you're not here:
"hey, what do you think's going to happen next, man?"
"i think he's going to go over there and talk to that person in the next ten minutes."
"shit! you're right. how did you know that?"
"maybe it's all happening closer to me. i just guessed."
"what do you mean closer to you? we're all in the same place."
"look, you're not here. there is no here. you see a lot of projections of humans around you, but you're not here. like physical motion is not real. nobody moves in space."
"so it's like the matrix. and we're plugged in. what are your conspiracy theories? i mean, like the real government and so on."
"i don't know. there are bad people, sure. but can bad people really group together? there have got to be some trust issues, right? or do they just tacitly approve and do their little bit for some evil agenda? but you know what i'm really thinking about now? sometimes, i imagine someone out there, actually several people, huge, off-Earth, you know, bored, nothing to do, plenty of spare time on their hands, they know what's going on, they're watching, and somehow they have power over the system, i mean they can send illusions of people into like, the theatre of Earth, and these illusions, they're not real people, they're sort of versions of themselves that they can manipulate like a puppet, and i keep meeting them. how crazy am i?"
"that's far out, man! but what do you think about the universe? what is it really? i mean, is it infinite or...?"
"yeah...the universe is infinite! but the universe is not real! it's just a theoretical model."
"you mean, like, what we see, when we go around, geography, it seems like there is a universe, but there isn't really?"
"exactly."
"but what are off-Earth people? how do they know about the Earth?"
"fuck, everybody knows about the Earth!"
"quiet, man, you don't want anyone to hear this stuff."
"yeah, i guess you have to be careful what you say, especially names."
"yeah, i mean, you don't know who can hear you, right? you think you're alone, you can say anything you want, but is that really true? you know what i mean?"
"i think about who my real neighbours are in space. you can't change who your neighbours are. i think i live in a peaceful part of space. i mean, some people, they just seem like they're really billions of light years away in reality, you know?"
"i don't know, man. how much can anyone really know? that's the entire problem. epistemology is a fucker, right?"
Showing posts with label earth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label earth. Show all posts
Friday, January 12, 2018
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Birth on Earth
birth on earth:
consider the Earth, this world that we share, that joins people together in a mutual system, think of it as a phenomenon, that started out small but spread throughout real space, connecting more and more people together. now as an Earth person, we may be far apart in space in reality, yet we meet others very distant from us. we have some kind of machinery in common and a link that exists between us.
in truth, we might not be able to separate what is real and what is hallucinatory with any conviction. we have the simulation theory of the Earth. but an alternative theory is that to be a human on Earth is to possess a virulent kind of schizophrenia, if you like, in that we are surrounded by hallucinations all the time. now some people we meet may be real, but many might be not. and this altered mental state persists all the time we are on the Earth.
consider that the Earth existed before we were born on the Earth. it started elsewhere. let us use the analogy of a virus. now what i'm saying is that the Earth is a mass contagion that exists across space. posit that the first person on the Earth had, at the time, a new form of extreme schizophrenia, and that it was mostly, or perhaps even all, a complete hallucination at the time. now this was something that spread to other people.
this Earth virus contains genetic material that alters your world. let us go through the steps. first it arrived unnoticed. then the dreams of Earth came. parts of the machinery that allow you to experience life on the Earth were being assembled all around you in your personal bubble space. the link was solidified. the physics arrived. now all this gestation may have happened without you being aware of it. a period of lethargy, feeling tired all the time, sleeping more and more, until you fall asleep for days. what is you is being altered so much, and you are asleep for so long, so that when you are finally born on the Earth, you don't remember much.
you may remember the sequence of dreams of an early life on Earth, waking up in the final dream, seeing your Earth family.
CLEARCHARGE
consider the Earth, this world that we share, that joins people together in a mutual system, think of it as a phenomenon, that started out small but spread throughout real space, connecting more and more people together. now as an Earth person, we may be far apart in space in reality, yet we meet others very distant from us. we have some kind of machinery in common and a link that exists between us.
in truth, we might not be able to separate what is real and what is hallucinatory with any conviction. we have the simulation theory of the Earth. but an alternative theory is that to be a human on Earth is to possess a virulent kind of schizophrenia, if you like, in that we are surrounded by hallucinations all the time. now some people we meet may be real, but many might be not. and this altered mental state persists all the time we are on the Earth.
consider that the Earth existed before we were born on the Earth. it started elsewhere. let us use the analogy of a virus. now what i'm saying is that the Earth is a mass contagion that exists across space. posit that the first person on the Earth had, at the time, a new form of extreme schizophrenia, and that it was mostly, or perhaps even all, a complete hallucination at the time. now this was something that spread to other people.
this Earth virus contains genetic material that alters your world. let us go through the steps. first it arrived unnoticed. then the dreams of Earth came. parts of the machinery that allow you to experience life on the Earth were being assembled all around you in your personal bubble space. the link was solidified. the physics arrived. now all this gestation may have happened without you being aware of it. a period of lethargy, feeling tired all the time, sleeping more and more, until you fall asleep for days. what is you is being altered so much, and you are asleep for so long, so that when you are finally born on the Earth, you don't remember much.
you may remember the sequence of dreams of an early life on Earth, waking up in the final dream, seeing your Earth family.
CLEARCHARGE
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Incredible Simulation
incredible simulation:
the concept of the Earth as a simulation comes as a shock to the materialist. what is a tree, anyway, really? what is food? that i taste something, that i can be sure of, but what else? is that all there is to life? my senses suggest things that are not real, or rather not what they seem.
the feat of teleportation immediately breaks the belief that physical motion is real. seeing things instantly change in front of you, like a train timetable, breaks the belief in a stable material world.
however another surprising aspect of simulation is that some other people whom you see and interact with might not be real, in that they are not conscious, but programmed beings. how did this come to be, if it were true? now the non-solipsistic view, there are many real people, but the simulants, the simulated virtual people, also exist in the population. if virtual people greatly outnumber real people, the danger is to slip to near solipsism. the virtual people, of course, look like and behave like real people. the answer is in this. they are derived from, based upon real people. you might never have met a certain real person but you've met a simulant just like them. posit that the Earth computer contains memories of real people, what they look like, what they have done, what they have said, and just plays a like version in the case of a simulant.
the inevitable question, how do you tell the difference? if you were able to manipulate to a greater degree how another person behaves, clearly they are not real. are virtual people made up of a rather ordinary, general palette, so to speak, so that a real person seems so much more of an individual, has its own unique personal light or quality that comes through that is perceptible? are real people more shocking, in the sense that virtual people are little more standardized, more regular, more predictable? do real people change the atmosphere or mood? do real people seem more emotional? do simulants sometimes not make sense in that they are poorly programmed? are real people more responsive then?
we all know calculation and programming are real by now. some of it is natural. some of it is man-made, artificial. the computer exists. in stealth, things develop unseen, the potential for things to manifest rises. the components of the Earth existed long before it began. growth happens. mutation is real. things spread. and there is that element of chaos in creation.
about the numbers and the ratio of real to virtual people, what can we say? what is the line of least resistance in thought? the overall numbers purported are large, the population certainly seem large, so the real population of the Earth is probably large, definitely large enough so that it might seem at one time that everyone were real. how many general types of people are there? a lot, hundreds at least, maybe thousands. you make guesses about the ratio. how could so many books and films and TV exist if there were not so many people? is it even possible for books to be created without a real author? if you assume that unconscious artificial intelligence is great then the ratio of virtual people to real people could be huge. it is easy to believe that artificial intelligence is growing certainly but is it that great already? the ratio could be 400:1 and the Earth might still seem normal. if you entertain the possibility of a million to one, then the world seems a very strange place indeed. really, only about 65 real people in the UK? it seems highly unlikely all things considered. if only every other person were virtual, it would seem almost negligible. of course not everybody is at the Earth, and certainly not at any one time. what if the population of the Earth were 40 million, plenty of people to seem a busy place, but not enough for everything to seem quite right?
if the Earth is a simulation, then are seemingly ordinary, mundane things even possible or advisable? are there parts of the world that seem to exist but don't, if you like? are there things that no one has really done? you would be the first to undertake exploration, generate new experiences. am i foolish to think if i turn up to the railway station, the train will arrive? are certain countries even real, does anybody really live there? do you have the requisite program files from someone else who has done things, seen places? and to continue on a slightly paranoid basis, do you want to avoid real people, or do you want to avoid simulants?
in actuality, real space is a fixed network of people, an unmoving chain of personal bubble spaces. it is huge. and we only know of other people from what comes down the chain. are there fixed cables in place across the chain, is it a proper system, do parts float rather freely and more slowly sometimes down the chain of space? is part of the Earth computer where we ourselves are running slightly independently or are we completely dependent on a constant feed from elsewhere? is it a decentralized system? can we, if we strain our senses, detect when something is possible? does the opportunity come to mind? by shiva, parts have arrived!
CLEARCHARGE
the concept of the Earth as a simulation comes as a shock to the materialist. what is a tree, anyway, really? what is food? that i taste something, that i can be sure of, but what else? is that all there is to life? my senses suggest things that are not real, or rather not what they seem.
the feat of teleportation immediately breaks the belief that physical motion is real. seeing things instantly change in front of you, like a train timetable, breaks the belief in a stable material world.
however another surprising aspect of simulation is that some other people whom you see and interact with might not be real, in that they are not conscious, but programmed beings. how did this come to be, if it were true? now the non-solipsistic view, there are many real people, but the simulants, the simulated virtual people, also exist in the population. if virtual people greatly outnumber real people, the danger is to slip to near solipsism. the virtual people, of course, look like and behave like real people. the answer is in this. they are derived from, based upon real people. you might never have met a certain real person but you've met a simulant just like them. posit that the Earth computer contains memories of real people, what they look like, what they have done, what they have said, and just plays a like version in the case of a simulant.
the inevitable question, how do you tell the difference? if you were able to manipulate to a greater degree how another person behaves, clearly they are not real. are virtual people made up of a rather ordinary, general palette, so to speak, so that a real person seems so much more of an individual, has its own unique personal light or quality that comes through that is perceptible? are real people more shocking, in the sense that virtual people are little more standardized, more regular, more predictable? do real people change the atmosphere or mood? do real people seem more emotional? do simulants sometimes not make sense in that they are poorly programmed? are real people more responsive then?
we all know calculation and programming are real by now. some of it is natural. some of it is man-made, artificial. the computer exists. in stealth, things develop unseen, the potential for things to manifest rises. the components of the Earth existed long before it began. growth happens. mutation is real. things spread. and there is that element of chaos in creation.
about the numbers and the ratio of real to virtual people, what can we say? what is the line of least resistance in thought? the overall numbers purported are large, the population certainly seem large, so the real population of the Earth is probably large, definitely large enough so that it might seem at one time that everyone were real. how many general types of people are there? a lot, hundreds at least, maybe thousands. you make guesses about the ratio. how could so many books and films and TV exist if there were not so many people? is it even possible for books to be created without a real author? if you assume that unconscious artificial intelligence is great then the ratio of virtual people to real people could be huge. it is easy to believe that artificial intelligence is growing certainly but is it that great already? the ratio could be 400:1 and the Earth might still seem normal. if you entertain the possibility of a million to one, then the world seems a very strange place indeed. really, only about 65 real people in the UK? it seems highly unlikely all things considered. if only every other person were virtual, it would seem almost negligible. of course not everybody is at the Earth, and certainly not at any one time. what if the population of the Earth were 40 million, plenty of people to seem a busy place, but not enough for everything to seem quite right?
if the Earth is a simulation, then are seemingly ordinary, mundane things even possible or advisable? are there parts of the world that seem to exist but don't, if you like? are there things that no one has really done? you would be the first to undertake exploration, generate new experiences. am i foolish to think if i turn up to the railway station, the train will arrive? are certain countries even real, does anybody really live there? do you have the requisite program files from someone else who has done things, seen places? and to continue on a slightly paranoid basis, do you want to avoid real people, or do you want to avoid simulants?
in actuality, real space is a fixed network of people, an unmoving chain of personal bubble spaces. it is huge. and we only know of other people from what comes down the chain. are there fixed cables in place across the chain, is it a proper system, do parts float rather freely and more slowly sometimes down the chain of space? is part of the Earth computer where we ourselves are running slightly independently or are we completely dependent on a constant feed from elsewhere? is it a decentralized system? can we, if we strain our senses, detect when something is possible? does the opportunity come to mind? by shiva, parts have arrived!
CLEARCHARGE
Friday, November 11, 2016
If Earth is a Simulation
if earth is a simulation:
first an argument about the word "simulation", a simulation, as opposed to what? a material, physical world where mechanical motion is real, that matter, the stuff of reality, really changes its spatial position, isn't that what they mean? well that is not real, so it is a simulation, because nothing really "moves", correct?
that is one aspect of the concept, one easily dealt with, the other is far weirder, that some people are simulated humans, they are not really 100% representatives of specific other, real people! i mean, to say it's a simulation because physical motion is not real is one thing, but maybe forms you see of other humans could represent real other people somewhere else? maybe not, and this possibility is one in which reality could be something of a strange, chaotic mystery to all.
assume the calendar is not really that far advanced, reality is actually only a few hundred years old. the problem we have is that there was a lot to begin with, humans, plants, trees, houses, all existed at the beginning, say, and because sudden changes can happen, and the unconscious is so large, it is always in motion and chaotic, it created Earth suddenly, as it is.
that dreams are chaotic is undisputed, a product of the unconscious, and are the portal to life on Earth, and i suppose the exit. that Earth is not quite what it seems, is not entirely normal really, the suspicion happens because of the existence of dreams principally.
on the question of simulated humans, if we assume that some of the people we meet are that, it does not mean that they are unlike any real people, the probability is that they are like someone real or several real people, because they must be based on someone! their speech, their actions, are derived from real people's. they may be a composite of several people plus some random factor, who knows? if we assume that the proportion of simulated humans to real humans is high, how high? 10000:1? that would mean there are only a few thousand real people around in any country! and in any case, the truth of reality becomes a confusing in between of belief in "normality" and a near solipsistic case. it would be naive to assume the extremes of one or another, actually, it's all real, simulated humans and real humans!
the interesting question becomes, how can you tell the difference between a real human and a simulated human? are real humans more coherent, more responsive? are simulated humans poorly programmed, if you like? do real humans have more of an aura, a presence? do they look different? do they have a unique glow? who knows?
and as for the ratio of real to simulated humans, how many real humans, the baseline from which these simulated humans are derived, does it require to produce the variety of people we see today? tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? it would be tending toward solipsism if you came up with a low number, surely? that would mean the collective unconscious of all real people was huge to produce the variety of people and the amount of media found on Earth! i do not doubt that the unconscious is large and capable but does it really dwarf the conscious minds of all of us? it seems unlikely that the number is low.
