RE: Is a dream reality possible?
January 8, 2012 at 11:35 am
(This post was last modified: January 8, 2012 at 11:41 am by Welsh cake.)
Were this topic in the humour sub-forum I'd jest that traffic lights are this proposed virtual reality's representation of loading screens. That's why you'll often encounter red signals because the town/area up ahead hasn't finished loading yet. It can't handle you travelling around too quickly. So as not to violate the illusion of reality, it allows you "freedom" to pass that loading device. However there are consequences programmed in for comprising the illusion's stability. The system's fail-safe for you overriding the loading-screen by foot is to terminate/injure you with oncoming traffic, or by car, send the cops after your sorry rule-breaking ass. 
However this is philosophy (serious hat on), so your questions all boil down to how do we know this reality we exist within is really real? Well for starters, its as real as you or me. But our imagination moves the goalposts and scope of what is truly real, thereby arguing from absolute certainty. For all we know, we could be the dream of a giant alien that sleeps for millions/billions of years. The atoms we're made of are merely electrical signals from one of its dark matter brain synapses to another. When it wakes we're reabsorbed back into its memories, and fated to live out our lives again when its sleeps next. Maybe the pandeists are right and we're all God role-playing the lives of countless living creatures for fun and drama. We won't know until we 'die' and become God again. How would we know?
This isn't the Truman Show where the thin veneer of a real-world and real-life may be utterly destroyed by anomalies, technical difficulties or "miracles". From past experience, these never occur. If an intelligence is smart enough to anticipate every single possibility, action or inaction there would be no way we could investigate the lie or falsify what we perceive to be true. If such a sentience exists its futile trying to thwart it or escape its artificial simulation. We simply wouldn't know either way.
The problem with speculating everything around us is fake is that's its very counter-intuitive and this backward way of thinking accomplishes nothing but mental masturbation. Its as much of a waste of time as Pascal's Wager. Oh yes, its fun to consider for a minute or two, however dwelling on the subject matter inevitably results in manifestations of mental illnesses and paranoia.
Entertaining this puerile notion denigrates everything we have learned, and everything we currently do know about reality. Granted the more we learn, the more we realise how little we know, but that shouldn't discourage us. We are slowly moving towards the truth. We should be more worried if we contemplate that this is all objectively real and we're in fact, wasting our one-and-only-lives musing as if it weren't.
We can't keep doubting our senses over and over. We have to approach this from a pragmatic and rationalistic view-point. We know the laws of physics and our understanding of them don't just stop working every Monday morning when its raining outside. Reality is demonstrable, investigable, repeatable and confirmable by science, observation and experimentation.
We are justified to believe reality is real based on the current information available to us, and until evidence presents itself (i.e. aforementioned Truman Show "technical glitches", or anomalies that violate the laws of nature arise), that reveal it is not. UNTIL we have evidence this is all a simulation we have no good reason to think its artificial (except that we've watched The Matrix once too often or are going insane and should seek professional help).
However this is philosophy (serious hat on), so your questions all boil down to how do we know this reality we exist within is really real? Well for starters, its as real as you or me. But our imagination moves the goalposts and scope of what is truly real, thereby arguing from absolute certainty. For all we know, we could be the dream of a giant alien that sleeps for millions/billions of years. The atoms we're made of are merely electrical signals from one of its dark matter brain synapses to another. When it wakes we're reabsorbed back into its memories, and fated to live out our lives again when its sleeps next. Maybe the pandeists are right and we're all God role-playing the lives of countless living creatures for fun and drama. We won't know until we 'die' and become God again. How would we know?
This isn't the Truman Show where the thin veneer of a real-world and real-life may be utterly destroyed by anomalies, technical difficulties or "miracles". From past experience, these never occur. If an intelligence is smart enough to anticipate every single possibility, action or inaction there would be no way we could investigate the lie or falsify what we perceive to be true. If such a sentience exists its futile trying to thwart it or escape its artificial simulation. We simply wouldn't know either way.
The problem with speculating everything around us is fake is that's its very counter-intuitive and this backward way of thinking accomplishes nothing but mental masturbation. Its as much of a waste of time as Pascal's Wager. Oh yes, its fun to consider for a minute or two, however dwelling on the subject matter inevitably results in manifestations of mental illnesses and paranoia.
Entertaining this puerile notion denigrates everything we have learned, and everything we currently do know about reality. Granted the more we learn, the more we realise how little we know, but that shouldn't discourage us. We are slowly moving towards the truth. We should be more worried if we contemplate that this is all objectively real and we're in fact, wasting our one-and-only-lives musing as if it weren't.
We can't keep doubting our senses over and over. We have to approach this from a pragmatic and rationalistic view-point. We know the laws of physics and our understanding of them don't just stop working every Monday morning when its raining outside. Reality is demonstrable, investigable, repeatable and confirmable by science, observation and experimentation.
We are justified to believe reality is real based on the current information available to us, and until evidence presents itself (i.e. aforementioned Truman Show "technical glitches", or anomalies that violate the laws of nature arise), that reveal it is not. UNTIL we have evidence this is all a simulation we have no good reason to think its artificial (except that we've watched The Matrix once too often or are going insane and should seek professional help).
