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Thread: What is reality?

  1. #21
    Registered User Beowulf's Avatar
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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Twirly View Post
    OK, I'm giving myself a headache now
    Me too.. I'm scared to stop looking at myself in case I cease to exist!

    I see what Twirly is trying to get at. What we call a book they may call "fuel for the fire" (in their own language of course) .. what we call "Pet" they may call "Food"

    They may have no concept of a book.. or even a concept of using "squiggles" to capture sounds (I'm reminded of a scene in The 13th Warrior where Antonio Banderras is asked if he can "draw sounds").

    You can't define what reality is for everyone.. as we all percieve it on different levels. Cultural and disabilities aside.. we all see the universe in different ways.

    no one person can truely tell what's going on in someone elses mind.. the internal monologue, the questioning, the reasoning etc.. No two human (or animal for that matter) minds are alike. Even computer "minds" processors and memory chips are not IDENTICAL at the sub atomic levels. So until such times as we can achieve shared unified conciousness with all living things in some sort of "universal mind meld" we'll never truely know if what we percieve as reality is really real.. erm.. I think? (I think my brain hurts.. but I'm not sure .. perhaps I only think I think my brain hurts!)

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    Registered User Twirly's Avatar
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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Beowulf1970 View Post
    So until such times as we can achieve shared unified conciousness with all living things in some sort of "universal mind meld"
    Otherwise known as nirvana in buddhism I believe, also the aim of some types of meditation and tantra. Put rather simplisticly.

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    Registered User Beowulf's Avatar
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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Twirly View Post
    Otherwise known as nirvana in buddhism I believe, also the aim of some types of meditation and tantra. Put rather simplisticly.
    I was thinking more of a download of all our minds into some futuristing super computer mind construct.. but hey it's just as likely as your solution

    Perhaps Budda runs the Matrix?

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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Beowulf1970 View Post
    Me too.. I'm scared to stop looking at myself in case I cease to exist!

    I see what Twirly is trying to get at. What we call a book they may call "fuel for the fire" (in their own language of course) .. what we call "Pet" they may call "Food"

    They may have no concept of a book.. or even a concept of using "squiggles" to capture sounds (I'm reminded of a scene in The 13th Warrior where Antonio Banderras is asked if he can "draw sounds").

    You can't define what reality is for everyone.. as we all percieve it on different levels. Cultural and disabilities aside.. we all see the universe in different ways.
    The fact that someone from this hypothetical culture doesn't have a concept of book doesn't alter the reality of the book's existence, FCOL! It's entirely irrelevant that they might look at it and fail to grasp its purpose; the fact is that they will see and feel the book and acknowledge its existence - notwithstanding the fact that it is 99% empty space. That's what makes it part of reality.

    (I before E except after C)

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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Beowulf1970 View Post
    I was thinking more of a download of all our minds into some futuristing super computer mind construct.. but hey it's just as likely as your solution

    Perhaps Budda runs the Matrix?
    He's more likely to eat it. Have you seen the size of that bloke?

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    Registered User Beowulf's Avatar
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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    The fact that someone from this hypothetical culture doesn't have a concept of book doesn't alter the reality of the book's existence, FCOL!

    (I before E except after C)
    Well obviously the atoms that make up the item in question exist regardless of who sees it. My point was that you can't really discuss reality or at least our perception of reality without first showing that everyone would preceive things differently.

    Your reality is one your brain creates for you.. in your reality spelling mistakes are a matter of grave concern.. in my reality they are a matter of no importance. I know how to spell thank you.. and your I before E except after C does't apply consistantly.. Weird that aint it

    I can spell.. what I CAN'T do.. is TYPE !!

    liek I giev a fllying fcuk

  7. #27
    Registered User Twirly's Avatar
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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Has anyone considered the irony of discussing the nature of reality in cyberspace?

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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Beowulf1970 View Post
    Well obviously the atoms that make up the item in question exist regardless of who sees it. My point was that you can't really discuss reality or at least our perception of reality without first showing that everyone would preceive things differently.

    Your reality is one your brain creates for you..
    OK, well the greeks called this 'solipsism'. For all anyone knows, they could a brain sitting in a dish as part of somebody else's experiment. (Paging Dr. Hfuhruhurr! Dr Michael Hfuhruhurr!)

    But as I said previously, that's a version of reality which requires a lot of preliminary assumptions, many of which are inelegant and unlikely.

    Maybe it is necessary to take a concensus vote.

    Two people in a room; A hears music, B doesn't. The music is not faint and difficult to hear, but is heard loudly. B hears A's voice perfectly well when they converse, so suspects that A is mistaken as to the existence of the music. However, it is not possible to be reasonably certain who is correct. Each must accept that they may be deceived as to exactly what is going on.

