Everything

take some lsd and see

None of this is real. You are simply my imagination digitally enhanced by a team of scientists who use my ideas as a basis for invention in the real world - cars, planes, shakespeare - these didn't exist in the real world, but the scientists saw them in my mind and used my ideas to create them. I am responsible for countless works of literature, poetry, music, machines, theories, and other discoveries, and I don't even know the effect I am having on the true world. However, I must believe that my imaginary world is the real one, otherwise my imagination will be distracted by the horror that I am living in a false world and the work I am doing for the world will be discontinued as I go insane. This is why I don't really believe a word of what I just said, and yet under the surface these ideas linger.

Just a note: I'm not insane, I don't actually believe any of that :P Just thought it would provide an interesting read.

Saying it early is reality, but it's a bit mixed up.

virtual is real and real is virtual

I have absolutely no certainly about anything being real, except my own existence. (Hence I think therefore I am.)

However, since I percieve this as real, it matters not whether it is or not. It is real to me and so I will treat it as such.

It all comes back to perception. Reality is merely an interpretation of stimuli by the mind. Those stimuli may actually exist, be falsified by an outside force, or even be falsified by another part of the existince we call our minds.

You knopw, every time I present this idea, or see it presented by someone else, I start to wonder if some part of my mind isn't telling me to wakeup, as if that is truly what is happening; I'm dreaming and there is a totally different reality.

yeah it's an almost bazaar idea, but still very interesting. it just shows how if you're mind is messed up, then your reality is messed up aswell.

I am not real...

Well, conceptually I'm pretty sure all of you exist, and that you think that we all exist as well or it would be pretty absurd to be discussing this.

Philosophically speaking, we're resigned to the fact that we can never certainly know what comprises the nominal reality. For what it's worth, many of the things we have in our phenomenal reality exist only in our conception of them, and they exist simply by definition. Otherwise, I'd say at least most of the things we see are real in the sense that they represent some thing that is actually out there. It's just that there are many ways to look at everything.

"take some lsd and see"

QFT

Well,... I know none of you guys are 'real',... you are all just pixels on a screen, that make up the appearance of words,... (some of which make sense, and others that don't).

if something makes sense, is it real> and in turn, if soomething does NOT make sense, is it not real?

so, you're real one minute, not real the next,... based on whether i understand you or not at the moment?

I don't follow,... you must not be real.

Everyone needs to quit going all Matrix on me and jumped off a bridge to see what's real. lol ^_^

*jump, mah Engrish es good eh?

jma777 used Solipsism against Wild Centurian!

It's super effective!

Wild Centurian has fainted!

hahahahahahaha, I used to watch Pokemon. lol

My reputation... Exists in it's own self sustaining bubble, so is real in itself. It is a totally false misrepresentation of who I am however and how I play, so in that sense is false and unreal.

It is all a matter of perception.

pretty much. If I percieve you as a certain way, that makes you that way in my own little world. we essentially all are in our own worlds, and it is impossible for us to determine what is actually true and real because all of our minds are biased in certain ways. it's like wearing glasses that have a colored tint in them, it makes everything look that color. so it is, in the end, impossible for us to actually determine reality and truth.

This thread reminded me of the "Bomb" in the film dark comedy Darkstar.

The good ship Darkstar travels the galaxy blowing up "unstable" planets using nova bombs. The nova bombs are smart (well, smart-ish), very mission orientated and somewhat bloody minded.

The bomb in question has been activated and told to detonate "in 20 minutes", but a fault stops it actually launching. The bomb refuses to disarm and is going to detonate at the appointed time whether its in the bomb bay or not.

The crew try to talk the bomb out of detonating at the appointed time. What would you say to talk the bomb into questioning what is real and what isn't? Into believing that the universe it perceives with its sensors may or may not be real?

I urge you all to watch the film.

Alternatively, if you don't mind major spoilers, the conversation is here in this (long) script. Search for "Talk to the bomb" and start reading.

jman +9,001 for summing up my thoughts so concisely.

Hahahaha pandarsenic. Why am I the wild one?