CLEARCHARGE
first an argument about the word "simulation", a simulation, as opposed to what? a material, physical world where mechanical motion is real, that matter, the stuff of reality, really changes its spatial position, isn't that what they mean? well that is not real, so it is a simulation, because nothing really "moves", correct?
that is one aspect of the concept, one easily dealt with, the other is far weirder, that some people are simulated humans, they are not really 100% representatives of specific other, real people! i mean, to say it's a simulation because physical motion is not real is one thing, but maybe forms you see of other humans could represent real other people somewhere else? maybe not, and this possibility is one in which reality could be something of a strange, chaotic mystery to all.
assume the calendar is not really that far advanced, reality is actually only a few hundred years old. the problem we have is that there was a lot to begin with, humans, plants, trees, houses, all existed at the beginning, say, and because sudden changes can happen, and the unconscious is so large, it is always in motion and chaotic, it created Earth suddenly, as it is.
that dreams are chaotic is undisputed, a product of the unconscious, and are the portal to life on Earth, and i suppose the exit. that Earth is not quite what it seems, is not entirely normal really, the suspicion happens because of the existence of dreams principally.
on the question of simulated humans, if we assume that some of the people we meet are that, it does not mean that they are unlike any real people, the probability is that they are like someone real or several real people, because they must be based on someone! their speech, their actions, are derived from real people's. they may be a composite of several people plus some random factor, who knows? if we assume that the proportion of simulated humans to real humans is high, how high? 10000:1? that would mean there are only a few thousand real people around in any country! and in any case, the truth of reality becomes a confusing in between of belief in "normality" and a near solipsistic case. it would be naive to assume the extremes of one or another, actually, it's all real, simulated humans and real humans!
the interesting question becomes, how can you tell the difference between a real human and a simulated human? are real humans more coherent, more responsive? are simulated humans poorly programmed, if you like? do real humans have more of an aura, a presence? do they look different? do they have a unique glow? who knows?
and as for the ratio of real to simulated humans, how many real humans, the baseline from which these simulated humans are derived, does it require to produce the variety of people we see today? tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? it would be tending toward solipsism if you came up with a low number, surely? that would mean the collective unconscious of all real people was huge to produce the variety of people and the amount of media found on Earth! i do not doubt that the unconscious is large and capable but does it really dwarf the conscious minds of all of us? it seems unlikely that the number is low.
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, September 27, 2014
True Crazy and Acting Normal
true crazy and acting normal:
as someone who was forcibly committed or sectioned to mental hospital not just once, but twice, in my twenties, the inescapable conclusion is this: acting not normal is actually really illegal! it is the unspoken law of society on Earth - you will act normal, or you will be imprisoned!
as i see it, you can be as crazy as you wanna be, but for your own sake, act normal around other people! that means no talking to yourself, even if that is almost impossible when you hear voices. the stereotype of the schizophrenic wandering around whispering to himself, oblivious of everyone else around him, is a true one. what needs to be realized is the intense nature of what is going on in this situation. the voices and the people they represent seem more real than the surrounding people you can see and touch. an ironic possibility is that of the somewhat simulated reality, where the people around you, for the most part, are truly not real people, only simulated people and the people you talk to with voices are, yes, completely real, yet you cannot see them! also, another big thing for acting normal is appearance and hygiene, you simply have to maintain this or people will pick up on it. i rather wish i had been taught how to act normal at school, it would have been far more useful than such esoteric studies as some history and religion. it's stuff a grownup really needs to know! many Christians believe the world is about 7,000 years old, indeed the old Russian calendar before Peter the Great adopted the Julian Calendar, was based on this assumption. my own bias is to think the world is much younger, shockingly so, only over 400 years old, but i digress.
i often suspect that there are far more schizophrenic people than accounted for by official statistics. they say 1% but what if everyone is to some degree? and what if most people just can successfully hide it? by acting normal, of course! Earth is somewhat at least, i believe, hallucinatory in basis. now i'm older, i find it hard to believe that everyone i see in the streets is real, and i've seen odd things, people disappearing, and appearing, out of nowhere. they say many people hear voices but are never diagnosed mentally ill. and it doesn't seem possible that "science", or whatever it is, works perfectly all the time. i think everyone has had some experience where they've wondered to themselves, what just happened? maybe they saw something odd that doesn't make sense. when i was very schizophrenic, i had too many strange experiences to ever fully believe again in the received "normal" world and its teachings of what's what.
and meanwhile, people who have been completely normal up till now, who have never questioned existence on Earth, perhaps they believe things that are false, have been easily led by modern science and its teachings, and are actually truly crazy about reality and metaphysics. one thing i have gone on and on about is that physical motion is not real! you do not really move! nothing really moves! it just seems like it! read my previous posts.
but how much can someone function if they are fundamentally crazy about metaphysics and reality? will they not one day hit the wall, so to speak, because they are insane about how reality and the world really work? the reason i am interested in metaphysics is because of my schizophrenia. if it hadn't happened when i was 20 years old, i might still be a dozy, normal person, just accepting the world as it seems. but when you are shaken up mentally, it leads you to question everything.
CLEARCHARGE
as someone who was forcibly committed or sectioned to mental hospital not just once, but twice, in my twenties, the inescapable conclusion is this: acting not normal is actually really illegal! it is the unspoken law of society on Earth - you will act normal, or you will be imprisoned!
as i see it, you can be as crazy as you wanna be, but for your own sake, act normal around other people! that means no talking to yourself, even if that is almost impossible when you hear voices. the stereotype of the schizophrenic wandering around whispering to himself, oblivious of everyone else around him, is a true one. what needs to be realized is the intense nature of what is going on in this situation. the voices and the people they represent seem more real than the surrounding people you can see and touch. an ironic possibility is that of the somewhat simulated reality, where the people around you, for the most part, are truly not real people, only simulated people and the people you talk to with voices are, yes, completely real, yet you cannot see them! also, another big thing for acting normal is appearance and hygiene, you simply have to maintain this or people will pick up on it. i rather wish i had been taught how to act normal at school, it would have been far more useful than such esoteric studies as some history and religion. it's stuff a grownup really needs to know! many Christians believe the world is about 7,000 years old, indeed the old Russian calendar before Peter the Great adopted the Julian Calendar, was based on this assumption. my own bias is to think the world is much younger, shockingly so, only over 400 years old, but i digress.
i often suspect that there are far more schizophrenic people than accounted for by official statistics. they say 1% but what if everyone is to some degree? and what if most people just can successfully hide it? by acting normal, of course! Earth is somewhat at least, i believe, hallucinatory in basis. now i'm older, i find it hard to believe that everyone i see in the streets is real, and i've seen odd things, people disappearing, and appearing, out of nowhere. they say many people hear voices but are never diagnosed mentally ill. and it doesn't seem possible that "science", or whatever it is, works perfectly all the time. i think everyone has had some experience where they've wondered to themselves, what just happened? maybe they saw something odd that doesn't make sense. when i was very schizophrenic, i had too many strange experiences to ever fully believe again in the received "normal" world and its teachings of what's what.
and meanwhile, people who have been completely normal up till now, who have never questioned existence on Earth, perhaps they believe things that are false, have been easily led by modern science and its teachings, and are actually truly crazy about reality and metaphysics. one thing i have gone on and on about is that physical motion is not real! you do not really move! nothing really moves! it just seems like it! read my previous posts.
but how much can someone function if they are fundamentally crazy about metaphysics and reality? will they not one day hit the wall, so to speak, because they are insane about how reality and the world really work? the reason i am interested in metaphysics is because of my schizophrenia. if it hadn't happened when i was 20 years old, i might still be a dozy, normal person, just accepting the world as it seems. but when you are shaken up mentally, it leads you to question everything.
CLEARCHARGE
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Errors in the Matrix
errors in the matrix:
i borrow the term "matrix" from the films but what i mean is that life here on Earth cannot be quite what it seems, that the material world is somewhat illusory. some of these errors in the matrix are obvious, like when you teleport, as happened to me in Durham, England, in 1993 and 1994, or when you suddenly skip a short distance ahead when you're walking, a mini-teleport, if you will. that happened to me, my father and sister in the underground lobby of the Louvre, in Paris, in 1998. these are clear visual mistakes, things that go against the rules of movement in the matrix. the audio mistakes are more subtle, like when you can bend the lyrics of a song to what you are thinking, when your mind takes over what you're hearing.
but there are other things less obvious. if you're careful, and observant, and your memory is good enough, you will notice other errors. first of all, in my experience, text, what you see on a printed page, is not reliably permanent, is actually unstable. there are instances where i'm sure the print has changed. for example, the first time i read a certain novel, there was a certain passage i remember which i couldn't find again on rereading it. it had disappeared. i am talking about the same book, not reading a copy of a later edition. i've found discarded railway and Underground tickets in London dated in the future. railway timetable boards have changed instantly in front of me. recently, looking through old credit card statements yesterday, something else has come to my attention. now in my memory i bought Sony earphones at Bluewater, in Greenhithe, in 2009, but i also remember after that i found the unopened earphones package with the receipt one day and the receipt was printed showing the transaction as being at the Sony store in Orpington, so after that i assumed my memory was wrong and that i had actually bought it there, not at Bluewater. but now the credit card statement confirms that it was bought at Bluewater in May, 2009. now i have not bought so many Sony earphones that i have confused them with another. i can only conclude that the matrix, the Earth system, had the actual source record for the receipt corrupted or mutated to show false details.
now things like this make you think you are losing your mind perhaps, or that your memory is faulty. but if your memory is correct that means the text has changed, and that you can never rely on text to stay the same. it is fortunate that i've seen text change instantly in front of me or i would keep questioning my memory, assuming that the text couldn't change.
and another thing i've noticed and i've read about elsewhere on the web on glitches in the matrix, but am not sure about, is seeing people walk past me twice. now i wasn't paying attention to where they were all the time exactly, but am i seeing repeats?
as someone with the diagnosis of schizophrenia, i am expected to hallucinate and i do know i do hallucinate. you see where this leads, hypothetically? if i hallucinate, am i hallucinating everything? everything and everyone on Earth? am i totally alone in my own world of hallucinations? once the error in the matrix becomes obvious, becomes apparent, you instinctively move mentally to dismiss the entire world as a falsity. this is extreme, but a natural reaction.
CLEARCHARGE
i borrow the term "matrix" from the films but what i mean is that life here on Earth cannot be quite what it seems, that the material world is somewhat illusory. some of these errors in the matrix are obvious, like when you teleport, as happened to me in Durham, England, in 1993 and 1994, or when you suddenly skip a short distance ahead when you're walking, a mini-teleport, if you will. that happened to me, my father and sister in the underground lobby of the Louvre, in Paris, in 1998. these are clear visual mistakes, things that go against the rules of movement in the matrix. the audio mistakes are more subtle, like when you can bend the lyrics of a song to what you are thinking, when your mind takes over what you're hearing.
but there are other things less obvious. if you're careful, and observant, and your memory is good enough, you will notice other errors. first of all, in my experience, text, what you see on a printed page, is not reliably permanent, is actually unstable. there are instances where i'm sure the print has changed. for example, the first time i read a certain novel, there was a certain passage i remember which i couldn't find again on rereading it. it had disappeared. i am talking about the same book, not reading a copy of a later edition. i've found discarded railway and Underground tickets in London dated in the future. railway timetable boards have changed instantly in front of me. recently, looking through old credit card statements yesterday, something else has come to my attention. now in my memory i bought Sony earphones at Bluewater, in Greenhithe, in 2009, but i also remember after that i found the unopened earphones package with the receipt one day and the receipt was printed showing the transaction as being at the Sony store in Orpington, so after that i assumed my memory was wrong and that i had actually bought it there, not at Bluewater. but now the credit card statement confirms that it was bought at Bluewater in May, 2009. now i have not bought so many Sony earphones that i have confused them with another. i can only conclude that the matrix, the Earth system, had the actual source record for the receipt corrupted or mutated to show false details.
now things like this make you think you are losing your mind perhaps, or that your memory is faulty. but if your memory is correct that means the text has changed, and that you can never rely on text to stay the same. it is fortunate that i've seen text change instantly in front of me or i would keep questioning my memory, assuming that the text couldn't change.
and another thing i've noticed and i've read about elsewhere on the web on glitches in the matrix, but am not sure about, is seeing people walk past me twice. now i wasn't paying attention to where they were all the time exactly, but am i seeing repeats?
as someone with the diagnosis of schizophrenia, i am expected to hallucinate and i do know i do hallucinate. you see where this leads, hypothetically? if i hallucinate, am i hallucinating everything? everything and everyone on Earth? am i totally alone in my own world of hallucinations? once the error in the matrix becomes obvious, becomes apparent, you instinctively move mentally to dismiss the entire world as a falsity. this is extreme, but a natural reaction.
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, April 5, 2014
The Reactive Mind
the reactive mind:
"what i'm saying is that people are impressionable. they go by what they see. and that's obvious that materialism is built on a visual impression of the world, what we see is thought of as real. and dreams, because what we see is usually less clear, that's thought of as not real, because it's less than what we see in waking life."
"wait, what's your argument, that dreams are just as real? or they're both not real? because i would go with both not being that real."
"maybe they're equally real or equally not real, if you see what i mean. my point is that we place dreams on a lower status just because we see in waking life much more clearly and it's a more stable world. we prize clarity and stability. you could say the mind is a big snob about the clear light of waking life."
"that philosopher who wondered whether he was a human dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being human? that you could say both are true?"
"right. the mind reacts upon waking that the dream wasn't real but what if it was?"
"so you could be sharing a dream with real people just as you could be with philosophical zombies in waking life?"
"right. zombies without consciousness, human illusions, simulated people, hallucinations of people, non player characters, whatever. it is interesting that when we consider that a lot of people on earth may not be real, doesn't that mean we're hallucinating? that everyone on earth falls into the schizoid camp of people? that everyone is schizophrenic?"
"but you're equating hallucinations with schizophrenia. but yes, i agree, but not everyone is clinically diagnosed schizophrenic. i have a theory though. all real people may be schizophrenic to some degree, it's just that most people hide it better than those that end up committed to a mental hospital. they have better coping mechanisms. think of it this way, there's a statistic i've read that over 10% hear voices or auditory hallucinations. and if this earth is a simulated world, that means 100% see visual hallucinations of people. why are only 1%, that's the statistic, diagnosed schizophrenic?"
"what you're saying is most people are just better at acting normal so they don't get locked up in a psychiatric ward?"
"exactly. but that's just my theory. it's like acting not normal is illegal and they're well aware of it."
"probably from a very early age, i guess. and i've been trying to remember the first part of my life better. i'm still sure how i ended up here on earth was because i dreamed of earth and then woke up in it. born at the age of three. on the one hand, you've got the theory life on earth is a dream, then you have the theory it's a computer simulation, or that's it's a grand hallucination, but really i guess it has elements of all three."
