The Phenomenology of Measurement

 J. Rogers, SE Ohio

When you measure something, it feels concrete:

• You hold a physical ruler
• You see numbers on a scale
• You record "2.5 meters"
• The object is right there, tangible

The experience is of encountering reality. Like performing a ritual and seeing results - it feels like the ritual did something real.

The Illusion

But what actually happened?

1. Reality: A spatial extent exists (dimensionless relationship in substrate)
2. You brought an arbitrary reference object (your ruler)
3. You compared them and got a ratio: 2.5
4. You labeled the ratio with your reference's name: "meters"

The "2.5 meters" is an artifact of your ritual, not a property of the object.

Why Reification Is Natural

The measurement process is physical:

• Physical rulers
• Physical interactions
• Physical records

So it's natural to think the result is physical too.

But the process is just:

• Bring abstract coordinate system
• Project reality onto it
• Record coordinate values

The ruler is real. The interaction is real. The ratio is real.

But "2.5 meters" is an abstraction - it only means something relative to your chosen reference system.

Like Magical Thinking

It's exactly like believing the spell is real because:

• You performed physical actions (words, gestures)
• Something happened (you felt different, events occurred)
• Therefore the spell caused it

The correlation between ritual and outcome gets mistaken for the ritual being the reality.

Same with measurement: the correlation between ruler-placement and reality gets mistaken for the measurement being the reality.

The numbers feel real because the process is physical. But they're coordinates, not properties.