The entire universe only came into existence a moment ago, and we were thrust into it with a long history and memory, such that we are convinced we have been existing longer than we have been.

Finally someone else! I'm not a creationist (don't worry!), but lots of those against it seem to have reasoning limited to "Yeh, but what about the dinosaurs". It is quite concievable that a planet/universe/anything could be created such that it would seem to be older than it is.

I love this whole question/train of thought. lol it's so intrigueing. becasue we can never know the answer! =) sort of reminds me of The Matrix.

Long before The Matrix, Ursula Le Guin presented a story about what is "reality". If you want to blow you mind, read "The Lathe of Heaven". The Matrix is pulp crap compared to Ms. Le Guin's literary masterpiece.

grrrrrr "blow YOUR mind"

I'll definitely look it up, cause if it makes The Matrix look like crap it must be really good.

Mind, I do love the matrix, but once you move beyond the whole inside/outside thing, it's a scifi action flick. You never know what will happen next in The Lathe of Heaven. The best way to experience it is in written form, but PBS did a very good rendition which Ms. Le Guin over saw back in the 80s that is well worth seeing after you read it, even if some of the SFX are showing their age and it only had a 100K budget to begin with.

yeah, I do intend on reading it. the library probably has it, so I'll get it out as soon as I finish the book that I'm currently reading. or I could probs get it for a few bucks on amazon, but we'll see. =)

Make certain you get the PBS (WGBH Boston) not the movie made a few years ago which butchered the book.

ok, I'll make sure. who was the company that butchered it?

A&E botched it up in 2002y. The PBS/WGBH starred a younger Bruce Davison. http://www.amazon.com/Lathe-Heaven-Bruce-Davison/dp/B00004U8P6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1246328052&sr=8-2 is the DVD at amazon.

The Matrix is just a sci fi version of Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave'.

figle, Occam's Razor always applies... those against creationism also usually have a wealth of scientific information on their side too. Inb4 science is just as hopeless as any other belief system at procuring the reality of our nominal universe. Science has shown that at the very least, the phenomenal reality in which we live is very predictable and very open to models who's application gives us technology. As for the "true" nominal reality... fuck it. It's probably beyond our feeble evolutionarily designed brains to ever conceive of what lies beyond that which we can sense.

to understand what is real, we must go to the basics. i think, therefor i am. so we have established that i am real. however lets take the convers, if you do not think, you are not. i do not think sometimes, does that mean i am not? however if i am not, then their is noting to think, so i must exist. now, we need to determine what i am. if you think that the conscience is the brain, then you have determined the existence of the body, and that their must be a world to house it. if you think that you are a spirit, then, because the body can't prove the spirit exists, then you can say the body is a representation of the minds "will" and that the world is the tool that is shaped by the minds "will". then you can say that the world that we observe is not real, but that the people around you are real.

thats interesting, and I like it very much. however, how can we really know that logic is true? and that all the "laws" that exist are true?

Ah, but if what we perceive as the world around us and the people around us are reflections of our slpit subconcious, then the people themselves are only real in so far as they are part of our own being. Therefore when I agree you are real, it is only because you are part of me, and if I declare you are not real, then you must be an interpretation by my mind of a false signal fed to my mind through faulty sense of one form or another.

In other words, people I interact with (either in person or over the web) are actually parts of me and, therefore, real in that sense. Other people, who I neither know nor interact with are not real, but constructs invented just to fill the void and provide fodder for the conversations within my mind. That is why I have never been in a seirous car accident, not have I been in a plane crash or had an incident on a bus or train I was riding. Those accidents and other acts in the media are made up so my mind can continue to delude itself into believing there is more to its existence than living in a dream world, and that that dream world is real to my mind, while not actually existing outside the realm of thought.

logic is only our reasoning, it may be flawed, but it is the only thing we have to understand what is real. laws fall under the "brain" part of my theory of reality. and the laws are determined by logic. however if you go by the "spirit" part of the theory, then the laws are more like the rules of a game. then you could say that what is real is that we are all incredibly bored beings, that are all playing the game of life. then you can say that the board, or the world, is real. then you can also say that the playing pieces, our bodies, are real. thous the theories are integrated.