"it's the frame of reference. like if you think it's a simulation then the question is who created it. the idea of god as the programmer just pops up like that naturally. but i think a lot of people don't ask who created your dreams last night, right?"
"it seems there's no getting away from the concept of god though. everyone on earth feels powerless really. and so everyone can imagine what god is. it's like it's one of the most common concepts that everyone arrives at. what if there is someone with power over it all, even if it's just someone who manages to hack the Matrix, if you like?"
"but is it run on what could be like computer code? are dreams coded too? what if, by inventing the computer and programming languages, we've made it run on computer code in the background?"
"and it wasn't before? so earth was fundamentally different before the advent of the computer age? and now it does run on something like C++? because now the code exists? and this is out there but like maybe before Newton's Laws of Motion, mechanical motion was different? humans somehow made motion work to the laws? who remembers?"
"right. once something new exists, it could change everything in the universe."
"what is the unconscious? is it just the material connecting our senses and the thought in our heads to everything else running in the invisible background? is it a random chaotic swirl happening around us?"
"yes. it's not easy to think about what really goes on, the metaphysics of reality. but all this talk of a simulated reality is the reaction to the Matrix movies, it really popularized the concept. the schizophrenia theory of earth and creation is not as popular."
"it's a loaded word. people fear madness. and chaos, which mentally is what schizophrenia is."
"again, people want stability. full on schizophrenia violently bends reality. it frightens people. it's like taking a sledgehammer to the world that is actually very delicate."
"the question is, if earth is hallucinatory, let's go with this, what makes it so stable?"
"maybe it's the code behind it now. computer science. now everyone knows and imagines the medieval world as a magical, chaotic place and time, it's fully in the culture. the thing is, what if we dismiss those that dismiss that as superstitious nonsense, and consider that's what life really was, nobody made it up later? ancient times really were the world of swords and sorcery?"
"and science banished that away and replaced it with today? science killed the magic? i don't know. i have my doubts sometimes that reality is even older than a few hundred years. i mean i've heard it's the Year 443. that means Year 1 was AD 1572 equivalent. it's like the dream world is constructed in an instant, and so could earth be therefore, i guess."
"that's true, it's just conjecture. but that's the way to think, i think. try to find the truth in everything. consider everything if it were true at first, without prejudice. hopefully eventually what is false will become obvious."
CLEARCHARGE
"what i'm saying is that people are impressionable. they go by what they see. and that's obvious that materialism is built on a visual impression of the world, what we see is thought of as real. and dreams, because what we see is usually less clear, that's thought of as not real, because it's less than what we see in waking life."
"wait, what's your argument, that dreams are just as real? or they're both not real? because i would go with both not being that real."
"maybe they're equally real or equally not real, if you see what i mean. my point is that we place dreams on a lower status just because we see in waking life much more clearly and it's a more stable world. we prize clarity and stability. you could say the mind is a big snob about the clear light of waking life."
"that philosopher who wondered whether he was a human dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being human? that you could say both are true?"
"right. the mind reacts upon waking that the dream wasn't real but what if it was?"
"so you could be sharing a dream with real people just as you could be with philosophical zombies in waking life?"
"right. zombies without consciousness, human illusions, simulated people, hallucinations of people, non player characters, whatever. it is interesting that when we consider that a lot of people on earth may not be real, doesn't that mean we're hallucinating? that everyone on earth falls into the schizoid camp of people? that everyone is schizophrenic?"
"but you're equating hallucinations with schizophrenia. but yes, i agree, but not everyone is clinically diagnosed schizophrenic. i have a theory though. all real people may be schizophrenic to some degree, it's just that most people hide it better than those that end up committed to a mental hospital. they have better coping mechanisms. think of it this way, there's a statistic i've read that over 10% hear voices or auditory hallucinations. and if this earth is a simulated world, that means 100% see visual hallucinations of people. why are only 1%, that's the statistic, diagnosed schizophrenic?"
"what you're saying is most people are just better at acting normal so they don't get locked up in a psychiatric ward?"
"exactly. but that's just my theory. it's like acting not normal is illegal and they're well aware of it."
"probably from a very early age, i guess. and i've been trying to remember the first part of my life better. i'm still sure how i ended up here on earth was because i dreamed of earth and then woke up in it. born at the age of three. on the one hand, you've got the theory life on earth is a dream, then you have the theory it's a computer simulation, or that's it's a grand hallucination, but really i guess it has elements of all three."
"it's the frame of reference. like if you think it's a simulation then the question is who created it. the idea of god as the programmer just pops up like that naturally. but i think a lot of people don't ask who created your dreams last night, right?"
"it seems there's no getting away from the concept of god though. everyone on earth feels powerless really. and so everyone can imagine what god is. it's like it's one of the most common concepts that everyone arrives at. what if there is someone with power over it all, even if it's just someone who manages to hack the Matrix, if you like?"
"but is it run on what could be like computer code? are dreams coded too? what if, by inventing the computer and programming languages, we've made it run on computer code in the background?"
"and it wasn't before? so earth was fundamentally different before the advent of the computer age? and now it does run on something like C++? because now the code exists? and this is out there but like maybe before Newton's Laws of Motion, mechanical motion was different? humans somehow made motion work to the laws? who remembers?"
"right. once something new exists, it could change everything in the universe."
"what is the unconscious? is it just the material connecting our senses and the thought in our heads to everything else running in the invisible background? is it a random chaotic swirl happening around us?"
"yes. it's not easy to think about what really goes on, the metaphysics of reality. but all this talk of a simulated reality is the reaction to the Matrix movies, it really popularized the concept. the schizophrenia theory of earth and creation is not as popular."
"it's a loaded word. people fear madness. and chaos, which mentally is what schizophrenia is."
"again, people want stability. full on schizophrenia violently bends reality. it frightens people. it's like taking a sledgehammer to the world that is actually very delicate."
"the question is, if earth is hallucinatory, let's go with this, what makes it so stable?"
"maybe it's the code behind it now. computer science. now everyone knows and imagines the medieval world as a magical, chaotic place and time, it's fully in the culture. the thing is, what if we dismiss those that dismiss that as superstitious nonsense, and consider that's what life really was, nobody made it up later? ancient times really were the world of swords and sorcery?"
"and science banished that away and replaced it with today? science killed the magic? i don't know. i have my doubts sometimes that reality is even older than a few hundred years. i mean i've heard it's the Year 443. that means Year 1 was AD 1572 equivalent. it's like the dream world is constructed in an instant, and so could earth be therefore, i guess."
"that's true, it's just conjecture. but that's the way to think, i think. try to find the truth in everything. consider everything if it were true at first, without prejudice. hopefully eventually what is false will become obvious."
CLEARCHARGE
Monday, March 10, 2014
From a Dream to Earth
from a dream to earth:
it was something like this, a series of dreams that were snapshots of life as a three year old. it covered a period of about a year in my life history, although i estimate the time i was asleep was only for a few days. i question why i remember the sequence so well. it must be because they were particularly vivid dreams almost like waking life. certainly the last dream became such. i awoke in the dream. i had come to Earth.
i cannot remember the day before i fell asleep and was truly born on Earth. i guess life was very simpler. i am not solipsistic by nature, even though for short periods i did consider i could be alone, even that the world was created the day i was born and that was why i could remember nothing beforehand. of course i dismissed that. from experience, i know that in a dream, memory is destroyed or unavailable and that is probably why i remember next to nothing about my previous life. i am still held in the "dream" of Earth.
to the paranoid suffering on Earth, it is not hard to imagine that an external demon, much like that of Descartes' concept, has lured us to Earth and imprisoned us against our will. because we are powerless in the process, it seems there are greater forces at work, but is it really personal? i confess, given a choice, i would not have come here. but also, i have dreamed far worse nightmares, Earth is not the worst prison. it is the lack of power that is frightening. i didn't ask to be born here.
what is the way out? can we return from whence we came? it seems logical that the exit is the entrance, we can only leave through a dream as well. i guess that before i die on Earth, dreams will become more vivid, more lucid perhaps, and that one day i will dream of elsewhere and wake up there. i will have died just as i was born.
CLEARCHARGE
it was something like this, a series of dreams that were snapshots of life as a three year old. it covered a period of about a year in my life history, although i estimate the time i was asleep was only for a few days. i question why i remember the sequence so well. it must be because they were particularly vivid dreams almost like waking life. certainly the last dream became such. i awoke in the dream. i had come to Earth.
i cannot remember the day before i fell asleep and was truly born on Earth. i guess life was very simpler. i am not solipsistic by nature, even though for short periods i did consider i could be alone, even that the world was created the day i was born and that was why i could remember nothing beforehand. of course i dismissed that. from experience, i know that in a dream, memory is destroyed or unavailable and that is probably why i remember next to nothing about my previous life. i am still held in the "dream" of Earth.
to the paranoid suffering on Earth, it is not hard to imagine that an external demon, much like that of Descartes' concept, has lured us to Earth and imprisoned us against our will. because we are powerless in the process, it seems there are greater forces at work, but is it really personal? i confess, given a choice, i would not have come here. but also, i have dreamed far worse nightmares, Earth is not the worst prison. it is the lack of power that is frightening. i didn't ask to be born here.
what is the way out? can we return from whence we came? it seems logical that the exit is the entrance, we can only leave through a dream as well. i guess that before i die on Earth, dreams will become more vivid, more lucid perhaps, and that one day i will dream of elsewhere and wake up there. i will have died just as i was born.
CLEARCHARGE
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
In Your World
in your world:
"in your world that might be a famous person, but i've never heard of him."
is there a metaphysical significance to that? could it be that we are really living in our own worlds, our own versions of Earth, only it just seems that we are living in the same, standardized Earth, with the same people in it? the invention of the computer and the internet showed us what was possible first of all and introduced concepts that we could borrow from to better understand the metaphysics of reality.
"ok, what if this person only exists in my world, i mean, i know when you say "in my world" you generally mean the place where you live, the people you know, etc. and that's individual but you assume that the media is the same, right?"
"maybe it isn't. how far you can test it is doubtful too. maybe you could look it up, this guy you're talking about, on the internet, and show me that he exists, but how do i know that you haven't just delivered that media to me through some channel in real space, just now, by us being together? and that he really didn't exist in my world before, but now i'm with you, he does? if you see what i mean."
"so real people meeting each other involves some kind of trade of information?"
"yes. so it opens up channels, i don't know, i'm tempted to say subspace channels but that's something else on Star Trek, maybe "interpersonal data channel" is better. i don't believe in the concept of the external world so how else could it work? i mean, of course, the data channels are open even when we're not together but presumably they're even more open when we are."
"so say we live in a more or less standardized, common Earth. i guess for it to be 100% standardized, it would require some central "Earth supercomputer" and maybe that doesn't exist. everyone has their own local Earth supercomputer, like everyone's an internet server, so to speak, in their own right."
"yeah, so data flows back and forth and yeah, obviously you each have some kind of supercomputer to render all your visuals, everything you see, and hear of course."
"and maybe data gets corrupted, there are errors in the transmission."
"and signal noise. that could explain how we live in slightly different versions of Earth. like we all live in parallel universes. because of poor connection. but i had an experience, where i was waiting to meet someone in a public place, and they appeared out of nowhere, literally."
"that happens to me too. we were going abroad and we were in a large train station and my father had wandered off and i was getting worried because i couldn't see him and then he appeared suddenly, just like that, at a distance. it's things like travel where you get paranoid whether the whole thing actually "works" or not."
"and then i was upset once, very emotional, and then either the dvd player broke or there was no electricity or something but it wouldn't come on. and then when i calmed down, it worked."
"i mean you could explain it away as, "oh, it's all in your mind", it was just an electrical fault, but the worrying thing is that if the external world is not real, it really is all in your own mind! weird things, frightening things, happen when you are very emotional."
"yeah like machines break. maybe it's harder to meet real people, assuming lots of simulated Non Player Characters, not just because there may be few real people, but because everything has to work, there has to be an excellent connection between real people."
"i don't know. real people. in one way, i think it's more frightening. what if you don't get along? a virtual character, someone simulated, you don't really care, right? it doesn't matter."
"well i don't know about that. what if the NPC came from someone else's, a real person's, database of characters, maybe they're not real but they're just like someone real, and they would know how you treat one of their simulated people."
"my army of illusions against someone else's? i still think it's less intimidating to deal with someone simulated and wouldn't you convert a character from somewhere else to someone more suitable in your own matrix? i don't know. but trade is good, right? when i was a kid, i really don't think i could write that easily. i mean, like when i was 6, we had to write an essay each weekend on that week's lesson on Native Americans, one page. it wasn't easy for me. maybe i could write better in a previous life and just forgot, but it's like, when i go to a book store and see all those titles on the shelves, that's got to come from elsewhere, other people have done all that, my unconscious or local Earth supercomputer may be able to create simulated people and a few snatches of speech but it's hard to believe it could come up with thousands of different books."
"think how much your world has changed. and you're not alone is what that shows. there are a ton of ideas out there."
CLEARCHARGE
"in your world that might be a famous person, but i've never heard of him."
is there a metaphysical significance to that? could it be that we are really living in our own worlds, our own versions of Earth, only it just seems that we are living in the same, standardized Earth, with the same people in it? the invention of the computer and the internet showed us what was possible first of all and introduced concepts that we could borrow from to better understand the metaphysics of reality.
"ok, what if this person only exists in my world, i mean, i know when you say "in my world" you generally mean the place where you live, the people you know, etc. and that's individual but you assume that the media is the same, right?"
"maybe it isn't. how far you can test it is doubtful too. maybe you could look it up, this guy you're talking about, on the internet, and show me that he exists, but how do i know that you haven't just delivered that media to me through some channel in real space, just now, by us being together? and that he really didn't exist in my world before, but now i'm with you, he does? if you see what i mean."
"so real people meeting each other involves some kind of trade of information?"
"yes. so it opens up channels, i don't know, i'm tempted to say subspace channels but that's something else on Star Trek, maybe "interpersonal data channel" is better. i don't believe in the concept of the external world so how else could it work? i mean, of course, the data channels are open even when we're not together but presumably they're even more open when we are."
"so say we live in a more or less standardized, common Earth. i guess for it to be 100% standardized, it would require some central "Earth supercomputer" and maybe that doesn't exist. everyone has their own local Earth supercomputer, like everyone's an internet server, so to speak, in their own right."
"yeah, so data flows back and forth and yeah, obviously you each have some kind of supercomputer to render all your visuals, everything you see, and hear of course."
"and maybe data gets corrupted, there are errors in the transmission."
"and signal noise. that could explain how we live in slightly different versions of Earth. like we all live in parallel universes. because of poor connection. but i had an experience, where i was waiting to meet someone in a public place, and they appeared out of nowhere, literally."
