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Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience -- and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. How does this happen? According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, we're all hallucinating all the time; when we agree about our hallucinations, we call it "reality." Join Seth for a delightfully disorienting talk that may leave you questioning the very nature of your existence.

Since everyone has his view on reality, the only thing we (probably) share is the "I think therefore I am". It would also imply that due to the way our consciousness works, we can't find the "one and only truth". There is just as many "truths" as there are of human beings.

Owley wrote:Since everyone has his view on reality, the only thing we (probably) share is the "I think therefore I am". It would also imply that due to the way our consciousness works, we can't find the "one and only truth". There is just as many "truths" as there are of human beings.

I have this fun idea of reality existing almost like gravity.
So our individual reality is tied to us, but also extends a bit outside our own body. (gravity being the effect one body has on another).
That actually explains why you start thinking like others if you spend a lot of time with them, and why we have mass hysteria. If you have a lot of people in the same place, all of their realities drag each other down to this weird shared reality that is trying to separate itself from the group and therefore creating things that aren't real to anybody.

That's interesting.

If a concept of self is based on brain signals, then when the brain signals no longer exist, that means that the brain is no longer shaping consciousness, not that consciousness goes away.
With the rapid acceleration of technology's development, I bet things such as neural interfaces wouldn't be that difficult at all. A controlled hallucination which is applied to the brain by a machine.
If I want a visual overlay of my environment, I could feed my visual data to a computer, and have it output the modified version back to my brain.

First we had it that humans aren't special in comparison to animals. Now we sort of have it that humans aren't that special when compared to machines.

Desecrated,

What I really take out of that fun idea, is that if we are shaping each other's realities, what is shaping our total reality? If each perception enforces its ability to be perceived by other perceptions, perhaps there's some kind of entity that constantly perceives objective reality as it is, thus enforcing objectivity for all of us. Then each individual would put their own subjective twist on the objective.

I had an idea similar to yours, what if objective reality as we know it, is just a shared hallucination much like your hysteria example? If this gravity force can influence mood, it should be able to influence overall perception. If I can't see something, in my own subjective reality, I know it doesn't exist. So if I do see something, then it must exist. You could take a stretch of logic and argue that it's the seeing of things which makes them exist to begin with.

I was fiddling with the idea that if I am aware, and another person is aware, then the only difference between our awareness is our position relative to each other. Assume a single observer, and add in non-linear time, and suddenly you can have a self reinforcing reality. If the single observer can exist independent of time, you could have them enter a room, watch it for say 20min, leave it, then enter the room 20min earlier (at the same time as their previous self), so they both sit in the same room for the same 20min. During that 20min, they are causing each other to gravitate towards each other's realities, so it becomes kind of solid and hard to shake. On the other hand, if you have a dream, which is super easy to modify, you could explain that by saying there's less observers in the dream. You could speculate interfering instances of the same being, to be an origin of force.

blindwake wrote:That's interesting.

If a concept of self is based on brain signals, then when the brain signals no longer exist, that means that the brain is no longer shaping consciousness, not that consciousness goes away.
With the rapid acceleration of technology's development, I bet things such as neural interfaces wouldn't be that difficult at all. A controlled hallucination which is applied to the brain by a machine.
If I want a visual overlay of my environment, I could feed my visual data to a computer, and have it output the modified version back to my brain.

First we had it that humans aren't special in comparison to animals. Now we sort of have it that humans aren't that special when compared to machines.

Machines are made in our image. it's not surprising that they will start to function like us someday.

Desecrated,

What I really take out of that fun idea, is that if we are shaping each other's realities, what is shaping our total reality? If each perception enforces its ability to be perceived by other perceptions, perhaps there's some kind of entity that constantly perceives objective reality as it is, thus enforcing objectivity for all of us. Then each individual would put their own subjective twist on the objective.

The interesting thing is that language is that entity. Language is the filter that we all use to express reality around us, and very often a persons view of reality is tied to their own lack of means to describe it.

I had an idea similar to yours, what if objective reality as we know it, is just a shared hallucination much like your hysteria example? If this gravity force can influence mood, it should be able to influence overall perception. If I can't see something, in my own subjective reality, I know it doesn't exist. So if I do see something, then it must exist. You could take a stretch of logic and argue that it's the seeing of things which makes them exist to begin with.

I struggled with this one as well. But I think that Ayn Rand solved it the best.
It's a very long argument but if you oil it down it's something like we can not become aware of something hat does not exists. therefore it has to exist before we become aware of it. Matter first, then consciousness.

I was fiddling with the idea that if I am aware, and another person is aware, then the only difference between our awareness is our position relative to each other. Assume a single observer, and add in non-linear time, and suddenly you can have a self reinforcing reality. If the single observer can exist independent of time, you could have them enter a room, watch it for say 20min, leave it, then enter the room 20min earlier (at the same time as their previous self), so they both sit in the same room for the same 20min. During that 20min, they are causing each other to gravitate towards each other's realities, so it becomes kind of solid and hard to shake. On the other hand, if you have a dream, which is super easy to modify, you could explain that by saying there's less observers in the dream. You could speculate interfering instances of the same being, to be an origin of force.

