Expanding My Umwelt

I didn't get anything posted last night because I was busy expanding my umwelt by researching those two esoteric words. (It just occurred to me that "esoteric" is itself an esoteric word.) Anyway, I think I understand their meanings as much as I need to for now. The meaning of "gestalt" became more clear when I discovered that the commonly used statement "The whole is greater then the sum of its parts." is a poor translation. The more accurate translation is "The whole is other than the sum of its parts.", which makes more sense to me. A car is different than a pile of car parts, it only becomes a car after the parts have been properly assembled. You can't drive a pile of car parts, but you can drive a car, unless one or more parts are defective or improperly installed. It's still a car, though, it's just a dysfunctional car, or maybe a non-functional car, in which case you can't drive it, but it's still a car and not a pile of car parts.

As near as I can tell, an umwelt is a perceptual thing and, as such, is insufficient to explain objective reality, because, by definition, objective reality is that which exists independent of perception. If you think about it, objective reality is actually an article of faith. The only way we can approach objective reality is through perception, and our perception may not be exactly correct, so we don't know for sure the exact nature of objective reality, we just believe that it exists because we find it easier to believe in it than to not believe in it. I condemn Old Dog's statement about objective reality becoming more subjective as heresy. Objective reality cannot become anything, it is what it is. While it's'  possible for something that is subjective to become more objective, the converse is certainly not true. Perhaps what Old Dog meant to say was that what appeared to be objective reality turned out to be more subjective than was previously believed. In that case, it is perception that has changed, not objective reality.

I enjoyed Ken's entertaining, if anthropomorphic, account of his travels with Harry. It's a wonder that technology has advanced so far, but it's also kind of unsettling. I hope Harry never learns to drive the car himself, but some fool will probably teach him just to prove that it can be done. Then security measures will have to be developed to keep Harry in his place. Lots of luck with that one!

People have been worried about robots taking over the world since before robots were invented. It's a reasonable fear, even more so today than it was in the days when robots were only science fiction. I don't know the answer to that problem, or if it even is a problem. Who knows, they might do a better job of it than the humans have.