"that happens to me too. we were going abroad and we were in a large train station and my father had wandered off and i was getting worried because i couldn't see him and then he appeared suddenly, just like that, at a distance. it's things like travel where you get paranoid whether the whole thing actually "works" or not."
"and then i was upset once, very emotional, and then either the dvd player broke or there was no electricity or something but it wouldn't come on. and then when i calmed down, it worked."
"i mean you could explain it away as, "oh, it's all in your mind", it was just an electrical fault, but the worrying thing is that if the external world is not real, it really is all in your own mind! weird things, frightening things, happen when you are very emotional."
"yeah like machines break. maybe it's harder to meet real people, assuming lots of simulated Non Player Characters, not just because there may be few real people, but because everything has to work, there has to be an excellent connection between real people."
"i don't know. real people. in one way, i think it's more frightening. what if you don't get along? a virtual character, someone simulated, you don't really care, right? it doesn't matter."
"well i don't know about that. what if the NPC came from someone else's, a real person's, database of characters, maybe they're not real but they're just like someone real, and they would know how you treat one of their simulated people."
"my army of illusions against someone else's? i still think it's less intimidating to deal with someone simulated and wouldn't you convert a character from somewhere else to someone more suitable in your own matrix? i don't know. but trade is good, right? when i was a kid, i really don't think i could write that easily. i mean, like when i was 6, we had to write an essay each weekend on that week's lesson on Native Americans, one page. it wasn't easy for me. maybe i could write better in a previous life and just forgot, but it's like, when i go to a book store and see all those titles on the shelves, that's got to come from elsewhere, other people have done all that, my unconscious or local Earth supercomputer may be able to create simulated people and a few snatches of speech but it's hard to believe it could come up with thousands of different books."
"think how much your world has changed. and you're not alone is what that shows. there are a ton of ideas out there."
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Life Like in a Matrix
life like in a matrix:
"having seen The Matrix movie, it's inevitable that you ask yourself, what if i'm in a matrix? i mean it's deceptive, we know the movie is a fiction and over the top so it's easy to dismiss, but what if the concept of simulated reality were real, just a more normal, mundane version? if i were in a matrix, how does the real thing differ from the movie one?"
"but what do you mean by in a matrix exactly?"
"well, first of all, the external world is not real. i mean, some might say that means philosophical idealism is true, but i'm not so sure that means everything is mental, that is, somehow related to thought and the five senses, what if there were still non-mental things which you couldn't exactly call physical or material as in like what you see in what is perceived as the physical external world, actually, as an aside, i'm not so sure physical is the right word as that means "human body" to me and i'm guessing that was the original meaning, but like, what if there were statues of humans that really existed in space, unchanging, but you couldn't exactly call them mental things, you know? what if there were solid forms out there fixed in space from which things we see are derived? the second thing about being in a matrix is that at least some people are simulated. i guess that's what i mean about a matrix, like that in the film, The Matrix."
"but who owns the matrix? is there a central supercomputer and all the data is delivered via a connection to everyone? are there several of them? local sub-servers? what? i can see how connection was always there. everyone is connected. people who aren't connected are really people in separate realities that aren't even here."
"i think reality and creation are a little messy. it's like some things always existed, right from the start of time, like parts of the supercomputer, parts of nature, human even. i think maybe things we take for granted were probably always there, like up and down and things fall downwards and we walk on top of the ground. i mean it's completely possible to imagine a reality where the opposite holds, where everything is upside down."
"so things that seem supermodern to us may have been there since time zero? i suppose if it's possible now, then the basic parts were always there is an argument. and i guess if everyone is connected, it's probable that everyone in a matrix is in the same one."
"yes i think it's unwise to assume, once you've accepted the matrix premise, that you're completely alone in your own matrix and everyone you see is simulated."
"yes going from one extreme, assuming the external world and everyone you see is real, to the complete opposite, it's all virtual. i think that says something about the way we think, in absolute extremes."
"whereas life is a grey area in between. you say who owns the matrix, that suggests there's some mastermind behind it with all the power but what if no one has any great power at all, we're all averagely unpowerful people stuck in the matrix because reality always was and is, so to speak, "matrix-ready"?"
"well that's one meaning of own, but i meant more like, where is the supercomputer, i mean in whose personal space?"
"well, if we are all fixed in space, some people always near, some far, you know, where does one person's space become another's? some people may be all together in a cluster, some may be far spaced out. about who owns it, i guess it's probably in parts piecemeal across reality's space. it's just too simple to think that, yes, all of it is in one person's personal space."
"so maybe the work's farmed out. we have to assume connection is great, i guess. maybe the orange is somewhere, and wheat in someone's else's zone, for example. but what if someone had a total breakdown, like a key processor is in someone's personal space, her zone, if you like, and she was really in a bad way?"
"well there is the possibility everything stops working tomorrow. like i've often wondered, what if the sun doesn't come up in the morning? things like that, you know."
"so you need a backup, right? maybe that's there, hopefully. i think the key is that the situation is very fluid. the way time works, i think, is that things could change in an instant, time isn't continuous, it's discrete perhaps, is a theory. but i think the internet makes everything change even faster. it's instant. one of the reasons i'm not a solipsist is that there is all this media, you think there's no way my subconscious could come up with all this stuff, therefore i couldn't possibly be alone. maybe there are a lot of real people working in the media? in Hollywood? and so Los Angeles?"
"i read articles about science and i wonder how much of it could hold up, given that many scientists assume the external world is real?"
"well if it works, it works. but what came first? it's like the chicken and the egg, were they discovering how things work or magically making things work according to their theory? the scientist could be a god, no?"
"well then everyone's a god of something. if say, the orange were originally here, does that make me the god of the orange? maybe."
"well then if it's all personal, i guess it gets a little creepy. how much do you accept from another person? if you knew something was originally theirs? is it better to give or to receive? would we even get along if we met?"
"well everyone's done it, i guess. so it's a little late to start worrying about it now. but to give and to receive, well someone has to receive and someone has to give. i mean, we're all connected, in one reality, so give is good, receive is good. it means there's a connection. otherwise we'd be completely alone."
"if you put it that way. what about language? i mean it's just like the fruit example in a way. if you go by what the media says, English is the most common language. you think maybe space could be divided up into language zones? but what if there were, say, Russian or French speakers to the right on a map of reality but also to the far left, could they really be apart, i mean, is a distribution with isolated zones with the same language even possible, because you'd think all the speakers of a language would be in one zone, right?"
"i would say English has many contributors to make it that common. originally, a language was just the sounds in the air, so to speak, and then we attached meanings, that's my theory, or maybe even a sound was already attached to the presence of something in a metaphysical sense."
"for me, the interesting thing about The Matrix was the paranoia about the evil demonic supercomputer behind it all. what if by creating the simulation and all these simulated people we did something dangerous? i mean hopefully it's harmless and only makes us a little crazy, but what if it's really bad?"
"try to turn it off? the thing is, it's really out of our control, or it seems it is. it's like trying to stop dreaming, having nightmares. we have to roll with the punches."
"and hope for the best?"
"always."
CLEARCHARGE
"having seen The Matrix movie, it's inevitable that you ask yourself, what if i'm in a matrix? i mean it's deceptive, we know the movie is a fiction and over the top so it's easy to dismiss, but what if the concept of simulated reality were real, just a more normal, mundane version? if i were in a matrix, how does the real thing differ from the movie one?"
"but what do you mean by in a matrix exactly?"
"well, first of all, the external world is not real. i mean, some might say that means philosophical idealism is true, but i'm not so sure that means everything is mental, that is, somehow related to thought and the five senses, what if there were still non-mental things which you couldn't exactly call physical or material as in like what you see in what is perceived as the physical external world, actually, as an aside, i'm not so sure physical is the right word as that means "human body" to me and i'm guessing that was the original meaning, but like, what if there were statues of humans that really existed in space, unchanging, but you couldn't exactly call them mental things, you know? what if there were solid forms out there fixed in space from which things we see are derived? the second thing about being in a matrix is that at least some people are simulated. i guess that's what i mean about a matrix, like that in the film, The Matrix."
"but who owns the matrix? is there a central supercomputer and all the data is delivered via a connection to everyone? are there several of them? local sub-servers? what? i can see how connection was always there. everyone is connected. people who aren't connected are really people in separate realities that aren't even here."
"i think reality and creation are a little messy. it's like some things always existed, right from the start of time, like parts of the supercomputer, parts of nature, human even. i think maybe things we take for granted were probably always there, like up and down and things fall downwards and we walk on top of the ground. i mean it's completely possible to imagine a reality where the opposite holds, where everything is upside down."
"so things that seem supermodern to us may have been there since time zero? i suppose if it's possible now, then the basic parts were always there is an argument. and i guess if everyone is connected, it's probable that everyone in a matrix is in the same one."
"yes i think it's unwise to assume, once you've accepted the matrix premise, that you're completely alone in your own matrix and everyone you see is simulated."
"yes going from one extreme, assuming the external world and everyone you see is real, to the complete opposite, it's all virtual. i think that says something about the way we think, in absolute extremes."
"whereas life is a grey area in between. you say who owns the matrix, that suggests there's some mastermind behind it with all the power but what if no one has any great power at all, we're all averagely unpowerful people stuck in the matrix because reality always was and is, so to speak, "matrix-ready"?"
"well that's one meaning of own, but i meant more like, where is the supercomputer, i mean in whose personal space?"
"well, if we are all fixed in space, some people always near, some far, you know, where does one person's space become another's? some people may be all together in a cluster, some may be far spaced out. about who owns it, i guess it's probably in parts piecemeal across reality's space. it's just too simple to think that, yes, all of it is in one person's personal space."
"so maybe the work's farmed out. we have to assume connection is great, i guess. maybe the orange is somewhere, and wheat in someone's else's zone, for example. but what if someone had a total breakdown, like a key processor is in someone's personal space, her zone, if you like, and she was really in a bad way?"
"well there is the possibility everything stops working tomorrow. like i've often wondered, what if the sun doesn't come up in the morning? things like that, you know."
"so you need a backup, right? maybe that's there, hopefully. i think the key is that the situation is very fluid. the way time works, i think, is that things could change in an instant, time isn't continuous, it's discrete perhaps, is a theory. but i think the internet makes everything change even faster. it's instant. one of the reasons i'm not a solipsist is that there is all this media, you think there's no way my subconscious could come up with all this stuff, therefore i couldn't possibly be alone. maybe there are a lot of real people working in the media? in Hollywood? and so Los Angeles?"
"i read articles about science and i wonder how much of it could hold up, given that many scientists assume the external world is real?"
"well if it works, it works. but what came first? it's like the chicken and the egg, were they discovering how things work or magically making things work according to their theory? the scientist could be a god, no?"
"well then everyone's a god of something. if say, the orange were originally here, does that make me the god of the orange? maybe."
"well then if it's all personal, i guess it gets a little creepy. how much do you accept from another person? if you knew something was originally theirs? is it better to give or to receive? would we even get along if we met?"
"well everyone's done it, i guess. so it's a little late to start worrying about it now. but to give and to receive, well someone has to receive and someone has to give. i mean, we're all connected, in one reality, so give is good, receive is good. it means there's a connection. otherwise we'd be completely alone."
"if you put it that way. what about language? i mean it's just like the fruit example in a way. if you go by what the media says, English is the most common language. you think maybe space could be divided up into language zones? but what if there were, say, Russian or French speakers to the right on a map of reality but also to the far left, could they really be apart, i mean, is a distribution with isolated zones with the same language even possible, because you'd think all the speakers of a language would be in one zone, right?"
"i would say English has many contributors to make it that common. originally, a language was just the sounds in the air, so to speak, and then we attached meanings, that's my theory, or maybe even a sound was already attached to the presence of something in a metaphysical sense."
"for me, the interesting thing about The Matrix was the paranoia about the evil demonic supercomputer behind it all. what if by creating the simulation and all these simulated people we did something dangerous? i mean hopefully it's harmless and only makes us a little crazy, but what if it's really bad?"
"try to turn it off? the thing is, it's really out of our control, or it seems it is. it's like trying to stop dreaming, having nightmares. we have to roll with the punches."
"and hope for the best?"
"always."
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Hypotheses on Reality and Playing with Belief Cards
hypotheses on reality and playing with belief cards:
"it never comes to that. no one really talks about it, do they, what they really believe about reality? it is unspoken but everyone knows what they have to assume to go about their normal lives on earth and they get it from what they see and hear around them."
"well, nobody really talks about it, but they may think it, that reality, the world of earth, is not quite what it seems, what you say everyone has to assume: an external world, physical motion, materialism or physicalism, whatever you call it. i think the reason really is a paranoid one, that they suspect they'll be accused of being at least slightly crazy and at worst get hauled off to a mental hospital and locked up forever. but then, also, i guess, these things can't be demonstrably proved to anyone else."
"or disproved. like if i say there is no external world, and this is the major plank of belief or assumption that everyone has to go by, really, well then someone will say, "what are we, a brain in a vat?" well, the problem with that is it assumes that there is still an external world outside our brain or our mind, a room with a vat and cables hooking us up to a Matrix-like simulation. the belief lingers on, whereas it should be thrown out completely. there is no external room where our brains are in, no wires, nothing. if anything, it's completely cleanly, invisibly done or connected."
"but we are visually impressionable people. it's not surprising, when everything we see leads us to assume there is an external world out there. we believe more what we see than what we hear, i guess."
"the truth of the matter is that if everyone teleported then the belief in an external world would collapse overnight. i can claim i have, but unless you do it yourself, you're going to doubt it."
"yes. it's completely obvious that the external world is not real when you've done it, teleport that is."
"yes. it's like an epiphany. because that just can't happen if the external world is real and the transition between locations is seamless, i mean, you feel nothing. i've read of other weird things happening to people, like seeing events repeated, a person passing by twice, or finding their car on a different level in the car park or parking lot, and seeing things that weren't there before suddenly appearing and so on."
"well, you could assume you are the only one who has teleported but surely if you'd done it, someone else has as well? it's just a fault in the visual geographical system. maybe it's even a fault or bug in the system that's contagious?"
"it happened to me so it has to happen to someone else? i'm propagating errors in the system?"
"but tell me again what the alternative is to an external material world?"
"right, physical motion is not real or mechanical motion or what seems like motion. in real space, everything exists in a fixed location relative to everything else. only time makes things change state."
"but then with pop culture and everything, you think, well, what is life then if not the commonly thought? is it a dream, is it the Matrix, what is it?"
"well that's where i run into problems too. i mean they are not clear-cut binary alternative possibilities, like is the external world real or not? i mean, i remember my life on earth began as a dream, right, but computers, hey, they're completely real, the technology, right? so it's probably at least a bit of both. what i have noticed, for me anyway, is that when i'm in a dream, i'm completely hazy about the true facts of my life, it's like i have an alternative dream existence that progresses that's similar to my waking life. i dream of my old school, my old homes, but the circumstances are different and when i try to remember facts about my waking life, i often think things that are false, only to realize upon waking, that i was incorrect."
