Earth and the Sceptic

earth and the sceptic:

it may be that everyone, at least once in their lifetime on earth, experiences something that makes them question the regular view of the world that is naive realism, that of an external world that exists with material objects independent of our sense perception, that we can move about in this world, etc. sometimes it is apparent and sometimes only subtle, an incident that jars our assumptions.

"well, i mean, first of all, like is physical motion real? when i walk to the door, is my body really moving to the door or do i just see the door moving towards me? and this can get very strange. last night i walked across a building floor, firmly set in my mind the thought that i wasn't really moving at all but that the walls were moving towards me, and there was just some feeling in my legs, i.e. the walking part, that was making this happen."

"but you said you teleported before. what came first? the suspicion that physical motion wasn't real or the teleporting that led you to this conclusion and then all this?"

"OK it's true. the teleporting came first. it certainly set in motion all this thought. i mean it's probably true to say if i hadn't i might still be completely delusional about motion or at any rate uncertain. but it's like, you teleport, so then you know, right?"

"tell me about the teleporting. i mean, like, how many times did you teleport? and how far?"

"twice the full teleport, what everyone would think teleporting is. across town in Durham, in the north of England, in 1993 and 1994. first i teleported from outside Barclays Bank in Market Place to the railway station and the second time from the Market Place area to Elvet Bridge but then there are what i call unapparent teleports. you really have moved suddenly to another location but it's not obvious because there's no sudden change in what you see. it's like what happened to me outside Cannon Street railway station in London. i walked eastwards but then, some time afterwards, i realized i had teleported somewhere to the west of the station and onto the road towards Bank, i guess Queen Victoria Street looking at the map, but the scenery, the shops and buildings, seamlessly flowed from one location to the other, so it wasn't obvious. of course, that's what i think happened but because it was "unapparent" i still have my doubts. and it happened in Paris, down one street and a left and then another left so should have been walking back on a parallel street but ended up back on the same street. at least that's what i really suspect happened."

"there's no control? it just happens?"

"yes."

"but if physical or mechanical motion is not real, we're all wherever we are, is everything an illusion?"

"well that's the problem. when you whack that part of your assumptions about reality away, you start to question everything. i mean, next, are other people real? and it's compounded, because my first memories of this lifetime on earth are those of a dream. am i dreaming? of course it's not what usual dreams are made of, but that's the source. and then you have computers. you see what's possible. and the first time i used a calculator when i was little, i was amazed! you have all this computing power, it's proof positive on earth that this exists. so is earth a dream or a simulated reality run by a sometimes faulty supercomputer?"

"right, when you teleported, it was like a bug in the system or you had a corrupted download of the location visuals."

"yeah. and even if science were real who said it was constant and worked perfectly? nothing else does. but to go back to whether other people are real, my natural assumption is that they are. or at least some of them. i found solipsism extremely frightening personally speaking. and i always thought maybe people shared a dream sometimes."

"but of course it's theoretically possible that everyone is in their own simulation? but though it seems probable there is overlap."

"right you can look at it all ways, i guess, the extremes being that either everyone is in the same world or everyone is in their own and everything greater and lesser in between. what you conclude is that reality is like a star map, with each star representing a person with vast distances in between perhaps, but that everyone is fixed in place."

"yes, but when you doubt some people are real, how can you tell? i mean how do i know if this other person is real or just a character in a simulation? it's been bugging me a long time."

"well i don't know if this qualifies as a proof, but sometimes you know what other people are going to say. they're completely predictable. i always thought real people must be a little more shocking but that's just a suspicion."

"but how did we come up with all this, the history, the language, everything?"

"the truth about language is there is an emotional impact to words and therein lies the real history. i believe there is a common reaction to many words. obviously, that's why we share languages. for example, the word "god", it instantly conjures up an impression of immense agency and power. that is the common emotional impact of the word itself."

"so it's like when the word was first discovered, first said, everyone thought the same thing and all religion must follow?"

"exactly. other pressure words are "kill" and "die". they really push people's buttons, so to speak. these things can't be ignored. just as in the beginning, they still have the same impact today."

"so imagine a little group, say, a family of girls, in the beginning. they gather round, come up with words, but they're not in isolation. other people come up with the same words and they mean the same thing and so some kind of connection is made. i suppose it's the words with the strongest emotional impact that last."

"or are the oldest. the problem with words, the powerful ones, is that they give rise to meanings that stir the imagination to think of things that are not quite real. it's like they have a hallucinatory effect sometimes."

"but of course there are other languages."

"yes, if you assume people can be categorized by what language they naturally speak, it's a real identifier."

"so there's a French zone of reality perhaps, a Chinese zone, etc. but everyone thinks about the same things in the end."

"right. that's assuming a language zone is spread like a brush stroke across space and in isolation."

"somehow, i doubt if we'll ever have a complete map of reality, showing exactly where everyone is. but these things that everyone thinks about, i mean, i imagine that what everyone thought about the first day at the start of time was what is time, right? imagine time zero. a few seconds on, what happened? am i alone? and so on."

"yes. it's the ancient tension in life."

"i guess it never goes away. and the need to know the truth."

CLEARCHARGE