Listening

During a university seminar, Dr. Rachel Hayes, a physicist, discussed how people often confuse their personal beliefs with reality itself. In a debate with journalist Mark Dalton, she explained that holding absolute certainty stops people from questioning and learning. She mentioned the “Copenhagen Perspective,” which says any theory or framework we use is just a tool — not the actual universe. Philosopher Alfred Korbin once summarized this with the phrase, “The map is not the world,” meaning our mental models are not reality itself. Another thinker, Alan Wescott, joked, “The menu is not the dinner.” Dr. Hayes argued that reality is not one fixed thing, but rather a set of changing processes. Science and philosophy both show that what we call “things” are actually energy patterns shaped by how our brains interpret the world.