Reality

James___ wrote:
I had better sex with a dog and the beotch knew she was a beotch.
That's your mother. And God did she know what she was. Just a beotch in heat until I came along.
And then we had you. I'm not your dad but if you want to make it personal, your mother's a beotch.
Kind of why science isn't personal. It's not about you or your family. It's only about if the science is right. It's okay to challenge science. It is wrong not to challenge it.
Science should never be accepted because it is. Challenging science only encourages people to learn.
With my family, I am a bastard child. I accept the rule of law but should be allowed to posses my own thoughts. And in that, I am free.

Swan wrote:

James___ wrote:
I had better sex with a dog and the beotch knew she was a beotch.
That's your mother. And God did she know what she was. Just a beotch in heat until I came along.
And then we had you. I'm not your dad but if you want to make it personal, your mother's a beotch.
Kind of why science isn't personal. It's not about you or your family. It's only about if the science is right. It's okay to challenge science. It is wrong not to challenge it.
Science should never be accepted because it is. Challenging science only encourages people to learn.
With my family, I am a bastard child. I accept the rule of law but should be allowed to posses my own thoughts. And in that, I am free.

Try Thorazine

HarveyH55 wrote:Reality, is just how you perceive the world, and all things you experience through your senses.

James___ wrote:

Swan wrote:

James___ wrote:
I had better sex with a dog and the beotch knew she was a beotch.
That's your mother. And God did she know what she was. Just a beotch in heat until I came along.
And then we had you. I'm not your dad but if you want to make it personal, your mother's a beotch.
Kind of why science isn't personal. It's not about you or your family. It's only about if the science is right. It's okay to challenge science. It is wrong not to challenge it.
Science should never be accepted because it is. Challenging science only encourages people to learn.
With my family, I am a bastard child. I accept the rule of law but should be allowed to posses my own thoughts. And in that, I am free.

Try Thorazine

I hoped that you would do better. Are you afraid of a simple challenge?
Maybe someone else can do better? It is "Game On".

p.s., your mother liked it. What are you afraid of? It's a game, right?
I'll stop for the moment. And next, I will let you know what she liked. It's all a part of the "game", right?
Why I'm not one of you guys. It's just to easy.

HarveyH55 wrote:
Reality, is just how you perceive the world, and all things you experience through your senses.

Into the Night wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:
Reality, is just how you perceive the world, and all things you experience through your senses.

Bingo. This exactly how philosophy defines 'reality' and what 'real' is.

Indeed, an entire branch of philosophy is dedicated to answering this very question, called 'phenomenology'.

Our senses (even if artificially enhanced through instruments), are just stimuli...meaningless, until we interpret them. Those interpretations are done according to how each of us figure the Universe works. That model that we interpret our senses by is as unique to each of us as a fingerprint.

Therefore 'reality' is as unique to each of us as a fingerprint.

It is this basic philosophy that inspired stories like The Matrix, Dark Star, Dragon's Egg, The Terminal Man, The Twilight Zone series, the Outer Limits series, and indeed much of science fiction. By altering the model in some way, a new 'reality' is created. You might say it is what makes science fiction just that...fiction.

None of it, of course, is science at all.

IBdaMann wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:Reality, is just how you perceive the world, and all things you experience through your senses.

Many philosophers have devoted a neuron or two to exactly this question.

It seems intuitive that there is some sort of absolute reality in which we find ourselves, and what you describe above is all any of us can legitimately claim is "what we know." Outside of our perceptions/experiences, we all form assumptions that help us "fill in" the big picture for each of us in a way that helps us make sense.

If you and I grab a football and throw it around for a while, it should occur to us that in order for me to throw the ball to you, for you to actually catch it and then for you to throw it back to me and for me to catch it, there must be some absolute reality at play even though you and I might individually be perceiving it quite differently.

However, there was a mathematician Kurt Gödel who proved (this is one of those rare cases where "proof" is actually the correct word) that we cannot know/understand completely the nature of the universe. Gödel's "incompleteness theorem" shows that even if you have a system of infinite true statements, it will be "incomplete" and that there will always be something TRUE about the system that cannot be derived from the existing infinite system and the rules of logic. Our human brains are certainly finite, and there are only a finite number of humans. If every human were to learn a different lifetime of TRUE knowledge about the universe, humanity's understanding of the universe would still be incomplete.

