How can we be sure this is reality?

[Confused Ape]

Religion and ideology are results of our species pattern seeking, but it does not mean the patterns we seek are true. Often we us a false perception as a placebo IE superstition or god belief. It can have a real affect of creating safety in numbers if the false meme is spread. The Egyptians falsely believed the sun was a god. That miss perception made them successful for 3,000 years.

The above indicates that 'reality' can be a majority opinion. Then there's personal reality. A theist who has a subjective experience of feeling a deity's presence will have a different mental construct of reality to atheists who regard themselves as survival machines for genes.

And when science moves on from the metaphysical interpretations of quantum physics, which is populated by models of the essence of reality from 'many worlds' to the Copenhagen interpretation, people's notions of what the fundamental essence of what is real will change.

I think that reading about the different ideas of what might be reality can be a very good exercise, though. Nobody knows which idea is 'true reality' yet so I've decided not to get too attached to a particular world view.