    Twenty people in a room; one hears music, the others don't. Now it is possible to be reasonably certain that there is no music. Everyone can hear each other talk, there seems to be nothing else interfering with the ability to hear whatever sounds may be present. So A has to accept that the music is not part of observable reality. It remains, of course, part of A's personal reality, even if it is the result of the heat oppress'd brain, or a delewsion, or whatever.

    The others, of course, have no way of knowing whether A really is hearing music or is only saying she does. (Didn't know A was female, did ya?)

    Now we have real problems. Is the music part of objective reality? We only have A's word for it that the music is real. If everyone accepts that the music is real, they may have been deceived into a mistaken view of reality. But they do not have the evidence to allow them to conclude that rejecting A's claim produces a more accurate view of reality.

    So yes, there are difficulties with determining what reality is. But nobody (outside of Pacific islanders or Amazon or Congolese tribesmen, etc) would accept, e.g., that the sun is not a massive ball of gas 93 million miles away. (I was going to add fusion, but there are a bunch of enthusiasts who claim that the sun is powered by gravitational/magnetic flux - or something like that.) No-one thinks it is in a chariot pulled by magnificent stallions and has to pass through hell each night in order to get back to the east to rise in the morning.

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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    The others, of course, have no way of knowing whether A really is hearing music or is only saying she does. (Didn't know A was female, did ya?)
    There might well be .... ....

    Grabbing my coat right now. Have a great weekend everyone

  10. #30
    Registered User Twirly's Avatar
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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    So yes, there are difficulties with determining what reality is. But nobody (outside of Pacific islanders or Amazon or Congolese tribesmen, etc) would accept, e.g., that the sun is not a massive ball of gas 93 million miles away. (I was going to add fusion, but there are a bunch of enthusiasts who claim that the sun is powered by gravitational/magnetic flux - or something like that.) No-one thinks it is in a chariot pulled by magnificent stallions and has to pass through hell each night in order to get back to the east to rise in the morning.
    You've just highlighted the main reason why some people on here have an issue with your view of the world (or whatever you would like to call it) being so black and white.

    At one point in time, "reality" was the stallions.

    Currently it's the fusion theory.

    Maybe in the future these "enthusiasts" will be proved right - or another theory will be developed to explain the sun.

    However each one, in it's turn is "reality". But this shifts as our perceptions shift, which might be for any number of reasons, including scientific developments which allow us to measure different parts of the world/universe in a different way.

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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Twirly View Post
    You've just highlighted the main reason why some people on here have an issue with your view of the world (or whatever you would like to call it) being so black and white.

    At one point in time, "reality" was the stallions.

    Currently it's the fusion theory.

    Maybe in the future these "enthusiasts" will be proved right - or another theory will be developed to explain the sun.

    However each one, in it's turn is "reality". But this shifts as our perceptions shift, which might be for any number of reasons, including scientific developments which allow us to measure different parts of the world/universe in a different way.
    Well, I don't think that's right.

    The stallions were never reality. They were always myth, fiction, whatever. This is because technical limitations prevented a more accurate understanding of reality.

    It can be said with reasonable certainty that the enthusiasts are wrong. A fusion weapon has been created, and detonated, at least by the Americans. Probably the Russians and the Chinese have done it too. If fusion exists, the sun is so massive that fusion must be occurring. We know how massive the sun is because of measurements that can made on observations carried out on the other bodies in the solar system. We know what the sun is made of because of spectrographic analysis. That mass of hydrogen must be experiencing a level of compression such that it creates a plasma, the compresion further generates heat, and creates the circumstances in which fusion is unavoidable. If fusion is happening, e=mc² tells us how much energy is being released, we can calculate how much fusion is going on and how much energy the sun is emitting and compare the two and find the figures agree with acceptable accuracy.

    Some of the fine detail may still be missing but not enough to make the fusion reactor theory wrong.

    On another note, why do people think it is such a strong argument to say:

    "A-ha! Humans used to be woefully ill-informed and ignorant so we have to take it as granted that we could be wrong now."

    I was ill-informed and ignorant about principles of law in 1997; I studied, and practised what I learned, and know how to find out what I don't already know. So now I'm not ill-informed and ignorant about those principles and there is no need for me to leave room for the possibility that I am.

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    Registered User stewart38's Avatar
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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Twirly View Post
    Try and imagine that you can't read or write, that you've never seen writing even, and you've lived in the Amazon rain forest all your life and never had any outside contact. Then someone presents you with what this thing with squiggles in that opens up and has these thin, flat things in it.

    You wouldn't know it as a book (Thomas the Tank or otherwise). It would just be an object - still made up of atoms, space, etc. but you wouldn't have the concept of "book" to relate to it. The concept of book is something that we learn from each other, it's a human creation. the object exisits, but is only the object "book" when someone perceives it as such.