But any given human's understanding will not be comprised of only TRUE knowledge. All any of us have is limited to our perceptions and experiences which is prone to error. In fact, some of us, like Swan, are way out there in loony land thinking that different things are the same thing. If we could examine humanity's collective understanding of reality, we would notice that people like Swan and keepit are driving down the average big-time to the extent that it might look hopeless for humanity. People like tmiddles and Pete Rogers abandon all attempts to learn and simply fabricate things to declare "what we know." These unfortunate aspects of humanity explain why Vegas odds make human extinction the overwhelming favorite.

... but then there are other people like you who are rational and who generally take the scientific method approach, who are not afraid to question and doubt, who are not looking for others to do their thinking for them, in whom the hope for humanity resides. You might not have studied physics your entire life but there is nothing you cannot learn if you need to. People like Swan, keepit, Duncan, Pete Rogers and tmiddles, who have adopted strong religious beliefs that run counter to physics, can no longer learn anything in those areas. They have shut their minds to learning. They will only seek out gibberbabble that supports their existing religious beliefs. They are done ... and there is little hope for them going forward ... and they certainly won't be contributing to any human understanding.

You might notice as well that once someone becomes well practiced at lying to oneself that the lies to others just begin to flow naturally. Someone who is willing to delude himself will not hesitate to be dishonest to others, especially when discussing "reality."

What I find ironic, is that there was a time in the past when much of America was decrying how Christians were trying to impose religion in the science classroom but now we have reached a point where society might have to turn to Christians to put science back in the science classroom. You can bet that I will laugh when it comes down to that.

.

HarveyH55 wrote:


We were all born to the same world, and with basically the same sensory organs. We learn to use them, in similar manners. Even those without a full set, still learn how to get around in the world. Well, except maybe James, who lost his 'senses', in the Norwegian war... We all are going to share a lot of similar interpretations, of what we sense. The problem, is when we experience things, that don't fit into our sensory perceptions, or consistent with past experiences, our minds have to put something down, to describe the experience. Sometimes a little weird, until we learn a better description. Basically, people who lack education, tend to make shit up, until they learn otherwise...

Basically, people who lack education, tend to make shit up, until they learn otherwise.

Xadoman wrote:
I have read and also learned that people have so strong inner beliefs into different things that those are almost impossible to change by argumentation or persuasion. For example I go to construction forum where most guys are quite knowledgedable about electricity, heat pumps etc etc, but at the same time those guys argue about CO2 emissions like those should matter to save the climate. When I try to explain them that global warming is not possible because of the laws of thermodynamics and Stefan-Boltmann , they simply start to call me a flat-earther. They are so brainwashed by mainstream media that they can not think anymore by themselves.
I always tend to analyze myself from that point of view that I might have a strong inner belief that actually might be wrong. Nowadays I doubt everything. It amazes me how naive I was when I was young.

Xadoman wrote:
I have read and also learned that people have so strong inner beliefs into different things that those are almost impossible to change by argumentation or persuasion. For example I go to construction forum where most guys are quite knowledgedable about electricity, heat pumps etc etc, but at the same time those guys argue about CO2 emissions like those should matter to save the climate. When I try to explain them that global warming is not possible because of the laws of thermodynamics and Stefan-Boltmann , they simply start to call me a flat-earther. They are so brainwashed by mainstream media that they can not think anymore by themselves.
I always tend to analyze myself from that point of view that I might have a strong inner belief that actually might be wrong. Nowadays I doubt everything. It amazes me how naive I was when I was young.

HarveyH55 wrote:
Some people like being victims. Some like to live in fear. Some people enrich themselves, by exploiting these people. It's something that has always been, and likely always will be. We aren't the only species, that deceive, it's natural way for some to survive and prosper.

There will always be convincing scams, and people who fall for them. A lot of people support global warming, because the see the potential to profit off the victims, and fearful. It's a big scam, that appeals to a majority of people, for various reasons, even though they have to kind of know, it's a non-issue, certainly not a crisis. A crisis, is an immediate threat, not something that may be an issue for future generation. Most of the people supporting global warming, will be dead, and have never seen any of the catastrophic changes promised. Their children, won't see the environmental changes, other than the windmills and solar farms, but they are going to suffer the economic catastrophe. Nature is self-balancing, self-correcting. It never actually reaches equilibrium, as a whole. We don't have the capacity to alter the balance.