I am an avid reader. A few months ago I stumbled upon Quantum Bayesianism (QM) and accepted its conclusions as the most accurate explanations of the base reality (or lack thereof). In short, according to QB, what we perceive as reality are our expectations of reality. In reality there is no reality. I further believe in a subset of QB pursuant to which what we perceive as reality is a compromise between all conscious creatures on what what reality should look like.
This made me wondering: If there's no reality, why even bother reading books that explain the reality (physics, psychology etc.)?
First, I still perceive reality or at least what I deem real. Hence, there are two reasons I should keep reading:
- Because I enjoy doing it,
- Because it makes reaching my goals easier/ faster. This requires some explanation; each of us participates in building a commonly shared reality. A book is simply an authors version of reality at the time of writing. But, because we read what we like (which is often what we agree with), it is reasonable to assume that most popular books reveal the view of reality that is most commonly held (and which in turn is the reality we perceive). So, the more accurate my knowledge of reality (which includes all the rules in maths, laws in physics, laws etc.), the faster will I achieve the arbitrary goals that I've set for myself.