    OK, I'm giving myself a headache now
    We have to give labels to things? It’s hard enough for people to understand me as it, but without labels?

    e.g.

    When I was in Egypt in 1997 I never heard of or seen a wooden scarab I knew nothing about the history of scarabs. One was given to me

    Calling it a pink flamingo would make no sense

    We give labels to things so we can communicate

    If I miss your point sorry

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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Beowulf1970 View Post
    Me too.. I'm scared to stop looking at myself in case I cease to exist!
    )· )· )· Who said that? ·( ·( ·(

  14. #34
    Registered User stewart38's Avatar
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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    )· )· )· Who said that? ·( ·( ·(
    Give us a list of the people you have blocked and we will help you out

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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by stewart38 View Post
    Give us a list of the people you have blocked and we will help you out
    Another very reppable post.

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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    Good question. Well, reality is real and it is how we perceive it that is the problem. As you suggest, we have a lot of trouble understanding our perceptions of reality - physical things are bad enough, our eyes can deceive us, as can every other sense.

    Our interpretation of events inevitably has to be simplified into what we expect to happen and what we need to pay attention to. Its amazing what the brain filters out as not relevant.

    In other words - most peoples perception of reality, on some level, is completely different from actual reality.
    "In other words, hold my hand
    In other words, darling, kiss me"

    "Falling" in love is a case in point.
    Love is blind etc.,
    It's a form of losing touch with reality, and if one is only pretending love, it's a very effective scam on the one who is.

    In the papers every day of the week.

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    Commercial Operator Rocky's Avatar
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    Re: Why do we end up arguing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    "In other words, hold my hand
    In other words, darling, kiss me"

    "Falling" in love is a case in point.
    Love is blind etc.,
    It's a form of losing touch with reality, and if one is only pretending love, it's a very effective scam on the one who is.

    In the papers every day of the week.
    OR, if you believe in MWI in Quantum Mechanics..

    In other Worlds, hold my hand,
    In other Worlds, darling kiss me...

  18. #38
    Commercial Operator Rocky's Avatar
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    Re: What is reality?

    So many things that are wrong…

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    OK, well the greeks called this 'solipsism'. For all anyone knows, they could a brain sitting in a dish as part of somebody else's experiment. (Paging Dr. Hfuhruhurr! Dr Michael Hfuhruhurr!) .
    That’s not actually what solipsism infers – it’s far deeper than, ‘I don’t know what your perception of reality is.’ Solipsism is the belief that there is only you. It’s the concept that whilst ‘knowing’ I am real I posit that you are all creations of my reality. You may be able to tell me that you feel the same way, but as you are a creation of my program of reality, you would say whatever I expect you to say. I can only know what I think and feel, and I cannot know what you think or feel – it therefore follows that if you believe in solipsism you believe there is only one reality… yours and everything that you perceive (including other people) are a creation of your reality.

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    On another note, why do people think it is such a strong argument to say:


    "A-ha! Humans used to be woefully ill-informed and ignorant so we have to take it as granted that we could be wrong now.".
    History tells us that what we know changes on a regular basis. It would therefore be foolish to suggest that what we know will not change in the future. This is especially the case given the current state of physics. Scientists cannot create a theory of quantum gravity, and without that we cannot unite all the forces of Nature. The reason they cannot do this is that there is a belief that some of the foundation blocks of scientific theory have been incorrectly constructed. Theoretical physicist, Lee Smolin, describes this problem with considerable eloquence and balance in his book, The Trouble With Physics.


    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    I was ill-informed and ignorant about principles of law in 1997; I studied, and practised what I learned, and know how to find out what I don't already know. So now I'm not ill-informed and ignorant about those principles and there is no need for me to leave room for the possibility that I am.
    The principles of law are well defined: and although the principles that govern the Universe have been defined, they have been defined in such a way as to not add up. In addition, as our technological ability advances, it helps us to reveal additional or new information. On this basis you simply cannot compare a static state with one that is in constant motion.

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    ... the fact is that they will see and feel the book and acknowledge its existence - notwithstanding the fact that it is 99% empty space. That's what makes it part of reality.
    This fact is wrong and also leads to an incorrect inference. The book is not 99% empty space it is less than 99.999999999999% empty space. To suggest that a visible element of it is solid (1%) is to create an entirely false impression.

