable testing indicates otherwise.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science

Hi drankula3, definitely agree. You make good points that we study things that are based on reality using science when we ask "what is truth?"

I still wonder if there might be constructs or frameworks 'out there' more advanced than "asking questions". When looking at evolution, I wonder if bacteria, plants, or animals have that frame of reference of "truth" and "asking questions". To me, it looks like "truth" and "asking questions" are things humans have constructed.

I wonder if "asking questions" is just a part of species evolution and I'm curious by the thought that there might be more powerful frameworks 'out there'.

Yeah, interesting point about us being reliant on memory. And I agree, it's useful to think about the circular argument.

I wonder if "asking questions" is just a small progressive part of evolution? For instance, on a time scale of species evolution, I wonder if things might look like this:

...Sensing...Simple reasoning...Complex questioning...X...Y...Z...

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