Yes.

Desecrated wrote: I have this fun idea of reality existing almost like gravity.
So our individual reality is tied to us, but also extends a bit outside our own body. (gravity being the effect one body has on another).

This makes a lot of sense and can even explain things like empathy, where both realities kind of merge and the feelings of one being have an impact on the feelings of the other so that the second's realty starts to change to get in conformity to the first's. I hope you understand what I mean, I have a hard time putting words on these thoughts.

The interesting thing is that language is that entity. Language is the filter that we all use to express reality around us, and very often a persons view of reality is tied to their own lack of means to describe it.

What do you mean? Like a framework that keeps us all thinking in circles? That kind of makes me think of times when I've woken up from dreams, and I kept applying dream logic to the wake. I'd be thinking of survival in the dream, then wake up, and wouldn't be able to let go of the fact that I was safe in my bed. Why make a maze when you can just convince the mice that they're already in one?

I struggled with this one as well. But I think that Ayn Rand solved it the best.
It's a very long argument but if you oil it down it's something like we can not become aware of something hat does not exists. therefore it has to exist before we become aware of it. Matter first, then consciousness.

I haven't yet read Ayn Rand's materials, now that you've caught my interest. Just from a quick think about what you are suggesting though, I feel like there's a circular dependency. It's kind of like, "Which came first? The chicken or the egg?" I can't fathom how matter can exist without experience, because matter is described in terms of experience. If you take something physical like a book, and strip away all the experiential descriptions, such as where it appears to be, what the texture of it is, etc., there's nothing left; it's just data. How can you have meaningful data without something that interprets it?

I was fiddling with the idea that if I am aware, and another person is aware, then the only difference between our awareness is our position relative to each other. Assume a single observer, and add in non-linear time, and suddenly you can have a self reinforcing reality. If the single observer can exist independent of time, you could have them enter a room, watch it for say 20min, leave it, then enter the room 20min earlier (at the same time as their previous self), so they both sit in the same room for the same 20min. During that 20min, they are causing each other to gravitate towards each other's realities, so it becomes kind of solid and hard to shake. On the other hand, if you have a dream, which is super easy to modify, you could explain that by saying there's less observers in the dream. You could speculate interfering instances of the same being, to be an origin of force.


Yes.

You seem to be stating that I can indeed speculate, but add nothing, so it appears that you think that the line of thinking is not useful. Is that the case? I recognize that I have a tendency to daydream a bit. It helps if you actually cut me down a bit.

blindwake wrote:
What do you mean? Like a framework that keeps us all thinking in circles? That kind of makes me think of times when I've woken up from dreams, and I kept applying dream logic to the wake. I'd be thinking of survival in the dream, then wake up, and wouldn't be able to let go of the fact that I was safe in my bed. Why make a maze when you can just convince the mice that they're already in one?

Not only that. All of our ethics and morals are bound into the language as well. Not only is the language our god, it is our religion,

I haven't yet read Ayn Rand's materials, now that you've caught my interest. Just from a quick think about what you are suggesting though, I feel like there's a circular dependency. It's kind of like, "Which came first? The chicken or the egg?" I can't fathom how matter can exist without experience, because matter is described in terms of experience. If you take something physical like a book, and strip away all the experiential descriptions, such as where it appears to be, what the texture of it is, etc., there's nothing left; it's just data. How can you have meaningful data without something that interprets it?

You would not have meaningful data. But you would have data. You would have something.

You seem to be stating that I can indeed speculate, but add nothing, so it appears that you think that the line of thinking is not useful. Is that the case? I recognize that I have a tendency to daydream a bit. It helps if you actually cut me down a bit.

When I give a super short answer, it usually means that you are 100% correct and there is nothing more I can add to it.
You should daydream, that is half the fun of being awake.

You would not have meaningful data. But you would have data. You would have something.

That's like saying you could have a data disk, but no one ever had to exist to be able to make the disk to begin with. If I can interpret the disk, it makes sense that something else would have been able to write the disk's data in a form that is readable; it would have been interpreted as it was written. The data on a disk is still meaningful regardless of whether you put it into a disk drive or not. It still has data even if it's not read.

