Don’t expect to have an explanation for everything. You may come across a cause-and-effect relationship that seems to work for you. You do something and it seems to produce the result you want. Good. Use it, take advantage of it — but never lose sight of the possibility that the system may not be exactly as you see it now. In other words, don’t bet

... See more

But overall, both research efforts themselves (*cough* behavioral economics *cough*) and “debunking” efforts can be naive in this clueless way, causing infinite regress of levels of bunking/debunking that goes nowhere. Because reality is messier than you think and people are more malicious than you think.

So while neuroscientists struggle to understand how there can be such a thing as a first-person reality, quantum physicists have to grapple with the mystery of how there can be anything but a first-person reality. In short, all roads lead back to the observer.