A machine is lying, or I’m boiling alive

This is what I saw while driving past on my way home today:

Byron IL Middle School, 1 May 2013

Byron IL Middle School, 1 May 2013

I was just driving home, minding my own business, when an epistemological quandary in the shape of an unhealthily high temperature flashed at me: Do I accept the meaning of these symbols, or do I instead choose the differing message I’m interpreting from what my senses tell me, thereby regarding the printed symbols as empty of meaning? (And while I ponder, I’ll stay inside my air-conditioned car, just in case.) Ah, I’m always having to decide what is my reality. And the symbols with which we or others used to describe reality may not be describing reality at all. This afternoon, this public school’s message board started publishing fiction.

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