    Atoms make up everything we see in the Universe from planets to stars to you and me – it is what matter is made of, and by ‘matter’ I mean stuff that you can see, touch and feel. Atoms make up the water we drink and the wind we feel on our face: but more than that, atoms are also all the space in between things. This means that the entire construct of the Universe is nothing more than a teaming mass of microscopic bundles of energy. The standard diagram of an atom, you will probably remember from your school days, is a nucleus with electrons orbiting around the outside in neat formation (this is not how it really works, but let’s not confuse things further). The nucleus itself is made up of protons and neutrons which are packed together to form an incredibly dense central point that also has a positive energy charge - the protons have a positive electrical charge and the neutrons have no charge. This charge in turn is balanced by the electrons whizzing around the exterior which carry a negative charge. (The protons and neutrons are also surprisingly, given there size, made up of even smaller elementary particles called quarks and leptons: but again let’s not confuse things further)

    Given the detail above the major fact to bear in mind is that although atoms make up objects that appear to be solid they are actually mostly empty space. The protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus only account for one millionth of a billionth of the atoms entire volume. A way to imagine this is that if an atom were the size of the United States the nucleus would be equivalent to the size of a golf ball sitting on the 18th green at Augusta. This leads us to an inescapable and perplexing conclusion - and that is the solidity that we see all around us is actually some form of ‘illusion’ or ‘holographic’ construct.

    Going back to Barry’s example, we can therefore see that the book is not 99% empty space, it’s far less ‘real’ than that. Given the size of the nucleus, if you took all the nuclei that made the book up and collected them together, you would not be able to see them at all. On that basis how can you perceive it as real?

    No-one knows the answer to this question and actually scientists don’t even think about it because it makes their heads hurt. The explanation probably lies in the fact that atoms can act as both particles (points in space) as well as waves (a spread out ‘smear’ of something). As waves can carry information it suggests that the atoms in the book are some how passing us information about what it is and how we should perceive it. What appears to happen is that our brains conjure up holographic images (images that appear solid, but are not) from the electrical (information) exchange that occurs when photons that emanate for the object strike the electrons in the component parts of our eyes. How our eyes then convert this electrical reaction and our brain then interprets it as an image or object that we would recognize is a complete mystery.

    All of our senses are false in that what we perceive is NOT actually what we experience. Touch for example; you do not touch anything. You feel that you do, but you only feel the repelling force of the atoms in your fingers repelling the atoms of whatever you’re ‘touching’. All of our experience is therefore conducted at a distance of one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimetre).

    So: there is no such thing as reality in a sense of how you would understand it or in how science would explain it. Science is concerned with the material, but as we have seen, within all of reality there is no substantial material existence – it is only an exchange of information. The other problem is that scientists themselves can only hypothesize on these issues using their conscious and cognitive abilities – and that’s a real conundrum! Scientific methodology has always been held up as paragon of virtue; yet its structure has not changed to reflect what we have learned. We have made tremendous progress in our understanding of the Universe, but we still evaluate our discoveries in the same way we did a 1,000 years ago. Quantum Mechanics shows us a sub-atomic World teeming with possibility that leads to a perception of reality that is constructed, as we have seen, from paradox and illusion. AND further still, we then examine these scientific ‘truths’ by our conscious interaction with the information, and yet our consciousness is, itself, intangible. What then can the scientific methodology of ‘testable, repeatable, predictable and observable’ really mean within this context?

    In other words, science is testing something that is not really there, and then thinking about it with thoughts that do not really exist!

    So what is reality? Well, in a nutshell it is: a construct of our consciousness that is created from the exchange of information that is generated from a quantum event. This means that it is more a metaphysical experience than a physical experience. If you therefore want to examine its ‘true’ meaning you have to seek out spiritual explanations, not scientific explanations.

  19. #39
    Registered User stewart38's Avatar
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    Re: What is reality?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post




    This fact is wrong and also leads to an incorrect inference. The book is not 99% empty space it is less than 99.999999999999% empty space. To suggest that a visible element of it is solid (1%) is to create an entirely false impression.


    Given the detail above the major fact to bear in mind is that although atoms make up objects that appear to be solid they are actually mostly empty space. The protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus only account for one millionth of a billionth of the atoms entire volume. A way to imagine this is that if an atom were the size of the United States the nucleus would be equivalent to the size of a golf ball sitting on the 18th green at Augusta. This leads us to an inescapable and perplexing conclusion - and that is the solidity that we see all around us is actually some form of ‘illusion’ or ‘holographic’ construct.

    Do you mean more then 99.9999999999% empty space and the 17th green at Augusta

    If the book is less then 99.99999999999% (someone count the 9s) empty space then its 99.9999999999999% matter

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    Commercial Operator Rocky's Avatar
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    Re: What is reality?

    Quote Originally Posted by stewart38 View Post
    Do you mean more then 99.9999999999% empty space and the 17th green at Augusta

    If the book is less then 99.99999999999% (someone count the 9s) empty space then its 99.9999999999999% matter
    Ah, well Eintsein's theory of relativity does tell us that Energy and Matter are equivalent - so you see how it creates a paradox in what we perceive. Energy is not usually thought of as visible and matter is thought of as 'solid'. Atoms are energy: and within the constituent parts we have the nucleus that is thought of as solid and the energy field of fogged out electrons that are thought of as empty space...

    My head's starting to hurt...

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