"right, the dreams sweep you up and everything moves so fast that you're completely caught up in it."
"yeah, so you have the amnesia effect that blocks out the truth about waking life."
"which explains why you poorly remember what happened before you were born into this world, on earth. but as a schizophrenic who hears auditory hallucinations, what about that? i mean the question is, obviously, whether you hear thoughts that are your own, or it's coming from real other people."
"it's extremely awkward talking to your psychiatrist about voices. because inevitably, they want to know what you hear, right? and a lot of the stuff is personal. it's either your inner thoughts as sound or it's coming from people that are truly nearby, or even far away, i suppose."
"who may or may not be on earth, as well. how schizophrenic would you say you were, on a scale of 1 to 10?"
"well, there are different aspects. you have the voices, which to every psychiatrist indicates you are schizo, right? maybe i was about a 7 in that area once, at one time i had about 7 or 8 different voices going on at the same time. but the eyesight going haywire, the teleportation, the streams of text i could see, train timetables instantly changing in front of me, different maps of the country where the towns are all in wrong places, travel tickets dated in the future, passages of novels changing, all that made me about at least 9 on that scale, if not 10."
"whatever it is, a Matrix, or a dream, or whatever, is everyone in the same one? i mean, a lot of the stuff must be shared, right?"
"i can see how, if everyone were in their own matrix, they would end up with solipsistic fancies."
"right. all the stuff about the Law of Attraction, i mean, it could work, if you were in your own world, conceivably. but if everyone were in the same earth Matrix, it would seem a little harder to manifest things. you can't control other people and events so much."
"though, imagine a modern house existed right at the start of time. i mean, running hot water and electrical machines and lights. it's like in time, they reverse engineered everything to make it work mechanically, you know, installed plumbing, connected pipes to reservoirs, built power stations and so on. but the point is, that was there, this working house, in the beginning."
"like human is original, not created. OK, if we dismiss the external world outright, since you so proved it wasn't real, i mean, that's one philosophical question out of the way, the big question really is, what about the other people in reality? OK, do we assume everyone is on earth or some are left out? on earth are all the other people we see real or are some simulated people? are there other planets with people on them, in this same universe, could this be a Star Wars or Star Trek universe? are there other simulations running?"
"i don't know. it's like playing with different ideas. if only you had a deck of cards with different ideas or beliefs about reality, i mean you could play around with them, mix and match and see where that leads you. some beliefs negate others but i can see how some could all be real in some way."
"well, i can't help feeling that it is important to know the truth. i mean we may not be able to "know" in the strictest philosophical sense but at least we could think about the truth to some emotional depth. like, if i assume my mother is not real, is just a philosophical zombie, a simulated person, is it important to know that?"
"i think it's important to at least know the true date and how much of the history of earth may not be real. i mean, i've come out with the date Year 442 as the true date before, but that's just what i've heard. a lot of schizophrenics say the voices lie to them and whatever, but what if some of it's true?"
"it would explain a lot. how little everyone knows about reality for starters. and it's not like intelligent life doesn't exist. it does. it would just be that so little time has passed from the start of time that everyone is still feeling around for the truth. but voices do lie is the problem, some of the time. you can't believe everything you hear."
"back to what you were saying. i dreamed about my mother first and then my father second and i think i woke up next to my father and sister on a plane from Taipei to Hawaii on 29 August, 1975. US Immigration stamped the date at Honolulu on my passport which i still have. but my official birthday is February 11, 1972, so i was already 3 years old when i was truly born on earth. i guess some might say that's when my soul truly arrived."
"you still dream about your parents don't you?"
"yes. and they're alternative versions of them."
"you know, some would say that you merely forgot everything that happened before."
"well, no, i clearly remember the dream sequence leading up to that. i've never forgot. so i definitely have preferences, is waking life a dream? well, no, but it's, derived from it, is that the right word?"
"of course, the other big question, is what happens when you die on earth?"
"yes. are we fated to reincarnate on earth or do we go back to whatever it was before? because whatever real matter we are, it can't cease to exist right, it could only change to something very different at worst, right?"
"but back to the here and now. i'm obsessed with knowing who, if given some people are not real, is actually real that i interact with on a regular basis. i mean, what figure should i hold in my mind? are we all surrounded by illusions of people in our daily life but we read and see and hear about real people in the media?"
"or there could be pockets of real people together in some places. you never know, you could be surrounded by lots of real people, you just don't know it."
"but what is a best guess estimate? 66% zombies? 1% real people? or what?"
"yeah. there is a danger, when you've woken up about the external world not being the case, that you assume you're surrounded by illusions. i mean, it could be really embarrassing. you might know lots of real people but suddenly assume they're all not real."
"i know. i've thought of that. but sometimes people just don't seem real. you can mentally control what some people say or there is a touch of that or they're just completely predictable."
"i don't know. i've had someone say to me before, apropos of nothing, "i'm quite real." and i was grateful to hear it. i don't think anyone, it's not like anyone would come up and say, "i want you to know, i am a zombie, a simulated person, a non-player character, a complete illusion."
"haha. i don't see that happening, you're right."
CLEARCHARGE
"it never comes to that. no one really talks about it, do they, what they really believe about reality? it is unspoken but everyone knows what they have to assume to go about their normal lives on earth and they get it from what they see and hear around them."
"well, nobody really talks about it, but they may think it, that reality, the world of earth, is not quite what it seems, what you say everyone has to assume: an external world, physical motion, materialism or physicalism, whatever you call it. i think the reason really is a paranoid one, that they suspect they'll be accused of being at least slightly crazy and at worst get hauled off to a mental hospital and locked up forever. but then, also, i guess, these things can't be demonstrably proved to anyone else."
"or disproved. like if i say there is no external world, and this is the major plank of belief or assumption that everyone has to go by, really, well then someone will say, "what are we, a brain in a vat?" well, the problem with that is it assumes that there is still an external world outside our brain or our mind, a room with a vat and cables hooking us up to a Matrix-like simulation. the belief lingers on, whereas it should be thrown out completely. there is no external room where our brains are in, no wires, nothing. if anything, it's completely cleanly, invisibly done or connected."
"but we are visually impressionable people. it's not surprising, when everything we see leads us to assume there is an external world out there. we believe more what we see than what we hear, i guess."
"the truth of the matter is that if everyone teleported then the belief in an external world would collapse overnight. i can claim i have, but unless you do it yourself, you're going to doubt it."
"yes. it's completely obvious that the external world is not real when you've done it, teleport that is."
"yes. it's like an epiphany. because that just can't happen if the external world is real and the transition between locations is seamless, i mean, you feel nothing. i've read of other weird things happening to people, like seeing events repeated, a person passing by twice, or finding their car on a different level in the car park or parking lot, and seeing things that weren't there before suddenly appearing and so on."
"well, you could assume you are the only one who has teleported but surely if you'd done it, someone else has as well? it's just a fault in the visual geographical system. maybe it's even a fault or bug in the system that's contagious?"
"it happened to me so it has to happen to someone else? i'm propagating errors in the system?"
"but tell me again what the alternative is to an external material world?"
"right, physical motion is not real or mechanical motion or what seems like motion. in real space, everything exists in a fixed location relative to everything else. only time makes things change state."
"but then with pop culture and everything, you think, well, what is life then if not the commonly thought? is it a dream, is it the Matrix, what is it?"
"well that's where i run into problems too. i mean they are not clear-cut binary alternative possibilities, like is the external world real or not? i mean, i remember my life on earth began as a dream, right, but computers, hey, they're completely real, the technology, right? so it's probably at least a bit of both. what i have noticed, for me anyway, is that when i'm in a dream, i'm completely hazy about the true facts of my life, it's like i have an alternative dream existence that progresses that's similar to my waking life. i dream of my old school, my old homes, but the circumstances are different and when i try to remember facts about my waking life, i often think things that are false, only to realize upon waking, that i was incorrect."
"right, the dreams sweep you up and everything moves so fast that you're completely caught up in it."
"yeah, so you have the amnesia effect that blocks out the truth about waking life."
"which explains why you poorly remember what happened before you were born into this world, on earth. but as a schizophrenic who hears auditory hallucinations, what about that? i mean the question is, obviously, whether you hear thoughts that are your own, or it's coming from real other people."
"it's extremely awkward talking to your psychiatrist about voices. because inevitably, they want to know what you hear, right? and a lot of the stuff is personal. it's either your inner thoughts as sound or it's coming from people that are truly nearby, or even far away, i suppose."
"who may or may not be on earth, as well. how schizophrenic would you say you were, on a scale of 1 to 10?"
"well, there are different aspects. you have the voices, which to every psychiatrist indicates you are schizo, right? maybe i was about a 7 in that area once, at one time i had about 7 or 8 different voices going on at the same time. but the eyesight going haywire, the teleportation, the streams of text i could see, train timetables instantly changing in front of me, different maps of the country where the towns are all in wrong places, travel tickets dated in the future, passages of novels changing, all that made me about at least 9 on that scale, if not 10."
"whatever it is, a Matrix, or a dream, or whatever, is everyone in the same one? i mean, a lot of the stuff must be shared, right?"
"i can see how, if everyone were in their own matrix, they would end up with solipsistic fancies."
"right. all the stuff about the Law of Attraction, i mean, it could work, if you were in your own world, conceivably. but if everyone were in the same earth Matrix, it would seem a little harder to manifest things. you can't control other people and events so much."
"though, imagine a modern house existed right at the start of time. i mean, running hot water and electrical machines and lights. it's like in time, they reverse engineered everything to make it work mechanically, you know, installed plumbing, connected pipes to reservoirs, built power stations and so on. but the point is, that was there, this working house, in the beginning."
"like human is original, not created. OK, if we dismiss the external world outright, since you so proved it wasn't real, i mean, that's one philosophical question out of the way, the big question really is, what about the other people in reality? OK, do we assume everyone is on earth or some are left out? on earth are all the other people we see real or are some simulated people? are there other planets with people on them, in this same universe, could this be a Star Wars or Star Trek universe? are there other simulations running?"
"i don't know. it's like playing with different ideas. if only you had a deck of cards with different ideas or beliefs about reality, i mean you could play around with them, mix and match and see where that leads you. some beliefs negate others but i can see how some could all be real in some way."
"well, i can't help feeling that it is important to know the truth. i mean we may not be able to "know" in the strictest philosophical sense but at least we could think about the truth to some emotional depth. like, if i assume my mother is not real, is just a philosophical zombie, a simulated person, is it important to know that?"
"i think it's important to at least know the true date and how much of the history of earth may not be real. i mean, i've come out with the date Year 442 as the true date before, but that's just what i've heard. a lot of schizophrenics say the voices lie to them and whatever, but what if some of it's true?"
"it would explain a lot. how little everyone knows about reality for starters. and it's not like intelligent life doesn't exist. it does. it would just be that so little time has passed from the start of time that everyone is still feeling around for the truth. but voices do lie is the problem, some of the time. you can't believe everything you hear."
"back to what you were saying. i dreamed about my mother first and then my father second and i think i woke up next to my father and sister on a plane from Taipei to Hawaii on 29 August, 1975. US Immigration stamped the date at Honolulu on my passport which i still have. but my official birthday is February 11, 1972, so i was already 3 years old when i was truly born on earth. i guess some might say that's when my soul truly arrived."
"you still dream about your parents don't you?"
"yes. and they're alternative versions of them."
"you know, some would say that you merely forgot everything that happened before."
"well, no, i clearly remember the dream sequence leading up to that. i've never forgot. so i definitely have preferences, is waking life a dream? well, no, but it's, derived from it, is that the right word?"
"of course, the other big question, is what happens when you die on earth?"
"yes. are we fated to reincarnate on earth or do we go back to whatever it was before? because whatever real matter we are, it can't cease to exist right, it could only change to something very different at worst, right?"
"but back to the here and now. i'm obsessed with knowing who, if given some people are not real, is actually real that i interact with on a regular basis. i mean, what figure should i hold in my mind? are we all surrounded by illusions of people in our daily life but we read and see and hear about real people in the media?"
"or there could be pockets of real people together in some places. you never know, you could be surrounded by lots of real people, you just don't know it."
"but what is a best guess estimate? 66% zombies? 1% real people? or what?"
"yeah. there is a danger, when you've woken up about the external world not being the case, that you assume you're surrounded by illusions. i mean, it could be really embarrassing. you might know lots of real people but suddenly assume they're all not real."
"i know. i've thought of that. but sometimes people just don't seem real. you can mentally control what some people say or there is a touch of that or they're just completely predictable."
"i don't know. i've had someone say to me before, apropos of nothing, "i'm quite real." and i was grateful to hear it. i don't think anyone, it's not like anyone would come up and say, "i want you to know, i am a zombie, a simulated person, a non-player character, a complete illusion."
"haha. i don't see that happening, you're right."
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, February 1, 2014
The Earth System and the Shared Files
the earth system and the shared files:
"first off, let's say the external world isn't real and second, that mechanical motion, where it seems that material objects move in space, isn't real either."
"so idealism?"
"yes. or rather, just not materialism. not everything may be mental, exactly, either. but if both of what i was saying were not real, what do we have?"
"a world like in the movie, The Matrix?"
"right. but it's not explicit that the external world doesn't exist at all in it, it goes kind of halfway about it. let's call our world the Earth System instead. there is the possibility that not everyone in reality is in it, i mean, i'm sure i wasn't always in it myself."
"but let's say everyone, who, i guess, is living on Earth is in the same Earth System, i mean, that's what it seems. what runs the Earth System? is it a supercomputer somewhere? is it the collective unconscious? what is it?"
"they could be the same thing or not. maybe the collective unconscious is a supercomputer. there's no denying that advanced computing and calculation is real. but is it mental in the sense that idealism has? is all calculation mental? but anyway, say it is in the same Earth System, say some people you meet are real, therefore, but the rest are simulated people."
"but are we like plugged in and everything is from the Earth System cloud or do we have our own computing power or what?"
"maybe both. everyone can see, right, so maybe everyone has their own graphics or visual rendering devices. but going back to my theory of a chain of personal bubble spaces, everyone is still connected, like there's a reality-wide superbroadband. and everyone creates, just by living on Earth, doing things, seeing certain places, they create files or complexes, that can be shared down the chain."
"so like i go visit a certain part of a large city that no other real person has ever been to, when the next person who visits that place, i share the geographical file?"
"exactly. i think everyone makes life complexes that could be shared, even like certain foods or something, rather than some central cloud supercomputer doing everything for everyone."
"so like if i were more psychically attuned or something, i could sense these travelling life complexes arriving in my own world, my personal bubble space, meaning i could do such and such?"
"right. it's like it's been done before. it's tried and tested. it's safe."
