The reductionist thesis (as I formulate it) is that human minds, for reasons of efficiency, use a multi-level map in which we separately think about things like "atoms" and "quarks", "hands" and "fingers", or "heat" and "kinetic energy". Reality itself, on the other hand, is single-level in the sense that it does not seem to contain atoms as separate, additional, causally efficacious entities over and above quarks.

Sadi Carnot formulated the (precursor to) the second law of thermodynamics using the caloric theory of heat, in which heat was just a fluid that flowed from hot things to cold things, produced by fire, making gases expand—the effects of heat were studied separately from the science of kinetics, considerably before the reduction took place. If you're trying to design a steam engine, the effects of all those tiny vibrations and collisions which we name "heat" can be summarized into a much simpler description than the full quantum mechanics of the quarks. Humans compute efficiently, thinking of only significant effects on goal-relevant quantities.

But reality itself does seem to use the full quantum mechanics of the quarks. I once met a fellow who thought that if you used General Relativity to compute a low-velocity problem, like an artillery shell, GR would give you the wrong answer—not just a slow answer, but an experimentally wrong answer—because at low velocities, artillery shells are governed by Newtonian mechanics, not GR. This is exactly how physics does not work. Reality just seems to go on crunching through General Relativity, even when it only makes a difference at the fourteenth decimal place, which a human would regard as a huge waste of computing power. Physics does it with brute force. No one has ever caught physics simplifying its calculations—or if someone did catch it, the Matrix Lords erased the memory afterward.

Our map, then, is very much unlike the territory; our maps are multi-level, the territory is single-level. Since the representation is so incredibly unlike the referent, in what sense can a belief like "I am wearing socks" be called true, when in reality itself, there are only quarks?

In case you've forgotten what the word "true" means, the classic definition was given by Alfred Tarski:

The statement "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is whi

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