Philosophical Question: REALITY: Does it exist?

C

Common-Carnage

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Now look here. I have given you ample time to come up with a sensible answer and you have disappointingly failed me.
"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide. No escape from reality".
*** With special thanks to Freddie Mercury. ***
Suppose Queen can count as noise, good noise or bad?
 

Dong

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People are queer, they're always crowing, scrambling and rushing about
Why don't they stop someday, address themselves this way?
Why are we here? Where are we going? It's time that we found out
We're not here to stay; we're on a short holiday

Life is just a bowl of cherries
Don't take it serious, it's too mysterious
You work, you save, you worry so
But you can't take your dough when you go, go, go

So keep repeating it's the berries
The strongest oak must fall
The sweet things in life, to you were just loaned
So how can you lose what you've never owned?
Life is just a bowl of cherries
So live and laugh at it all
 

WickedPerdition

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Ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall.

The question was not addressed to you. Your 'answer', however, is somewhat predictably dull.
Try not to become just another 'bandwagon hopper' in the Forums.
Post-futurist?
:rolleyes:

P.S. Balance wit with sense and you'll fare well .... or farewell.
 

post-futurist

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The question was not addressed to you. Your 'answer', however, is somewhat predictably dull.
Try not to become just another 'bandwagon hopper' in the Forums.
Post-futurist?
:rolleyes:

P.S. Balance wit with sense and you'll fare well .... or farewell.
OK. Thank you for the polite reprimand. Different discussion forums have different rules and customs. I'm new here. I'll try to learn.
 

Dong

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OK. Thank you for the polite reprimand. Different discussion forums have different rules and customs. I'm new here. I'll try to learn.
Don't worry PF...... WP is often telling us how to behave,
BTW Noise.... it's what stops the silence!
 

Altair

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I have been BANNED a total of 5 Times,,,Not proud of it but things like this happen.

My word on this is just get on with it...!

You can't please everyone.....All of the time...;)
 

funandflirty

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I have been BANNED a total of 5 Times,,,Not proud of it but things like this happen.

My word on this is just get on with it...!

You can't please everyone.....All of the time...;)
I’m curious, what were you banned for and do you feel it was just? :)
 

WickedPerdition

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Not Quite I think.!

Thank you for your observation. As I am sure you are aware, Bad_Influence suffers from severe selective delusions.
Like many others, he is convinced that if you take a break from chat you MUST have been banned from the site.

Also, like yourself, I have been wrongly banned several times for standing up to the bullying/goading tactics from easily-manipulated moderators.
Something I have complained about more than once, to NO avail. Still, I remain undeterred and unbowing.
:rolleyes:
 

A_Son_of_God

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Reality does exist. Yes. Our perception of reality though may differ, and in some cases we may not know what reality is as opposed to non-reality. For instance, when I'm dreaming, and I'm stuffing my mouth with a large marshmallow, and wake up with bite marks in my pillow, was that a reality? No, it was a mixup of signals - namely, the conscious with the sub-conscious and unconscious. If the dream state was working fine, I'd not have literally bitten the "marshmallow". Never in my wildest dreams would I intentionally put my mouth on some sweat-soaked head support, covered with a thin, cotton lining.

The same when a person takes LSD, or some pills that also cause hallucinations. They see sounds, and they hear colours. In fact, one can, on some really wild drugs, watch television on things like speakers. They can turn their heads and make the music change. Little demons can jump out of the sky, and then dart back up into that trapdoor that doesn't exist in the ceiling again.

So reality does exist, but our perception of it may be altered by things like drugs, head injuries, or some other anomaly. Just like our understanding. We may be of a specific thought pattern, due to some circumstance, and this thought pattern could blind us to some blatantly obvious things. We can be misled very easily. We may even support the things that mislead us, and attack those who point it out to us, because our "reality" actually isn't a reality at all, but a predetermined thought process that has prevented us to looking/hearing.

The proof that reality exists, is community. We have an interaction, and we have things we can all agree on to some degree. We all know cars drive on the road, for instance, and thanks to education, we know to be careful crossing it.
 

Raining_Roses

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Yes.
Humans really think they’re be-all and end-all! Just because ‘no one’ is around, that doesn’t mean ‘something’ isn’t around. A tree falling would be heard by the creatures in and around the tree, so it would be heard. Also, there’s the whole physics rabble about energy, which means the creation of sound is not dependent on a listener (albeit factors of the sound are subjective to the listener).

We need to keep an open mind. We have no choice but to depend on our senses, but we need to understand that our senses have limitations.

