How can we be sure this is reality?

[Brian37]

It's SCI-fi. As in science fiction. That was annoying the shit out of me.

Brian, you're just being contrary. We can't test if this is truly reality. We can't. We don't have to let that fact disrupt our lives, but it's a fact. You're being willfully ignorant, which is something I've noticed in your quite often. If you stop being so stubborn over the stupidest shit, maybe you could learn something.

We can't test if this is truly reality.

So? "Technically" you are right. But so far we are hands over fist every single day gauging reality better and better and so far the only tool that is doing that is science, not superstition or si fi woo.

I doubt seriously before we go extinct we will ever know everything there is to know, but modern technology and science is giving us a much wider view of reality, even if we "technically" cant know absolute reality. I am fine accepting that the computer I am typing on is really a computer and not a squid.

[Nine]

Gods... you're all being so exhaustingly... saddening.

Reality is. Don't need to throw NTSs around, right? THIS IS REALITY. There is more than one 'reality' in reality, really: for reals.

Realness, dudes. Realistic, and stuff.

And really... it's all perspective, mates.

Sure its all real in its own way. Well I think it is.. Who knows.. Its just differently real.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTn7xtVsE6U

[Annik]

You don't get it, Brian. You just simply don't. It's a shame, too, because this is a very simple concept and we've explained it to you 50 times.

[Brian37]

Whatever came before the big bang I view as merely being as simply like the seasons changing. The weather on this planet is not a program or simulation, it simply does. So why would the universe or what may or may not have been before need to have a god, or a simulation?

We don't know. So until we know don't assume we are the cause of a god or a simulation or pink unicorns.

Seems like woo to me...

Woo? The universe is woo? Spring changing into summer is woo? Or are you simply not happy that it is merely a cycle like the duration of a sun? You can sex up nature all you want, but I wont.

[catfish]

"Whatever came before the big bang I view as merely being as simply like the seasons changing"
Seems like if you don't have evidence of your "seasons changing", you believe in woo...
Just stating the obvious in hopes that you'll see a pattern there.

We don't know what came before the bigbang, therefore woo.
We don't know what sparked the first lifeform, therefore woo.
.

[Nine]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oL53h8nlfg

Woo or Wheeeew!

[Tiberius]

Mental masturbation does not replace reality. Point of view does not replace a lab.

Can you prove that a lab always demonstrates reality? The point I'm trying to get across is that science is limited; it is limited to our observations and the way what we perceive as reality works. If what we perceive as reality is not actually reality, but is a computer simulation or a dream, science isn't going to be able to reveal this.

You can accept flawed perception without defaulting to making claims without backing them up.

Where was a claim made other than the admission that we can't claim something? Besides, we can back up the claim that we cannot be sure that this is reality, and we can do so using logic.

I make a claim, since we don't know everything anything is possible so it is true until we disprove it.

When has anyone said this? We aren't claiming that reality is a dream and holding that it is true because you can't disprove it. We're merely saying that reality could be a dream, and you cannot prove whether it is or not either way. The same applies to your position: what we perceive as reality might be all there is, but neither of us can prove it either way.

Science certainly has some really freaky stuff in it, like gravity affecting time. But admitting that human perception is flawed does not make everything possible by default.

Again, nobody is arguing this. Indeed, I don't think anyone is talking about science. We are in the realms of philosophy and logic here.

This is why we have scientific method and labs. To insure quality of data. The fact that scientists don't live in the future does not mean we let our brains fall out and assume something is true first.

Nothing to do with what we are talking about.

A falling tree will still make a sound even if you don't hear it. The laws of physics are not suspended because you don't hear the sound. Right now somewhere in another country YOU don't live in a car horn is honking. A TV is on making noise in a house or apartment you don't live in.

You fail to get my point. What is sound? Is sound the oscillation of pressure, or is it the interpretation of that oscillation inside our ears / brain? If it is the former, then yes, a falling tree will make a sound even if you don't hear it. If it is the latter, then all the tree does is make pressure oscillate...but that oscillation never becomes sound because it is never heard by anything.

[Brian37]

"Whatever came before the big bang I view as merely being as simply like the seasons changing"
Seems like if you don't have evidence of your "seasons changing", you believe in woo...
Just stating the obvious in hopes that you'll see a pattern there.

We don't know what came before the bigbang, therefore woo.
We don't know what sparked the first lifeform, therefore woo.
.

What? I am anti woo not pro woo.

We don't know, everyone here so far agrees with that, including me.

I simply don't ponder anything accept the law of probability. If we are going to speculate on something or nothing before, then I am going to base the most likely answer on what we see now, our current data. And our current data is view life and the universe as cyclical. Evolution is a cycle. The sun has a cycle, and the planet rotates around the sun in a cycle, and black holes have time spans too.

RIGHT NOW the debate in science is it could have come from nothing or it could be a product of material processes prior. What is not required and can be ruled out is a cognition as the cause. And I doubt us being a program of some sort is a necessity either.

[Jackalope]

[Brian37]

I think we are going in circles here.

Can you prove that a lab always demonstrates reality? The point I'm trying to get across is that science is limited; it is limited to our observations and the way what we perceive as reality works. If what we perceive as reality is not actually reality, but is a computer simulation or a dream, science isn't going to be able to reveal this.

Degree of accuracy of prior data and proper use of method insures less chance of mistakes. But "technically" no, we cant.

Science is limited but it is our best tool so far.

No I am not going to place my bets on this being a dream or a simulation even if "technically" we cant absolutely know. Like I said in a prior post, I am quite comfortable, and consider it a very safe bet that my computer won't suddenly turn into a squid, even if "technically" I don't know the future.