"but do files arrive the same, i mean, what if there were errors in the transfer?"
"well speaking of errors, that's how we realize we are in a Matrix-like world, when there are noticeable errors. it's a shock. the world is not what we thought. but i guess, what you were saying, a few errors in the copy may not make much of a difference. it could be minor things, like the text of a book is slightly different, names and dates in history, and so on. or the size and colour of buildings in a geographical location are different."
"i don't know if i would dare go somewhere where no real person lives or has ever been to. to do something for the first time ever seems a little dangerous."
CLEARCHARGE
"first off, let's say the external world isn't real and second, that mechanical motion, where it seems that material objects move in space, isn't real either."
"so idealism?"
"yes. or rather, just not materialism. not everything may be mental, exactly, either. but if both of what i was saying were not real, what do we have?"
"a world like in the movie, The Matrix?"
"right. but it's not explicit that the external world doesn't exist at all in it, it goes kind of halfway about it. let's call our world the Earth System instead. there is the possibility that not everyone in reality is in it, i mean, i'm sure i wasn't always in it myself."
"but let's say everyone, who, i guess, is living on Earth is in the same Earth System, i mean, that's what it seems. what runs the Earth System? is it a supercomputer somewhere? is it the collective unconscious? what is it?"
"they could be the same thing or not. maybe the collective unconscious is a supercomputer. there's no denying that advanced computing and calculation is real. but is it mental in the sense that idealism has? is all calculation mental? but anyway, say it is in the same Earth System, say some people you meet are real, therefore, but the rest are simulated people."
"but are we like plugged in and everything is from the Earth System cloud or do we have our own computing power or what?"
"maybe both. everyone can see, right, so maybe everyone has their own graphics or visual rendering devices. but going back to my theory of a chain of personal bubble spaces, everyone is still connected, like there's a reality-wide superbroadband. and everyone creates, just by living on Earth, doing things, seeing certain places, they create files or complexes, that can be shared down the chain."
"so like i go visit a certain part of a large city that no other real person has ever been to, when the next person who visits that place, i share the geographical file?"
"exactly. i think everyone makes life complexes that could be shared, even like certain foods or something, rather than some central cloud supercomputer doing everything for everyone."
"so like if i were more psychically attuned or something, i could sense these travelling life complexes arriving in my own world, my personal bubble space, meaning i could do such and such?"
"right. it's like it's been done before. it's tried and tested. it's safe."
"but do files arrive the same, i mean, what if there were errors in the transfer?"
"well speaking of errors, that's how we realize we are in a Matrix-like world, when there are noticeable errors. it's a shock. the world is not what we thought. but i guess, what you were saying, a few errors in the copy may not make much of a difference. it could be minor things, like the text of a book is slightly different, names and dates in history, and so on. or the size and colour of buildings in a geographical location are different."
"i don't know if i would dare go somewhere where no real person lives or has ever been to. to do something for the first time ever seems a little dangerous."
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, January 18, 2014
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
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
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Consider Simulation Earth
consider simulation earth:
"it's called naive realism but it's completely what everyone has to go by in life here on earth. you have to accept the external world as a model in principle at least, you know, you have to learn to navigate from A to B on the planet, and assume everyone you see is a person you could interact with."
"what i always had a problem with, even when i was a kid when i more or less accepted everything, is this, i see things in front of me, you know, really at a distance, well, are they really things in front of me or is that just like a physical part of my eyesight, my field of vision, in front of me, and could it really be both? and then when i teleported, i knew physical motion was not real, so the world had to have some kind of virtual aspect to it."
"yeah, there's a kind of duality between naive realism and science against what's thought of as magic, don't you think? it's like, you teleport, well honey, mechanical motion and the external world were never real, so hey, why not? it's like you're watching a 3D YouTube video that just jumped to another scene, right? you're walking along and you suddenly teleport to another part of town. clairvoyance and telepathy? well, you just pick up what the people actually right next to you like forever because nobody really moves in real space think. objects not behaving scientifically? well, nobody said the laws of motion work perfectly, especially when people are emotional. telekinesis and mind over matter? well, as idealism has it, the world is mostly a mental construct. shapeshifting? well, i've had different bodies in my dreams. no big deal."
"yeah but still, what i'm saying, when you realize that earth is not what it seems, that it must have some virtual aspect at the bare minimum, i mean, you go a bit wild in what you think. right, if you dismiss solipsism to start with, the concept that you're the only one in existence, as too depressing for one, and two, it doesn't seem likely that my own unconscious could produce this much on its own, there must be other people, and then on the other end of the scale, you dismiss naive realism, that everyone you see is a real person, that there are billions of people on earth, i mean, even if one person you saw on the street were not real, was a fault in the system, that would deny naive realism, wouldn't it? so then you try to strike a median view, so let's say just under half the people are real, you still need a lot of people to produce all this media, right? but then you think, is there really just one simulation earth running? maybe it's like most people are still in alpha version, i'm running beta version, and there are details that are different in different versions, though fundamentally the simulations are the same, like, i think Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States but in alpha version, Abraham Lincoln doesn't even exist, or something like that. and then you think, well, maybe some other countries are completely virtual, you know, maybe you shouldn't go there, it would strain the simulation. and you think, maybe all the Russians are in like the Russian sector of real space, maybe the English speakers are spread out. how are real people connected and what data flows through, anyway?"
"yeah, but doesn't it make you paranoid about the virtual people, the NPC's, the non player characters? is there any control over them? i mean, it's like someone a long time ago imagined someone, someone who never exists really, and then eventually when simulation earth is up and running, they've manifested as a character in it. how else could they have got there?"
"well no, in the end, they're not real, they're like some kind of electronic configuration. i mean, it's not like they're external demons trying to enter this reality!"
"in a paranoid fit one night, that's exactly what i thought. it's scary, people that are not real, like, taking over reality."
"i mean the unconscious produces details, the imagination constructs personal like data or something, it's probably harmless. just think of them as robots."
"well that just leads to the question, is it programmable in some way? can we somehow break into the system and change the outcome? code the Matrix? you know, if it's like an electronic arcade game, can we cheat?"
"yeah, there's lots of stuff on that, you know, the law of attraction, consciously concentrating on outcomes, writing stuff down, and so on. and there's a quote from Star Wars: Episode I, Qui-Gon Jinn says to Anakin Skywalker, "your focus determines your reality." but what you said about an arcade game, i was thinking, if in an advanced amusement arcade you had the most convincing virtual 3D reality game, wouldn't there be a moment you think to yourself when you took the headset or whatever off, this is just what the regular world is?"
"and would people take life so seriously if they thought of it as just an arcade game, a virtual experience? but i guess for now, there's nothing else. i mean, it's not like there ever is an external world that's real, that there's a room there where my brain is and there are plugs leading into the computer, no, it's completely cleanly invisibly wired, you know? i haven't got the best memory. i would say i have impressions and ideas of what life was before earth but nothing i can definitively say is a memory. it's not convincing to me the theory that time is a linear chain of progressive change, that the future will keep being different from the past. i don't think that's the case. i think it's most likely that when i die, game over on earth, i just go back to what it was before, you know?"
CLEARCHARGE
"it's called naive realism but it's completely what everyone has to go by in life here on earth. you have to accept the external world as a model in principle at least, you know, you have to learn to navigate from A to B on the planet, and assume everyone you see is a person you could interact with."
"what i always had a problem with, even when i was a kid when i more or less accepted everything, is this, i see things in front of me, you know, really at a distance, well, are they really things in front of me or is that just like a physical part of my eyesight, my field of vision, in front of me, and could it really be both? and then when i teleported, i knew physical motion was not real, so the world had to have some kind of virtual aspect to it."
"yeah, there's a kind of duality between naive realism and science against what's thought of as magic, don't you think? it's like, you teleport, well honey, mechanical motion and the external world were never real, so hey, why not? it's like you're watching a 3D YouTube video that just jumped to another scene, right? you're walking along and you suddenly teleport to another part of town. clairvoyance and telepathy? well, you just pick up what the people actually right next to you like forever because nobody really moves in real space think. objects not behaving scientifically? well, nobody said the laws of motion work perfectly, especially when people are emotional. telekinesis and mind over matter? well, as idealism has it, the world is mostly a mental construct. shapeshifting? well, i've had different bodies in my dreams. no big deal."
"yeah but still, what i'm saying, when you realize that earth is not what it seems, that it must have some virtual aspect at the bare minimum, i mean, you go a bit wild in what you think. right, if you dismiss solipsism to start with, the concept that you're the only one in existence, as too depressing for one, and two, it doesn't seem likely that my own unconscious could produce this much on its own, there must be other people, and then on the other end of the scale, you dismiss naive realism, that everyone you see is a real person, that there are billions of people on earth, i mean, even if one person you saw on the street were not real, was a fault in the system, that would deny naive realism, wouldn't it? so then you try to strike a median view, so let's say just under half the people are real, you still need a lot of people to produce all this media, right? but then you think, is there really just one simulation earth running? maybe it's like most people are still in alpha version, i'm running beta version, and there are details that are different in different versions, though fundamentally the simulations are the same, like, i think Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States but in alpha version, Abraham Lincoln doesn't even exist, or something like that. and then you think, well, maybe some other countries are completely virtual, you know, maybe you shouldn't go there, it would strain the simulation. and you think, maybe all the Russians are in like the Russian sector of real space, maybe the English speakers are spread out. how are real people connected and what data flows through, anyway?"
"yeah, but doesn't it make you paranoid about the virtual people, the NPC's, the non player characters? is there any control over them? i mean, it's like someone a long time ago imagined someone, someone who never exists really, and then eventually when simulation earth is up and running, they've manifested as a character in it. how else could they have got there?"
"well no, in the end, they're not real, they're like some kind of electronic configuration. i mean, it's not like they're external demons trying to enter this reality!"
"in a paranoid fit one night, that's exactly what i thought. it's scary, people that are not real, like, taking over reality."
"i mean the unconscious produces details, the imagination constructs personal like data or something, it's probably harmless. just think of them as robots."
"well that just leads to the question, is it programmable in some way? can we somehow break into the system and change the outcome? code the Matrix? you know, if it's like an electronic arcade game, can we cheat?"
"yeah, there's lots of stuff on that, you know, the law of attraction, consciously concentrating on outcomes, writing stuff down, and so on. and there's a quote from Star Wars: Episode I, Qui-Gon Jinn says to Anakin Skywalker, "your focus determines your reality." but what you said about an arcade game, i was thinking, if in an advanced amusement arcade you had the most convincing virtual 3D reality game, wouldn't there be a moment you think to yourself when you took the headset or whatever off, this is just what the regular world is?"
"and would people take life so seriously if they thought of it as just an arcade game, a virtual experience? but i guess for now, there's nothing else. i mean, it's not like there ever is an external world that's real, that there's a room there where my brain is and there are plugs leading into the computer, no, it's completely cleanly invisibly wired, you know? i haven't got the best memory. i would say i have impressions and ideas of what life was before earth but nothing i can definitively say is a memory. it's not convincing to me the theory that time is a linear chain of progressive change, that the future will keep being different from the past. i don't think that's the case. i think it's most likely that when i die, game over on earth, i just go back to what it was before, you know?"
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Flexible Assumptions about Life
flexible assumptions about life:
"what happened when i was 20 was quite shocking to me. i mean huge upheaval. it's like i was born, i came into this world, i accepted everything i was told, and for a long time, i believed it all. but i suppose as a child, that's typical."
"there's a docile quality to childhood. it's like in a dream. you instantly accept everything you think about the dream world. in a way psychologically that is the most docile state perhaps, in that you're completely led by your thoughts no matter how strange they seem when you wake up."
"and the first thing i remember about this lifetime is a long series of dreams. well then the breakdown happened to me and all the craziness. but what it did was, it called all my assumptions about life, about the world, about earth, into question. it's like it scrambled my brain. i knew some of my thoughts were crazy, were definitely false, but then what if some of the assumptions i had when i was, you know, "normal", also false? how could i be sure?"
"you mean normal assumptions about life and the world?"
"yes, the ones everyone accepts, like the population."
"like seeing is believing."
"exactly. that everything you see and hear in three dimensions is somehow real is the core assumption. but when you have hallucinations, when you're not sure what you're seeing or hearing is real and what is not anymore, that changes everything. and you can never change it back."
"not to lessen what you're saying, but i wonder if, what if everyone experiences hallucinations, maybe just slightly in some cases, you know, not enough to raise the alarm, but it's like, no one admits to it!? maybe it's not a minority? or not hallucinations, in that they're not real at all, but a whisper here and there, you know, they're not sure if someone spoke or not, they certainly can't see anyone, but they're none the wiser? maybe they see something and think, that's odd, but they don't really question it?"
"so, so called normal forever isn't the case for anyone? that wouldn't surprise me. the mind is a delicate thing. it's an upset or something strange that happens first."
"what happened to you was your assumptions were shaken and you became a sceptic."
"no, you're right. that's why you have to have flexible assumptions about life. what happens when you realize you were crazy about something you believed for a very long time is that the shock doesn't wear off for years. you wonder about everything. like are the people i see real, is the world full of philosophical zombies or illusions of people? are the voices i hear, without seeing anybody, real people calling to me, or not?"
"and it's not definitely all or nothing. what if the answer is sometimes?"
"right. it's like changing gears. you wake up and think, what am i going to assume about the world today? you don't want to get stuck into a mindset that collapses when you find out some part of it wasn't true and never was."
CLEARCHARGE
"what happened when i was 20 was quite shocking to me. i mean huge upheaval. it's like i was born, i came into this world, i accepted everything i was told, and for a long time, i believed it all. but i suppose as a child, that's typical."
"there's a docile quality to childhood. it's like in a dream. you instantly accept everything you think about the dream world. in a way psychologically that is the most docile state perhaps, in that you're completely led by your thoughts no matter how strange they seem when you wake up."
"and the first thing i remember about this lifetime is a long series of dreams. well then the breakdown happened to me and all the craziness. but what it did was, it called all my assumptions about life, about the world, about earth, into question. it's like it scrambled my brain. i knew some of my thoughts were crazy, were definitely false, but then what if some of the assumptions i had when i was, you know, "normal", also false? how could i be sure?"
"you mean normal assumptions about life and the world?"
"yes, the ones everyone accepts, like the population."
"like seeing is believing."
"exactly. that everything you see and hear in three dimensions is somehow real is the core assumption. but when you have hallucinations, when you're not sure what you're seeing or hearing is real and what is not anymore, that changes everything. and you can never change it back."
"not to lessen what you're saying, but i wonder if, what if everyone experiences hallucinations, maybe just slightly in some cases, you know, not enough to raise the alarm, but it's like, no one admits to it!? maybe it's not a minority? or not hallucinations, in that they're not real at all, but a whisper here and there, you know, they're not sure if someone spoke or not, they certainly can't see anyone, but they're none the wiser? maybe they see something and think, that's odd, but they don't really question it?"
