Suppose I came to you and told you this. I then explain that I had gone back in time and altered the future in some small way.
Would you believe me?
How would I prove it to you?
What if I came to you (a la matrix) and told you everything you knew didnt exist, never had. That history was a creation of one person, that tv and movies and books were all geared to control us. That there was no ‘Earth’ per se, but that we were all actuall brains in jars, and our very BODIES were an illusion…
How would I prove it? What would be sufficient proof to you?
Could there ever be enough proof to reject ones own existence? By accepting the proof, we would destroy our whole reality…
No, Kelli, I have it on high authority (Spider Robinson, than whom few are higher or more authoritative) that the first time travelers operated in Nova Scotia. Not New Brunswick.
Ok, What if it was your brother, husband, mother… what if they told you that things USED to be different, but they had altered reality. What if it wasnt someone on a MB, but a trusted friend, would you beleive them?
No. Nor would I believe a trusted friend or family member. I might believe they’d lost it, though.
As vandal said, show me.
Haven’t seen the movie, so I can only go by what you described. But, no, I wouldn’t believe you. I’m not sure how you’d prove it – how was it proven in the movie?
Somewhere in the game Alpha Centauri, there’s a line that goes something like this: (sorry, just heard this secondhand, so I know it’s not exact)
“Everything I know could be a lie, for all I know, I could just be a brain in a jar…”
-Excerpt from Jar #72. Recommend immediate termination.
I would not believe you, unless you took me back in time with you.
You could not prove that what we experience as “reality” is a fiction. That position is called solipsism, and I would reject it on the grounds that it’s not a very practical philosophy. While it may be true, where do you go from there? It’s a philosophical dead end; all future inquiry becomes pointless if this premise is accepted.
I’d like to watch it, but my wife doesn’t like violent movies. So I’ll have to find time to rent it and watch it myself. Alas, such time is not frequent in this house.
I probably wouldn’t believe you either, kelli, but I suppose if you had proof that was tangible and would’ve been difficult to come by or fake… coins maybe with the dates on them. I’d probably believe that.
**
Well, if everything was an illusion, how would I know YOU weren’t an illusion too? How would you know YOU weren’t one yourself?? Or that I wasn’t one, and YOU were the one having the illusion of talking to me? I think proof in that case would never be as simple as [stentorian tone please] “Please pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
I had to be made to watch ‘The Matrix’ too, and while some of it left me cold, it was an interesting premise.
Number 1 is much more complicated than it looks. Ockham never said that the simpler of two explanations is more likely true. He said do not multiply entities beyond necessity. Leaving necessary entities out, and obsuring others is not better than the alternative.
Number 1 is a tautology, and incomprehensible outside a meaningful context. It might be an identity, or it might be an equivocation. The former is only abstractly useful, and the latter is entirely worthless.
It’s a bit like that old favorite ‘what if’ - you know the one:
What if the world were created 5 seconds ago and all your ‘memories’ were just planted in your brain? Can you prove otherwise?
After a while of thinking this was very profound it soon became obvious to me that no, you cannot prove otherwise. What I learned from it is that you can never really ‘know’ anything but worrying about it is ultimatly futile. My policy since has been to accept that what I see and learn are a good working model of reality, but hopefully with a mind open to alternatives. So no kellibelli, I would not believe you unless your reality seemed more plausible than mine - after all why should I trust your delusions over my own?
The Matrix is warmed-over Philip K. Dick. Read some of his novels, particularly Time out of Joint, Ubik, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich for a better treatment of the question “What is reality?”.
Proving the world is an illusion is easy: just show me the world behind the world. No need to prove that THAT world is real - I need to acknowledge the presence of the illusion, not its nature.
No, the real problem is proving the world ISN’T an illusion. Can any of you do that?
The reality of the physical universe was once proven to me by the 13-year-old younger brother of a college friend. I loved the proof then and still do now.
Consider: what you do know about the universe, assuming you do know anything, is not all there is to know about it. There is a lot that is not perceived: radio stars, neutrinos, etc. But what you do know does have some sort of coherence and “actability” – when you do X, Y results. Therefore, even if what you perceive is in total error as regards ultimate reality, with Descartes’ deceiving imp altering all your perceptions, it is still a “map” of ultimate reality, just as the one that assumes that perceptions correspond (partially) to reality is. So at bottom the two statements are not contradictory. Therefore we know what we know, and we perceive as much of reality as we are equipped to perceive.
What does it matter? Is my knowing this going to change anything about my perceived life? Will I ever have the ability to see outside my current perception of reality? Does this change my perception of the reason I exist? It probably won’t have an effect on the actual reason I exist.
Nice theory, but if it doesn’t give me any more ability to change my existence, then does it really matter?
Howdy, ZCam, welcome aboard. You’re absolutely correct–it doesn’t matter much on the surface.
But what if, say, a friend of yours believed there were magical pixie fairies living in the wainscotting who controlled the White House via the Bavarian Illuminati? Your friend believs this very firmly, and bases all his actions around his belief. Then, one day, you break open the wainscotting and show him that there aren’t any pixie fairies. Assuming you manage to convince him his beliefs were wrong, you have just introduced a huge complication into his life, and his behavior, relationships, and very existence might be shaken to the core.
It could matter. If we were all Matrix-esque Duracells, and you could be shown that your subjective perceptions were wrong, wouldn’t you want to know? Or would you be content with just living your life as always?
Ya know, I may not have much to say, but I’ll by golly jump into any thread which references both Philip Dick and Spider Robinson (thanx, Poly).
Hey, I’m comfortable with having my existence shaken to the core. I like science, and to paraphrase Richard Feynman, the basic tenet of science is to doubt everything.
But still. Say I believe you. Have you given me a way to use that information? Am I able to go change the past myself? What if the outcome is disastrous? Can I go back and change it again?
And what if I’m a brain in a jar? Can I communicate with whoever put me there, or at least change my behaviour in such a way as to affect what’s really going on?
If not, then what does it matter? It’s nice to know, but it’s not going to have much impact on how I live my life. Whatever that life really is…
Hey, wait a second. We really are just brains in jars. The jar is made of bone, and the inputs are all biological instead of metallic, and we get to walk around the lab, but still!
