In Hebrew, the phrase “Gluten Free” is a palindrome.
I’m sure there are things I/we do not know. I’m sure there are things I simply cannot comprehend, and pretty sure the same is true for our species as a whole. I reject that out of all of us, the author knows/comprehends, and that the answer is that science and spirituality are the same thing, quantum theory something acid Darwin.
Also, I’m 2/3rds into Fall/Dodge in hell, don’t spoiler it for me as I’m sure I’ll pick it up again any decade now.
Not sure if this counts as a spoiler, but… you’ve got through the “good” stuff, no need to struggle on (like I did).
[Voice of Marvin]
The first three hundred pages were the worst.
The next three hundred, they were the worst too.
Then it went into a bit of a decline.
Our understanding of reality is certainly constructed by the brain. That’s not a very controversial to say. It is especially clear when you look at parts of our perception in isolation - for example, the raw image quality of human eyesight is shockingly bad, and doesn’t become useful very until it’s been run through the brain’s enhancers. Many of our thoughts and beliefs are like this.
The author in the OP seems to be extending this idea beyond the brain, to the reality of actual concepts. Even this works to some extent… the concepts in religion and folklore bear little resemblance to reality, but they helped early humans make enough sense of their physical and social world to help them survive a little better. So here again, our perceptions and thoughts are a function of fitness.
All of this breaks down utterly when we break into the realm of critical and self-reflective thinking, where people consciously try to break down their subjective experience and see which ideas still make sense when they live in someone else’s head. This is the process by which we derive “reality”.
Of course it’s also possible that this kind of reality is in fact unreal. Maybe someone planted dinosaur bones in the ground to trick us. But believing that sort of thing requires believing other things that make reality less useful, so reasonable people don’t do that.
tl; dr reality is real.
Where do these useless fucking wankers find the time to come up with this bullshit? And who pays them to work this hard to spell check and polish it?
What persuades a public library to expend public funds to put that travesty on a shelf? :mad:
Got it in one.
Yes.
Even a bunch of reasonably intelligent high school kids passing around a joint would be embarassed to spout crap like this.
Reality is whatever bites your ass. If it affects you, even if total fantasy like religious beliefs, then it’s real. If it doesn’t affect you then BFD, why worry? Baby elephants orbiting Tau Ceti IV don’t bother me.