I have struggled with the questions you pose for the majority of my teen and adult life. I was raised in a mixed bag of depictions of a God. We moved around a lot and we lived next door to a lot of different types of people- fundamental Christians, Jehovah Witnesses, Muslims, Baptists- and my father especially, would end up ‘getting to know them’. But inside the 4 walls, the larger voice was Catholic then Spiritualist, frequently being argued down by atheism. I finally became comfortable with agnosticism, but as I grow older, I have become more convinced that we are possibly living in a simulation akin to a futuristic SIMs game. Thus, our ‘reality’ is not really ours or even a possible ‘reality’. It’s data.

It could possibly explain phenomenon such as doppelgangers, Déjà vu or accounts of reincarnation. Possibly even explain stories of the Akashic records. If we are in a simulation akin to the SIMs, Déjà vu could be explained as a ‘glitch’ in the memory system and the character restarting at a certain point in the game. It’s the 2nd time the system pathway has been created and the character ‘feels’ it, but can’t declaratively remember it as it hasn’t (technically) happened before. Reincarnation could be the same controller for a second, third, etc character as the game progresses. Controllers can have one more than character on the go, hence, why people claim to have ‘soul mates’ or have a strong connection to another without knowing why.
Doppelgangers- an old program for a ‘human’ appearance or a small choice of physical attributes in the program for a human or the coincidence that two controllers picked the same combination of physical attributes for their character.

The world and the way we live has become more and more complicated as the centuries roll past. Everything has become ‘data’. We don’t live anymore- we provide data. From what we eat, what & where we spend, where we go, who we live with, how many of us are there. From breath, no matter who you are or where you are, you provide some form of data.
Our energy usage as a planet has risen and in general, the world we live in is weakening- more humans=more food consumption, land consumption, etc, etc. As the data source (humans) rise and the data to accommodate them rises (e.g.: food, water, psychological needs), the system weakens, because it can only take so much- just like a computer increasing its data processing with an old battery and aging hard-drive. Glitches become frequent and viruses start to attack.
The theory of a simulation, in many ways, should strip the belief of free will and could be seen as endorsing theism. There is also the question of ‘what controls the controller?’ or ‘what created the controller and advanced simulation?’
And that’s where it could go round and round, rocking around in an eternity symbol and coming back on itself until the sun explodes and beyond!

The reason I dance along the belief of the simulation theory is because I take note of the ‘glitches’.
One example being that I recently found an obscure ‘60’s song on Youtube that in nearly 5 decades of life I had never heard before. Absolutely none of it was familiar and I was shocked I hadn’t heard it before. I love my 60’s and have loved the band responsible for the song since I was a teenager, and it’s a song that instantly made my ears prick up because of its unique, hypnotic start. It quickly became significant to a dear friend who was dying at the time I first heard it- I even sang it to him- and in the days after his death, I couldn’t listen to it without crying, so couldn’t play Youtube. Instead, I stuck to the radio and a channel that I had NEVER heard it on before- in over 15 years of daily listening and almost 16 hours of listening, every day throughout lockdown and working from home, this song had not been played once while I was listening. It’s not a popular ‘60’s song by all means!
Nevertheless, in the week after my friend’s death, they played it 4 times while I was listening at my usual times. In the two weeks after that, they played it twice. I’ve heard it again since, blaring out of a pub. The coincidence was strong with this one and I still haven’t shaken it off!

Déjà vu could possibly be explained by a number of theories. My worst experience of Déjà vu with a ‘glitch’ was when I met a woman on a course. For some reason, she took an instant dislike to me and me to her- on meeting her, I felt I recognised her and thought I’d seen her in an argument in a social club a few years prior. However, when everyone was smoking outside, I asked her if I knew her from the club, but she claimed she didn’t live in the area and was quite rude and hostile in her answer. Standing at the side of the training centre, I had an unsteady wash of Déjà vu of that moment and walked away, slightly embarrassed about not saying anything back. But as I was walking away, I heard her say to her ‘buddy’, “I don’t know why, but I really don’t like her”. From the rest of the course, it was obvious our paths had not crossed before, yet I never lost the feeling that I knew her- I recognised her voice, her mannerisms, etc- and I really didn’t like her and wanted to stay as far away from her as possible!

As humans, we have created A.I. Perhaps, in a distant galaxy, actually it’s the A.I that created us! The cycle of creation…but not as the man-made religions would have us believe!
 

Moriarty

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Asimov wrote.
“The saddest aspect of society right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”

I think wisdom is taking a back step as it is only learned in the long term.
Whereas knowledge is learned in the short term.
Especially with the advent of the internet and then social media.

Everything today is based on short term gratification.
It's why thoughts of things like marraige, or having kids, are going down in the younger generation.
Can't blame them, when they can't get houses, but thats another form of short term thinking, profit for the building companies.
I mean, massive building corperations own so much land, yet they don't build on it, why?
Because it would bring house prices down.

As for the Deja Vu phenomenon, there is a plethora of information about experiments done showing those who suffer them a lot may have some kind of disorder or damage within the brain, be that psychological or physiological.

