What is real?

So I watched this movie when I was 5 years old, and its stuck with me since.




Now what if this was happening, but not in a fake TV setting, but say this was the year 10,013 and we wanted to do an experiment on what life was like in 2,013 so we grabbed all our historical facts and generated a world with you the person reading this to be our experiment. All your parents all your friends and people you have ever met are all working with us and are pretending. Everything you believe to be a fact isn't actually true, we've just doctored books and brought in people to tell you how the world is around you. Everyone here on Sythe isn't actually real we are all just here again pretending. Every time you visit a new country you get on a plane and we just fly around in circles and change the setting layout and convince you that you have visited a new place, after all it is 10,013 it's not hard for us. What if every single thing you say or do is being recorded, even your thoughts are made public we have just convinced you it's impossible for others to hear your thoughts. I mean just think now how loud that voice inside your head is, can people really not hear it? But now here is the best part, what if I told you this post was made and meant to be read by you, we want to see what would happen if you knew.......




Would it even matter if you lived in a world where this was the case?

 

I suppose it doesn't really hurt the subjects since they wouldn't know any better. However, with the internet, I feel it would be impossible to simulate such a world just because the sheer amount of effort that would have to go into planting all of the information we have on the internet would take a thousand lifetimes.

 

Think about the truman show where the one girl spills the beans. Guaranteed that would have happened by now. With that their experiment would sort of be ruined in a way because you wouldn't act naturally.

That being said I know how you feel though I've felt the same way before. I've wondered before if that everyone was just actors in my life before but its only when you think about does it really freak you out a little. Like what if all your successes in life were planned so they weren't real achievements.

 

It's the year 10,013 not hard, hell you could even just be a brian in a jar and we have used electrodes to simulate everything you see/feel/hear

 

I can't recall if it was The Truman Show or The Matrix (or something else?) this quote is from, but it has stuck with me:

"We accept the reality we are presented with"

With advances in tech, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make the distinction, and define, what reality is.

I can't remember where the article was from, but I recall a Chinese or Japanese person trying out a virtual reality game ( earphones, visual, sensory) basically all 5 of his senses were hooked up to this game, and he died 3 days later from lack of water/food because, mentally, his brain thought the Virtual reality was indeed reality. when he ate in game, his breain thought he was eating etc, so his biological needs were ignored. Scary stuff really.

 

<3 the Truman show. It's very much like Descartes' evil genius argument.

In a nutshell, he was trying to find something firm and lasting that he could say he knew for certain. If something presented even the least bit of doubt, he would disregard it entirely. He started with the senses argument - saying that there had been times in his life where his senses had deceived him (optical illusions, distant/close objects, bending stick in the water) etc. and so his senses couldn't be trusted (or at least, his sensory perception, as it was still the case he knew he was sitting by the fire and he was holding paper). He then presented the dreaming argument. How did he know he wasn't dreaming? Everything he knew, or thought he knew, could well be a dream. If this was the case, surely nothing is certain? (there are several counters but I'm trying to make this short...) But something does survive the argument, in order to appear in a dream, the things making up the dream must exist in reality. Shape, colour, number.. all must exist in order to make up the dream.

So, here's what I was getting at. Descartes' is only left with logic. So he presents the evil genius argument. Instead of a God, what if there was an evil genius, fooling us in to thinking everything we do. Even the rules of logic are skewed, nothing is certain. All he can use to recover from the fact that he knows nothing for certain, is that he must exist to be deceived. You may have heard the phrase "Cogito ergo sum", "I am, I exist".

He does later apparently rebuild all he knows using the Trademark argument for God, but that's another story. I've missed out all the criticisms (and there are hundreds) but the point I'm getting at is the paragraph above.

 

I doubt this would be possible. Maybe this could be possible when everyone involved in the "new world" would be clueless about it. That would work, I doubt one person with the rest being actors would work, eventually someone would slip up. The whole world might be clueless, we may be examined by someone right now, or something

 

It really depends on how you define 'real' and it all boils down to perspective.

If it seems real to us, then it's real isn't it? I mean, does it matter if our reality is real or not? What matters is our perception of it and how we view it.

Take inception. You have people who are unable to face the harsh reality of the world and decide instead to dream for the rest of their lives. Yes, it may not be 'real' from our perspective, but to the dreamers, it is. As long as they aren't aware that they are in a dream, it is their reality and i believe that is all that counts.

 

But with that being said in our dreams we are limited to only a few senses, like sight and we kind of dip into sound or even taste sometimes what if this is happening now when we "get a feeling" about something, could that be one of the senses that our reality has finding its way to the false reality we live in...?


As for the comment above "we accept the reality we are placed in" but that doesn't mean anything is or isn't real it jut means we would like to remain ignorant if it isnt real and call those whom suspect that it is real crazy..

 

Reminds me of the movie Source Code.

You've really got me thinking. Hell. Anything is possible. We all could be. Who knows.

If I am, screw it, I enjoy my life and wouldn't really care if everything was just a dream.

 

Depends on the person and their level of intelligence.

 

I'd prefer to think of it as a virtual reality over actors and lights camera action.. I think it could be more interesting to think I'm laid in a floatation tank living this unbelievable virtual life.

 

Sensory perception isn't the only perception that we're able to do. Not delving into matters of drugs/test drugs but DMT and the research into that is worth having a look at. Centres around the 'spirit molecule' as they call it which may in turn affect your opinion.

 

By accepting the reality, we are accepting it's legitimacy, therefore believing it is real.

However yes, those who choose to question the reality/way of life/perceptions of the majority are usually, sadly, labelled as weird/different/mentally ill

 

Man, thank you for bringing up this topic. I remember watching the movie back when I was younger and my english wasn't that good back then. Deffo gonna dl it and watch !

 

I'm glad i didn't read this while high. And honestly i've tought about it too after a similar thing we did in history class i believe. If however something like this would exist it doesn't hurt anyone in the experiment. And i should stop browsing randomly on sythe and go study. Good Op tho

 

#1 Great movie, #2 I think about this All the time since I have seen this movie, 3# I would freak out just like he did lol

 

I think a little outside the box. This is something I think about a lot in different ways.
Pretty trippy when you start looking at everyone wonderong "What if your not real either..."

 

Everything with mass.

 

What you're saying would be extremely difficult to keep running stable for years and years of time, however, what about Solipsism? And if you don't want you to go paranoid or your head to hurt for the next 24 hours, I'd avoid clicking that or googling anything about it.