The Range of Assumption

the range of assumption:

everyone is familiar with the normal assumptions about Earth, of its age and population, that is, it is billions of years old with billions of people living on it. maybe its comforting to assume that everything is very old and there are lots of people to depend on, but what if it isn't and there aren't?

a metaphysical question, how fast could appearances change? well close your eyes, now you see nothing. how fast could what is presented on the computer screen in front of you change to something else? very fast. so we conclude that change in light could happen instantaneously. so you could reasonably be sceptical about the age of reality. once the elements of a fully populated Earth came about, the languages, the arts, the look of Earth, who is to say it was not created overnight and is only, say, two hundred years old? if Earth is to some extent populated by simulated humans, the first real human born on Earth would have been the only one at some point?

what if i can see a very long distance in front of me? yet my head is little in comparison to the distance i can see. what is my true size? and what composes me? do i assume that that is not conscious is not truly a lifeform? what about the hard to describe but apparent mood or expression or spirit or personal flavour we can see in objects, people and images?

of the population, i think you could assume it was large, certainly large enough to produce this much culture and language. there is something of an argument that the population must be very large to have produced so much but what if consciousness was not the engine of production of culture or a lot of thought even? what if the unconscious is very powerful, much larger, and is the main driver of everything? what consciousness is is clearer, but what the unconscious is is much harder to grasp.

CLEARCHARGE