"so, so called normal forever isn't the case for anyone? that wouldn't surprise me. the mind is a delicate thing. it's an upset or something strange that happens first."
"what happened to you was your assumptions were shaken and you became a sceptic."
"no, you're right. that's why you have to have flexible assumptions about life. what happens when you realize you were crazy about something you believed for a very long time is that the shock doesn't wear off for years. you wonder about everything. like are the people i see real, is the world full of philosophical zombies or illusions of people? are the voices i hear, without seeing anybody, real people calling to me, or not?"
"and it's not definitely all or nothing. what if the answer is sometimes?"
"right. it's like changing gears. you wake up and think, what am i going to assume about the world today? you don't want to get stuck into a mindset that collapses when you find out some part of it wasn't true and never was."
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Earth Quick and Easy
earth quick and easy:
"so it came to me. the dream world is created in an instant, right? or maybe not an instant, some of it may have been swimming around in the unconscious for a while, but still it's pretty fast, right? coupled with that, the idea that i dreamed my way into earth, well what do you have? the concept that maybe earth is somehow part of the dream world, or was created out of the dream world, and that maybe it too was constructed pretty fast."
"the word "constructed" that you use, that just goes against what we normally think of how things, you know, buildings, roads, manufactured items, are made, like really slowly and using mechanical means."
"right, mental manufacturing is quicker and easier than manual or mechanical ways. the difference between the dream and earth is that the dream world is a blur most of the time, but the dream world extension that is earth is clear and in more detail, but it's still just an extension nevertheless."
"well it's the detail and the stability that make it seem real. it's like a computer image file loading slowly, a few big blurry blocks to start with and then it clears up into detail. the dream is the blurry image and earth is the clear image. that's a thought. i suppose it's a problem for some, the whole earth thing and science seeming to work perfectly in a lot of cases. there's the thinking i've read that how could we tell if everything were virtual, you know, if it were like a vast computer simulation, and obviously this is coming from a position where everything seems normal and odd things don't happen, you know, like it's all physical science in perfect order."
"we see glitches, real errors in the coding of earth."
"yeah, like the program has bugs, if it were a computer simulation, that is."
"right, things have happened, definitely, that make it impossible to really believe anymore. it's almost ironic. it's like the only person who knows earth isn't quite real is the person running a pretty bad, poor quality "earth simulation computer program". he's the guy with the crappy software or computer. the guy with the bug free perfect program probably still thinks earth is completely real, all science is true, and Physicalism explains everything."
"perhaps, but maybe no one buys it all, believes in everything like that."
"you're right. i guess everyone has doubts at some point. you know, but yet we're probably dismissed as crazy schizophrenics. it's like, oh you just have problems with your perception, a few crossed wires there in your brain, that's what it is, which is somehow getting divorced from a physical world."
"well ok, back on track, so earth was created in an instant or pretty quick. so when did it start? because then the earth history that we have is a lie, right?"
"well, at the start, i guess we were all in worlds of our own or in little groups of neighbouring people sharing a world. and then we imagined and dreamed earth into existence some time later, and then we slowly started to populate earth, of course, earth being a world full of philosophical zombies to start with and just a few real people."
"your best guess?"
"i don't know. from what i'm led to think, i'm guessing earth began in the 1800's. maybe the first real person on earth came before. but then, i think reality is only a few hundred years old. i know this is very alternative. what we have in the general domain of theories is that it is anything from a few thousand years old to billions of years old. what i think they've grossly underestimated is how fast things happen and how large the unconscious is and what it's capable of and how much existed right at the start of time."
"but you're an Idealist. you believe in the greater mental. it's an extreme position perhaps. it certainly means you disagree with both Creationists and people who think evolution is true."
"people who believe in evolution believe in Physicalism."
"and ok, so what is the true date, assuming that one, an accurate calendar was kept right from day one, and two, that you know what it is?"
"the year is 442 and today the date is September 24."
CLEARCHARGE
"so it came to me. the dream world is created in an instant, right? or maybe not an instant, some of it may have been swimming around in the unconscious for a while, but still it's pretty fast, right? coupled with that, the idea that i dreamed my way into earth, well what do you have? the concept that maybe earth is somehow part of the dream world, or was created out of the dream world, and that maybe it too was constructed pretty fast."
"the word "constructed" that you use, that just goes against what we normally think of how things, you know, buildings, roads, manufactured items, are made, like really slowly and using mechanical means."
"right, mental manufacturing is quicker and easier than manual or mechanical ways. the difference between the dream and earth is that the dream world is a blur most of the time, but the dream world extension that is earth is clear and in more detail, but it's still just an extension nevertheless."
"well it's the detail and the stability that make it seem real. it's like a computer image file loading slowly, a few big blurry blocks to start with and then it clears up into detail. the dream is the blurry image and earth is the clear image. that's a thought. i suppose it's a problem for some, the whole earth thing and science seeming to work perfectly in a lot of cases. there's the thinking i've read that how could we tell if everything were virtual, you know, if it were like a vast computer simulation, and obviously this is coming from a position where everything seems normal and odd things don't happen, you know, like it's all physical science in perfect order."
"we see glitches, real errors in the coding of earth."
"yeah, like the program has bugs, if it were a computer simulation, that is."
"right, things have happened, definitely, that make it impossible to really believe anymore. it's almost ironic. it's like the only person who knows earth isn't quite real is the person running a pretty bad, poor quality "earth simulation computer program". he's the guy with the crappy software or computer. the guy with the bug free perfect program probably still thinks earth is completely real, all science is true, and Physicalism explains everything."
"perhaps, but maybe no one buys it all, believes in everything like that."
"you're right. i guess everyone has doubts at some point. you know, but yet we're probably dismissed as crazy schizophrenics. it's like, oh you just have problems with your perception, a few crossed wires there in your brain, that's what it is, which is somehow getting divorced from a physical world."
"well ok, back on track, so earth was created in an instant or pretty quick. so when did it start? because then the earth history that we have is a lie, right?"
"well, at the start, i guess we were all in worlds of our own or in little groups of neighbouring people sharing a world. and then we imagined and dreamed earth into existence some time later, and then we slowly started to populate earth, of course, earth being a world full of philosophical zombies to start with and just a few real people."
"your best guess?"
"i don't know. from what i'm led to think, i'm guessing earth began in the 1800's. maybe the first real person on earth came before. but then, i think reality is only a few hundred years old. i know this is very alternative. what we have in the general domain of theories is that it is anything from a few thousand years old to billions of years old. what i think they've grossly underestimated is how fast things happen and how large the unconscious is and what it's capable of and how much existed right at the start of time."
"but you're an Idealist. you believe in the greater mental. it's an extreme position perhaps. it certainly means you disagree with both Creationists and people who think evolution is true."
"people who believe in evolution believe in Physicalism."
"and ok, so what is the true date, assuming that one, an accurate calendar was kept right from day one, and two, that you know what it is?"
"the year is 442 and today the date is September 24."
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Hallucinations Gone Wild
hallucinations gone wild:
"so that's pretty much how the hallucinations started. i was feeling quite paranoid, very alone. then i started hearing people's voices. it's interesting even though a lot of it was about what i was thinking, so i should have known really, i assumed they were real. you could say i was really naive about the whole thing. i was 20 years old. i didn't know what schizophrenia was at the time. and that all makes sense the normal way. anyway that's how it all began."
"but what triggered it? something must have happened. and what do you mean by makes sense the normal way?"
"in my case i think it was just fear. but to start with it was just auditory. the visual hallucinations came later. what i mean is i worked out that probably most of the voices weren't real at that time, which is more or less what a psychiatrist would say. you know, your brain's not working the right way so you hear your thoughts and so on. what i wanted to tell you is the visual hallucinations became a lot more in an episode i had over two years ago. i really saw things! at night i looked out of the window and saw buildings move and the atmosphere, it was like my house was a starship and i was flying over a huge city. that lasted on and off over a couple of days. it's when you don't sleep, you start thinking a lot, the hallucinations pick right up."
"it doesn't sound safe."
"it's not. you have to be careful when it starts up. but the thought presented itself to me clearly that if in the general equation of everything the mental component of reality were more, that the world even could be generated in a schizophrenic fit in a moment. and even before objects seemed to appear from out of nowhere, i mean that could be touched. i'm not 100% sure but i think i got an extra bottle of Coca-Cola in my fridge, for example. the thing is, i couldn't prove it, because i wasn't sure about the number. also, in the dark, i'd see ghostly images of extra cigarettes in the pack and i was kind of hoping if i could just touch them they would materialize. and then i'd never run out of cigarettes!"
"let me get this straight. so what you are saying is, a real magician is someone having an extreme schizophrenic episode!? magicking objects up from hallucinations?"
"yeah. i guess. but i haven't seen anything out of the ordinary for years."
"but can you make things disappear?"
"well, i have lost a few things over the years."
"if it's a world full of philosophical zombies, maybe you could delete a few people here and there."
"hold on. that's dangerous territory. what if you tried to delete a real person? not good. or just thought about it even? i don't want to go there."
"no you're right. but what if you deleted all the zombies to just leave only the real people on earth?"
"well that might sound fine to start with but what if everyone was left stranded? say 9 out of 10 people disappeared?"
"yeah, you're right again. but what i'm trying to say is, if only you could control it, it wasn't a dangerous out of control thing, you know what i mean?"
"no, i see what you're saying. it did occur to me that maybe all the other real people were in different countries but who knows, right? i had this experience a year after it all started, when i was 21, of sitting in a train to London from Durham and i had this definite feeling that no one else on the train was real, i was completely alone. it's just that the mood changes so drastically sometimes you're forced to go along with it."
"yes. that's true even when you're what they call mentally normal, not schizophrenic. what do you suppose will happen when you die?"
"i expect i'll start dreaming of somewhere else beforehand and then i'll wake up there one day. just how i got here. and that will be that, the end of my time on earth."
CLEARCHARGE
"so that's pretty much how the hallucinations started. i was feeling quite paranoid, very alone. then i started hearing people's voices. it's interesting even though a lot of it was about what i was thinking, so i should have known really, i assumed they were real. you could say i was really naive about the whole thing. i was 20 years old. i didn't know what schizophrenia was at the time. and that all makes sense the normal way. anyway that's how it all began."
"but what triggered it? something must have happened. and what do you mean by makes sense the normal way?"
"in my case i think it was just fear. but to start with it was just auditory. the visual hallucinations came later. what i mean is i worked out that probably most of the voices weren't real at that time, which is more or less what a psychiatrist would say. you know, your brain's not working the right way so you hear your thoughts and so on. what i wanted to tell you is the visual hallucinations became a lot more in an episode i had over two years ago. i really saw things! at night i looked out of the window and saw buildings move and the atmosphere, it was like my house was a starship and i was flying over a huge city. that lasted on and off over a couple of days. it's when you don't sleep, you start thinking a lot, the hallucinations pick right up."
"it doesn't sound safe."
"it's not. you have to be careful when it starts up. but the thought presented itself to me clearly that if in the general equation of everything the mental component of reality were more, that the world even could be generated in a schizophrenic fit in a moment. and even before objects seemed to appear from out of nowhere, i mean that could be touched. i'm not 100% sure but i think i got an extra bottle of Coca-Cola in my fridge, for example. the thing is, i couldn't prove it, because i wasn't sure about the number. also, in the dark, i'd see ghostly images of extra cigarettes in the pack and i was kind of hoping if i could just touch them they would materialize. and then i'd never run out of cigarettes!"
"let me get this straight. so what you are saying is, a real magician is someone having an extreme schizophrenic episode!? magicking objects up from hallucinations?"
"yeah. i guess. but i haven't seen anything out of the ordinary for years."
"but can you make things disappear?"
"well, i have lost a few things over the years."
"if it's a world full of philosophical zombies, maybe you could delete a few people here and there."
"hold on. that's dangerous territory. what if you tried to delete a real person? not good. or just thought about it even? i don't want to go there."
"no you're right. but what if you deleted all the zombies to just leave only the real people on earth?"
"well that might sound fine to start with but what if everyone was left stranded? say 9 out of 10 people disappeared?"
"yeah, you're right again. but what i'm trying to say is, if only you could control it, it wasn't a dangerous out of control thing, you know what i mean?"
"no, i see what you're saying. it did occur to me that maybe all the other real people were in different countries but who knows, right? i had this experience a year after it all started, when i was 21, of sitting in a train to London from Durham and i had this definite feeling that no one else on the train was real, i was completely alone. it's just that the mood changes so drastically sometimes you're forced to go along with it."
"yes. that's true even when you're what they call mentally normal, not schizophrenic. what do you suppose will happen when you die?"
"i expect i'll start dreaming of somewhere else beforehand and then i'll wake up there one day. just how i got here. and that will be that, the end of my time on earth."
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, November 9, 2013
To Forget and to Sleep
to forget and to sleep:
"...well, no, that's not the point. i'm not theorizing or speculating or whatever you call it just for the sake of thinking a lot. there is a purpose to it. i want some answers. really, like how did i get here? why am i on earth? what happened before and so on."
"right, don't get so worked up. i wasn't attacking your opinion. it's just that some would say, you know, here's a guy that could better spend his time thinking about more practical things, things that you can verify, be sure of..."
"i know, i know. and that has its place. i'm not knocking that. it has its value. but don't you think there's a mystery here? this a pretty vaguely discussed topic but there must be a lot of people interested. when i was young, i mean, i had all these questions but then, you know, life got busier and they faded into the background but now i'm older they're back. you want to know what i think? and i don't mean to force my ideas on to you but i'm pretty sure about a few things."
"go right ahead. and i'm not saying i agree with what i said. i'm just communicating an opinion from somewhere or someone else."
"ok, we'll get your true opinion later. no, so i've been thinking a lot about what i'm thinking while i'm thinking, if that makes sense, becoming more aware of how my thoughts drift, kind of keeping track of what's going on inside my head."
"right. being aware of your thoughts."
"yes. so there are a couple of things i've noticed. one, you can forget something you were thinking about within two seconds. it's really that fast. you know, so, normally you may think you have a pretty sharp memory, that you remember most things, right? wrong. you can forget something instantly, especially when you're thinking fast. i mean, i know, sometimes you can recover that thought if you dig a little, right, sometimes you can get it back."
"yes, it's amazing when that happens. but i never thought i had a very sharp memory."
"and the second thing is, when you're falling asleep, there is an incredible onset of these random thoughts from the subconscious. it's as if they're from an alternative life where the rules and baseline assumptions about your world are slightly different. and in a dream, there is always a concept to it. say, for example, i'm dreaming about being back at school. ok, i'm not actually seeing that much, but i know it's at school, exams are on, i'm obviously going to fail because i don't remember the subject material anymore and so on. and the dreams are so powerful they wipe out whatever our regular daytime awake thoughts are. you know, so i can see that if life on earth begins in a dream which you wake up from actually being on earth, i can see how you might have amnesia about what your life previously was."