Where'd that something come from? Why is it coherent?
The only real solution I have to the chicken vs egg problem is that there's an infinite chain of them: ... egg -> chicken -> egg -> chicken -> egg -> chicken ...
Which one comes first is then dependent on what part of the sequence you're looking at.
It's like how a program is still data, even if it is working on data. If you have matter (data), you have an observer (program) to work on it: ... data -> program -> data -> program -> data -> program ...
I can't fathom truly separating the chicken and the egg, because they're basically the same thing, much like a program is still just a bunch of data.

violetstar wrote:http://www.nbcnews.com/id/38238685/ns/t ... XUGXDRtnDd

It's a lie, Egg came first, dinosaur laid eggs, and due to solar flare one mutated and instead of dinosaur hatched a chicken. Obviously [rolleyes]

That doesn't prove anything. All the article says is that chickens do in fact lay eggs. We know that.
It's an analogy. It's not literally about a chicken and an egg. It's about causation itself.
If the chicken did in fact come first, where did it come from? Did the flying spaghetti monster just drop it out of a UFO?

blindwake wrote:That doesn't prove anything. All the article says is that chickens do in fact lay eggs. We know that.
It's an analogy. It's not literally about a chicken and an egg. It's about causation itself.
If the chicken did in fact come first, where did it come from? Did the flying spaghetti monster just drop it out of a UFO?

It's was a joke.. jeez ppl
Anybody care for some peppermint tea? I like to mix it with some camomile, does wonders for a troubled mind [wink]

I know it was a joke. The UFO was also a joke. To be honest, I kind of ignored the joke and just addressed violetstar.
Unless that was also a joke. Then I completely missed it. But who am I kidding, NBC News is always a joke.

blindwake wrote:Did the flying spaghetti monster just drop it out of a UFO?

That feels like the most likely scenario to me.

Buddhism actually says that all reality itself is an illusion/unreal and the conclusion to this is that nothing would be more 'real' than the other in reality. Just that maybe then if so, everything is just as real or unreal as each other and are perceived/function in different ways.

I agree on this, I believe that the reality is an illusion and everything we see, smell, touch , hear and sense its not truth but an illusion, created by our brains/minds, and in order to reach perfection we have to fully realize this truth.

Spida wrote:

darktruth77 wrote:I agree on this, I believe that the reality is an illusion and everything we see, smell, touch , hear and sense its not truth but an illusion, created by our brains/minds, and in order to reach perfection we have to fully realize this truth.

I think the word "illusion" loses it's meaning in this context since it is what is attempting to be defined. What is real? You must know this before you can say whether or not something is an illusion.

Instead I would be asking what is the fundamental substance of existence. This would be what is real. Then the illusions could be determined, perhaps.

Real is something that exists independently of the observer and consciousness and also an object can be real if it is existing as we know it outside of our mind and our senses. But we know that this not truth because everything is energy and this energy is vibrating and the difference of each object is the frequency of vibration.
But in the most fundamental level of reality energy is vibrating at the same time in all possible frequencies and also all possibilities existing. However in third dimension we only perceive only o possible outcome in space. But in the higher level of reality(maybe 10th dimensions) all possibilities and everything that we can imagine it is existing as reality, and in this dimension or in this state of consciousness we can create our own reality.

Spida wrote:

@DarkTruth77

It does seem to come down to Energy. Matter being a manifestation of energy. Energy itself being defined by frequency. Frequency: wavelength, and amplitude. It's just another way of saying "Invisible Snakes", Serpents. They follow me everywhere I go.

Ciao

Yes, I agree. But I also believe that all possibilities are existing and energy is vibrating in all frequencies in the same time but when we observe we can only observe o possible outcome, maybe our minds are calculating the most possible outcome, and we perceive this energy as matter, because of our brain so the reality its created by the observer and the observer when reaches the higher spiritual level can create his reality as he wishes.

Yes Snakes/Serpents are everywhere. They are Holy.

darktruth77,

Real is something that exists independently of the observer and consciousness and also an object can be real if it is existing as we know it outside of our mind and our senses

Why does something have to exist independently of an observer for it to be "real"?
How do you know that anything exists outside of your mind and sense? After all, you can't directly perceive.
Who's to say that what you see isn't exactly what you get? If what you're sensing isn't the actual real deal, then what is the real deal? How do you describe it?
How can you call what you are seeing an illusion when you aren't even sure what could possibly be behind the illusion? Is the illusion still illusory if it's all there is?

Personally, I don't see the difference between a dream and waking life. One's just harder to shake than the other.

blindwake wrote:darktruth77,

Real is something that exists independently of the observer and consciousness and also an object can be real if it is existing as we know it outside of our mind and our senses

Why does something have to exist independently of an observer for it to be "real"?
How do you know that anything exists outside of your mind and sense? After all, you can't directly perceive.
Who's to say that what you see isn't exactly what you get? If what you're sensing isn't the actual real deal, then what is the real deal? How do you describe it?
How can you call what you are seeing an illusion when you aren't even sure what could possibly be behind the illusion? Is the illusion still illusory if it's all there is?

Personally, I don't see the difference between a dream and waking life. One's just harder to shake than the other.

If something doesnt exist outside of your mind then it is an illusion, something created by your mind/brain or even consciousness.
In fact everything is energy and everything that is possible and imaginable exists, but with our observation the possibilities are collapsing and we observe only our reality which actually is created by our consciousness.

I agree that the reality is a dream and dream is a synonymous to illusion, and we can control our reality by the realization of the truth.