Personally, if you look at the brain as a series of neural pathways, which is how information is passed from one part to another.
Then imagine a road network.

How many of us have taken a wrong turning?
Even when we are heading to and from somewhere we know, because our thinking was elsewhere.

I think its a perception pause, where the brain see's, understands and produces a memory for a given situation, only for it to get misfiled, then corrected.
Hence we percieve it twice.
 

cidal

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Whatever your opinion is on the original question...wait, I forgot what it was. Oh yeah...one more thing that is meaningless for us to waste our time with. Trees falling etc etc. Then again, it's like someone who loves porn, or loves scuba diving, or watching footie...it's all in pursuit of happiness. Sitting around and debating pointless sh**...brings us happiness on some level, those of us who do.

Everything is about chemicals that give us those good feelings. Drink up.


Also, I am very sorry tempting_engima. My failings morphed in to being a dick to you.
 

NickUK

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Asimov wrote.
“The saddest aspect of society right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”

I think wisdom is taking a back step as it is only learned in the long term.
Whereas knowledge is learned in the short term.
Especially with the advent of the internet and then social media.

Everything today is based on short term gratification.
It's why thoughts of things like marraige, or having kids, are going down in the younger generation.
Can't blame them, when they can't get houses, but thats another form of short term thinking, profit for the building companies.
I mean, massive building corperations own so much land, yet they don't build on it, why?
Because it would bring house prices down.

As for the Deja Vu phenomenon, there is a plethora of information about experiments done showing those who suffer them a lot may have some kind of disorder or damage within the brain, be that psychological or physiological.

Personally, if you look at the brain as a series of neural pathways, which is how information is passed from one part to another.
Then imagine a road network.

How many of us have taken a wrong turning?
Even when we are heading to and from somewhere we know, because our thinking was elsewhere.

I think its a perception pause, where the brain see's, understands and produces a memory for a given situation, only for it to get misfiled, then corrected.
Hence we percieve it twice.
My own theory on deja vu is that it is simply the concious or reality experiencing part of the brain, slowing down momentarily so the subconcious having experienced it first, communicates a perception or experience back to it, so that it perceives it to be a memory...
 

Raining_Roses

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Whatever your opinion is on the original question...wait, I forgot what it was. Oh yeah...one more thing that is meaningless for us to waste our time with. Trees falling etc etc. Then again, it's like someone who loves porn, or loves scuba diving, or watching footie...it's all in pursuit of happiness. Sitting around and debating pointless sh**...brings us happiness on some level, those of us who do.

Everything is about chemicals that give us those good feelings. Drink up.


Also, I am very sorry tempting_engima. My failings morphed in to being a dick to you.
The majority of the 'love' is for the song- it's such a bloody good song!
 

Raining_Roses

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As for the Deja Vu phenomenon, there is a plethora of information about experiments done showing those who suffer them a lot may have some kind of disorder or damage within the brain, be that psychological or physiological.

Personally, if you look at the brain as a series of neural pathways, which is how information is passed from one part to another.
Then imagine a road network.

How many of us have taken a wrong turning?
Even when we are heading to and from somewhere we know, because our thinking was elsewhere.

I think its a perception pause, where the brain see's, understands and produces a memory for a given situation, only for it to get misfiled, then corrected.
Hence we percieve it twice.
Quotes from you from other posts:

"We can no more understand the wind, than we can the workings of the brain.
We cannot comprehend the complexity of our own psychology with the very brain we are meant to be studying."

"Just because we do not understand a thing, should not mean we discount it."

"Science is just as much a religion as any other, it is based on what one see's, which is as illusionary as what one believes."


Our brains are still enigmas to the researchers- both psychological and neurological, thus, despite looking at how information passes from one part of the brain to the other may well be somewhat understood, memory and why we remember what we remember is still a complex phenomenon, riddled with theories. I frequently do dementia courses and take workshops on the effect of trauma on the brain & memory and from what II recall, there has been a number of studies which included looking at the 'memory centres' in the brain; the amygdala being active in memories of the past, the frontal lobe being active in working memory- planning, imagined future events, etc.
We have a bare understanding of what goes on in our brains and still don't know what the majority of it does. There are theories that dedicate a lot of matter to memory and the transference and storage of memory, but others pinpoint epicentres.

Funny how an illustrated network of neuronal movement looks very similar to a universe. And how much do we know about that?!?
Brain Network- Universe.jpg

As a footnote, one would be advised not to defend a cult with the last statement and then use the absence of 'science' in response to a factor related to a theory akin to theism. It stinks a little of constantly singling out my views for critic, especially seeing as you contradict yourself. If I was being really analytical, I could think that it's because I'm female and the cult leader is not. And we all know bro's stick tight ;)
Alas, this is not the first time! :rolleyes:
 
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