"and it's easy to forget anyway, right? so the argument we might make that we generally have a good memory is perhaps not so true?"
"we remember a few things very well and a few more things pretty well but which only disguises the fact that a lot of these things slip right past us."
"well i don't think you're wasting your time. i mean, it's definitely not something that anyone could say they have absolutely no interest in. it's something that concerns everyone on earth, where they come from, how did they get here... i don't know. i guess it's a different focus. and it's like the brain can only focus on a few things at a time, right? that's why we forget too, i guess, come to think of it."
"yeah. do you remember exactly what you were thinking ten seconds ago?"
CLEARCHARGE
"...well, no, that's not the point. i'm not theorizing or speculating or whatever you call it just for the sake of thinking a lot. there is a purpose to it. i want some answers. really, like how did i get here? why am i on earth? what happened before and so on."
"right, don't get so worked up. i wasn't attacking your opinion. it's just that some would say, you know, here's a guy that could better spend his time thinking about more practical things, things that you can verify, be sure of..."
"i know, i know. and that has its place. i'm not knocking that. it has its value. but don't you think there's a mystery here? this a pretty vaguely discussed topic but there must be a lot of people interested. when i was young, i mean, i had all these questions but then, you know, life got busier and they faded into the background but now i'm older they're back. you want to know what i think? and i don't mean to force my ideas on to you but i'm pretty sure about a few things."
"go right ahead. and i'm not saying i agree with what i said. i'm just communicating an opinion from somewhere or someone else."
"ok, we'll get your true opinion later. no, so i've been thinking a lot about what i'm thinking while i'm thinking, if that makes sense, becoming more aware of how my thoughts drift, kind of keeping track of what's going on inside my head."
"right. being aware of your thoughts."
"yes. so there are a couple of things i've noticed. one, you can forget something you were thinking about within two seconds. it's really that fast. you know, so, normally you may think you have a pretty sharp memory, that you remember most things, right? wrong. you can forget something instantly, especially when you're thinking fast. i mean, i know, sometimes you can recover that thought if you dig a little, right, sometimes you can get it back."
"yes, it's amazing when that happens. but i never thought i had a very sharp memory."
"and the second thing is, when you're falling asleep, there is an incredible onset of these random thoughts from the subconscious. it's as if they're from an alternative life where the rules and baseline assumptions about your world are slightly different. and in a dream, there is always a concept to it. say, for example, i'm dreaming about being back at school. ok, i'm not actually seeing that much, but i know it's at school, exams are on, i'm obviously going to fail because i don't remember the subject material anymore and so on. and the dreams are so powerful they wipe out whatever our regular daytime awake thoughts are. you know, so i can see that if life on earth begins in a dream which you wake up from actually being on earth, i can see how you might have amnesia about what your life previously was."
"and it's easy to forget anyway, right? so the argument we might make that we generally have a good memory is perhaps not so true?"
"we remember a few things very well and a few more things pretty well but which only disguises the fact that a lot of these things slip right past us."
"well i don't think you're wasting your time. i mean, it's definitely not something that anyone could say they have absolutely no interest in. it's something that concerns everyone on earth, where they come from, how did they get here... i don't know. i guess it's a different focus. and it's like the brain can only focus on a few things at a time, right? that's why we forget too, i guess, come to think of it."
"yeah. do you remember exactly what you were thinking ten seconds ago?"
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, September 21, 2013
What the World Seems
what the world seems:
"so at one point in time it seemed completely real, for an instant, that i could be the only person in reality. it was my solipsistic moment. and let me tell you it was a frightening concept. but even worse was that, ok, i'm thinking i'm the only real person, but all the while, i'm in a crowded room surrounded by people! it's one thing to think i am alone, but then what is going on with all the other people i can see? it means a total loss of control, right? a reality of falsity that you have little or no power over."
"but you came back from that? you stopped believing that? how long did it go on for?"
"well, yes and no. that was one extreme. and people like simple thinking, right? either other people are all not real or the other side of the coin is everyone is real. now i had gone for years thinking that everyone was real, so long that i can always revert to that, but the thing is, i think i've come to the conclusion that thinking in black and white, all or nothing, you know, that kind of thinking is flawed. what is more probable, and in the end you have to deal with probabilities because no one is going to come up to you and tell what the truth is, right, is that the world is somewhere in between."
"you mean some people are real and some people are not, they're philosophical zombies?"
"exactly. the philosophical question of the guy dreaming about being a butterfly and is he really a man or a butterfly dreaming he is a man, i think the correct answer is both. what this example just points out is, again, we like to think of binary possibilities, it's one or the other, but the truth is, to put it simply, it's all real. there are elements of truth in both situations."
"ok. but because we're talking, we know the other person is real, right, and solipsism can't be strictly true?"
"yes. but the part of that where other people are not real, is what i'm saying, that is probably the case. just not everyone."
"but how can you disprove that everyone is real and we're all together on earth?"
"well one thing i do remember clearly is that my life on earth began as a sequence of dreams, each more and more "awake" like until we get to where i have my first clear memory of being on earth at the age of three, the summer of 1975, i mean fully awake, on a flight to Honolulu from Taipei. and the weird thing is, you'd expect to forget a lot of dreams, but i still remember each of the dreams in my pre-earth sequence. so what i'm saying is, earth has something to do with the dream world. sometimes, i wonder if something really bad were to happen in life here on earth, would i "wake up" from the waking nightmare, in the world i came from before earth?"
"but what you're saying about people wanting to think of distinct possibilities, you know, as if only the extremes could be true, it's because it's hard to make sense of something more complex where bits of both or even third or fourth possibilities could be true. you can accept that, i mean, but it's hard to know where to begin, and it's frustrating, because ultimately it becomes some kind of mathematical project, where you're looking at all the combinations that could exist and you try to assign probabilities to each. it's like you want to think life is simple but in the end it's a mess of Bayesian probabilities or something like that."
"i know. i'm constantly changing my assumptions. some days it's like, well, maybe i met a real person today and other days, no one around me is real, i'm wandering around in a waking dream. and it's not like in The Matrix, where in a sense the guy got out of being a brain in a vat. if you were a brain in a vat, you couldn't exactly stop being one. the "real world" in the movie may have more real people in it, that's all it is."
"that's slightly a whole other topic. what i want to know is, if some people are real and some aren't, how do you tell who is real and who isn't?"
"well as far as logic goes, and i'm not sure, real people are more shocking."
"because philosophical zombies are more a product of the unconscious?"
"right. they're more what you expect."
"well i've met plenty of shocking people, so that's at least a few dozen real people i guess. but what if you marry someone who isn't real, or marry someone who is real, for that matter? would you have a preference one way or the other?"
"well that's a minefield. i think i have the same policy for both when i'm with people. i can't get into obsessing, well, is this person real or not all the time."
"that's probably wise. but you can't exactly escape from that. once the question is out of the bag, so to speak, you can't avoid it anymore."
"well from a paranoid point of view, and i confess, i've lain awake frightened as anything some nights, both possibilities are worrying."
"right. if the other person is not real, then no big deal, right, is one way to look at any trouble. but what's the other fear?"
"it goes back to that moment when i thought i alone was real but was surrounded by a crowd. if that situation could exist, where the unconscious runs rampant, generating zombies everywhere, it just seems a dangerous place to be."
"so more real people, please. so i guess finally, what's a good number to hold in your mind as a best guess as to what the true population is?"
"i don't know, i wish i did. but i'm sure there are other worlds too and not everyone is on earth."
"come on, give me a number! something i wouldn't end up embarrassed by, should the truth ever get out."
"ok. maybe lower estimate high two digits, which would mean the collective unconscious is huge, like a supercomputer processing all these zombie people. high estimate, maybe a million, where you couldn't really tell the difference."
"so maybe median estimate 5 digits? somebody must have written all these books in the book stores, right?"
"the main variable we need to know is how much is the unconscious capable of? if it's a supercomputer, then anything is possible, right? then we get a low figure for the true number of people. if it requires that many people to produce all the literature and stuff like that in the world then it's a high figure. and anyway, you should probably even if you have the correct estimate consciously change your assumptions all the time."
"just to get used to all the possibilities?"
"right. exactly."
CLEARCHARGE
"so at one point in time it seemed completely real, for an instant, that i could be the only person in reality. it was my solipsistic moment. and let me tell you it was a frightening concept. but even worse was that, ok, i'm thinking i'm the only real person, but all the while, i'm in a crowded room surrounded by people! it's one thing to think i am alone, but then what is going on with all the other people i can see? it means a total loss of control, right? a reality of falsity that you have little or no power over."
"but you came back from that? you stopped believing that? how long did it go on for?"
"well, yes and no. that was one extreme. and people like simple thinking, right? either other people are all not real or the other side of the coin is everyone is real. now i had gone for years thinking that everyone was real, so long that i can always revert to that, but the thing is, i think i've come to the conclusion that thinking in black and white, all or nothing, you know, that kind of thinking is flawed. what is more probable, and in the end you have to deal with probabilities because no one is going to come up to you and tell what the truth is, right, is that the world is somewhere in between."
"you mean some people are real and some people are not, they're philosophical zombies?"
"exactly. the philosophical question of the guy dreaming about being a butterfly and is he really a man or a butterfly dreaming he is a man, i think the correct answer is both. what this example just points out is, again, we like to think of binary possibilities, it's one or the other, but the truth is, to put it simply, it's all real. there are elements of truth in both situations."
"ok. but because we're talking, we know the other person is real, right, and solipsism can't be strictly true?"
"yes. but the part of that where other people are not real, is what i'm saying, that is probably the case. just not everyone."
"but how can you disprove that everyone is real and we're all together on earth?"
"well one thing i do remember clearly is that my life on earth began as a sequence of dreams, each more and more "awake" like until we get to where i have my first clear memory of being on earth at the age of three, the summer of 1975, i mean fully awake, on a flight to Honolulu from Taipei. and the weird thing is, you'd expect to forget a lot of dreams, but i still remember each of the dreams in my pre-earth sequence. so what i'm saying is, earth has something to do with the dream world. sometimes, i wonder if something really bad were to happen in life here on earth, would i "wake up" from the waking nightmare, in the world i came from before earth?"
"but what you're saying about people wanting to think of distinct possibilities, you know, as if only the extremes could be true, it's because it's hard to make sense of something more complex where bits of both or even third or fourth possibilities could be true. you can accept that, i mean, but it's hard to know where to begin, and it's frustrating, because ultimately it becomes some kind of mathematical project, where you're looking at all the combinations that could exist and you try to assign probabilities to each. it's like you want to think life is simple but in the end it's a mess of Bayesian probabilities or something like that."
"i know. i'm constantly changing my assumptions. some days it's like, well, maybe i met a real person today and other days, no one around me is real, i'm wandering around in a waking dream. and it's not like in The Matrix, where in a sense the guy got out of being a brain in a vat. if you were a brain in a vat, you couldn't exactly stop being one. the "real world" in the movie may have more real people in it, that's all it is."
"that's slightly a whole other topic. what i want to know is, if some people are real and some aren't, how do you tell who is real and who isn't?"
"well as far as logic goes, and i'm not sure, real people are more shocking."
"because philosophical zombies are more a product of the unconscious?"
"right. they're more what you expect."
"well i've met plenty of shocking people, so that's at least a few dozen real people i guess. but what if you marry someone who isn't real, or marry someone who is real, for that matter? would you have a preference one way or the other?"
"well that's a minefield. i think i have the same policy for both when i'm with people. i can't get into obsessing, well, is this person real or not all the time."
"that's probably wise. but you can't exactly escape from that. once the question is out of the bag, so to speak, you can't avoid it anymore."
"well from a paranoid point of view, and i confess, i've lain awake frightened as anything some nights, both possibilities are worrying."
"right. if the other person is not real, then no big deal, right, is one way to look at any trouble. but what's the other fear?"
"it goes back to that moment when i thought i alone was real but was surrounded by a crowd. if that situation could exist, where the unconscious runs rampant, generating zombies everywhere, it just seems a dangerous place to be."
"so more real people, please. so i guess finally, what's a good number to hold in your mind as a best guess as to what the true population is?"
"i don't know, i wish i did. but i'm sure there are other worlds too and not everyone is on earth."
"come on, give me a number! something i wouldn't end up embarrassed by, should the truth ever get out."
"ok. maybe lower estimate high two digits, which would mean the collective unconscious is huge, like a supercomputer processing all these zombie people. high estimate, maybe a million, where you couldn't really tell the difference."
"so maybe median estimate 5 digits? somebody must have written all these books in the book stores, right?"
"the main variable we need to know is how much is the unconscious capable of? if it's a supercomputer, then anything is possible, right? then we get a low figure for the true number of people. if it requires that many people to produce all the literature and stuff like that in the world then it's a high figure. and anyway, you should probably even if you have the correct estimate consciously change your assumptions all the time."
"just to get used to all the possibilities?"
"right. exactly."
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, August 24, 2013
The Journey of the Head Stone
the journey of the head stone:
and so there in the fixed heavens of space, there was a head stone. it could think for itself and see and hear. and it was not alone. it was sure there were others like it but as it could never really move, it could not crawl across space to verify and measure things in any sense. it spent its time imagining things, dreamed of other worlds, and when it thought hard enough it could almost fully imagine a largely populated place called earth, where humans could interact with other humans and lead busy lives. it was as if a traveller from this place was feeding thoughts and ideas about earth to it. it seemed almost real.
then one day, the head stone fell asleep for days. and when you sleep for days, the reality is that you forget. the head stone dreamed of earth and woke up as a very young child, in a new family, with a mother and a father, perhaps a sister or a brother too. for decades, the head stone lived as a mortal on earth. it grew up, experienced life. then one particular day the head stone fell asleep and died, leaving earth, to return to the world from where it came.
CLEARCHARGE
and so there in the fixed heavens of space, there was a head stone. it could think for itself and see and hear. and it was not alone. it was sure there were others like it but as it could never really move, it could not crawl across space to verify and measure things in any sense. it spent its time imagining things, dreamed of other worlds, and when it thought hard enough it could almost fully imagine a largely populated place called earth, where humans could interact with other humans and lead busy lives. it was as if a traveller from this place was feeding thoughts and ideas about earth to it. it seemed almost real.
then one day, the head stone fell asleep for days. and when you sleep for days, the reality is that you forget. the head stone dreamed of earth and woke up as a very young child, in a new family, with a mother and a father, perhaps a sister or a brother too. for decades, the head stone lived as a mortal on earth. it grew up, experienced life. then one particular day the head stone fell asleep and died, leaving earth, to return to the world from where it came.
CLEARCHARGE
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