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

The World Model Alternatives

the world model alternatives:

"what i could never get around, if what they call the external world were real, was how my senses, you know, my field of vision and sound, was not crashing into other people's senses, if we were truly close together. i mean, i see colour at a distance. if you were standing in front of me, wouldn't that mean the colours i see are somehow inside you, and vice versa?"

"you mean, if your senses, your personal parts, physically extended, and how are they not interfering with people who seem near you?"

"exactly. because i don't see images in my head. i see them truly in front of me at a distance. and then i see the people in front of me. how can the two be in the same place?"

"well, the alternative is, ok, we don't really move around, so to speak, we are not actually near each other, it only seems that, but that we are connected somehow to a system that processes what we see and hear according to the 3D mechanical motion world model that we all know."

CLEARCHARGE

A World View Distorted by Schizophrenia

a world view distorted by schizophrenia:

what is a world view? the fundamental beliefs or assumptions made about the world, the universe even, and reality and life. what drives the philosopher in all of us is the need to know what is real and what is not. to be delusional or crazy is generally agreed to be a bad thing. people are supposed to be locked up in mental hospitals for this very reason. it may be argued that on earth, busy place that it is, such knowledge is not required to be a "success in life" and even that some confusion may not affect ability to "function in society", but this a weak argument, deflected away by the very overriding emotional demand to know the truth.

what does it mean to know? i know there are more complicated theories but two words stand out, "true" and "think", indeed, to think about true things. actually it cannot be further reduced as a concept. academically, if you had little confidence in your judgment on what to be true and what to be false, you would need to think about every theoretical possibility just to cover yourself, in the faint hope that at least you had thought of everything and at some point in time "knew the truth". happily, often the search for truth is a binary proposition, for it is either one or the other, though i am sure sometimes there are multiple theoretical possibilities, and therein lies the "third way" or fourth or fifth.

i don't think i am deceiving myself when i claim to know the conventional beliefs or assumptions on earth. i went to school, after all, i read newspapers and magazines, i've watched television and films, i have attended church before, i've sat through lectures, indeed i have consumed information and media. and i've seen what is technologically possible, telephones, computers, 3D virtual reality games.

let us deal with one of the most fundamental questions. what is motion exactly? it calls into question what you think about time and space, and ultimately decides what you conclude about the so called "external world" that may be highly convincing. can matter, a person, a mind, whatever, actually "move" relative to other matter, persons, or minds? happily, this is a binary proposition. it is either true or false. what are you thinking? i presume you are visualizing an object moving towards or away from another and thinking that might be actuality! in the model of the external world, this is entirely the case put forward.

but the whole question of eyesight, what i see before me, and to the sides, and i really do see objects at a distance in front of me, not in my head, if people were actually moving relative to each other on a round planet, how does the structure of my eyesight not crash into someone else's near me, so to speak?

i began hearing "voices" or "auditory hallucinations" and seeing visual hallucinations when i was 20 years old in my third year at university. after i had been sectioned or committed and released from hospital, i had the rest of the year off and returned to repeat the final year. in that year, i teleported twice. to anyone who has experienced teleportation, the concept of an external world is simply not believable anymore! the first time, i was at an ATM, i had got the cash, i turned away and then i was suddenly at the train station, about a mile away. i even started to worry what would happen if i teleported to New York without my passport on me and couldn't teleport back! if the external world were real, how could i move to another point instantly without feeling anything, even if it was at light speed? or was i a clone somewhere else in space, with my consciousness suddenly activated? no and no. Ockham's Razor would suggest the simplest theory is that, indeed, the external world is not real and that matter does not "move" relative to other matter, space is merely that that is occupied by matter, it is not a "vacuum" or "empty container", quite the opposite.

conventional thinking about schizophrenia is that it is a mental illness of perception, that sufferers are delusional, all voices are hallucinatory and so on. i suspect it is hinged on a belief in the external world, it is posited it is only our perception that has gone awry and reality is just fine, so to speak. if we eliminate belief in the external world, an explanation would be that schizophrenia is an acute instability of the mind, that our hearing and our eyesight are "turned up", which accounts for the "hallucinations", and the system that worked for so long to provide normality, is thrashing around wildly. if the external world is not real, then perception is reality, is it not, don't you think? anything can happen to a schizophrenic!

when i returned to university, i still heard people speaking without seeing them, the "voices". one day i was calmly looking at the door handle, making it move up and down slightly by thought alone. i was staring at the light bulb on the ceiling, adjusting the brightness, dimmer and then brighter, again by thought alone. objects disappeared, i never found where my dissertation went! you see the interesting dichotomy? on the one hand, hallucinating and delusional, on the other, maybe i was telepathic and had budding psychokinesis powers!

CLEARCHARGE