How can we be sure this is reality?

[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.