# Wgen did you discover that "reality" is inconsistent? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 2, 2009, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738 "2009-07-02T20:47:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/41 "2009-07-03T07:33:09Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > Also, you assert that in the 2nd grade, you dropped a pencil, which you found in your lap, but which you felt hit your foot and heard hit the floor. Dude, either this is a made-up episode for the purpose of introducing your topic, in which case your discussion starts of being intellectually dishonest, or you simply have some pretty bizzaar (perhaps even nebulous) grip on “reality.” Becauce you **cannot** have felt the pencil hit your foot if it was in your lap. And if you really think you did hear it hit the floor, and felt it hit your foot, then you are suffering from the sort of non-real sensory input that puts you in a good chance of being able to be diagnosed with a mental illness. Of course, it’s easily possible for one to feel something else round their foot and hear some other noise and, in the context of the expectations one would have at that point, to misinterpret these and then be temporarily confused by the apparent incongruity of the situation. But most of us would reconcile ourselves and shrug it off pretty quickly. What’s really bizarre is attributing so much significance to such a mundane one-off incident from a little over thirty years ago with so many readily possible explanations. I mean, really, the OP boils down to is “Once, in second grade, I got confused for a bit. When did _you_ first realize that there’s no such thing as physical matter?” ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/42 "2009-07-03T07:52:15Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > I note you have totally dropped the issue of “third person” memories, which you have universally been told no one else has (I don’t, either; I see things in memory and dream in first-person perspective). While not commenting on **Smashy** ’s mental state, I’ll raise my hand and say I’ve experienced third person memories and dreams as well. Not all of them, not even most of them, but I have had the feeling. My dreams and memories sometimes take on a cinematic quality that I chalk it up to watching too many damn movies. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/43 "2009-07-03T07:59:59Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > He then sat me in the back of his car and explained that the overpass could be icy, even though it was 10 degrees above freezing, because of the wind chill. Which made it feel colder. Even though it was not actually colder. (But apparently the water thought it was, because it was definitely ice.) I didn’t understand this until I was ten seconds slow igniting my furnace. One arm was as naked as the day I was born and the other had hair that disrupted the flow from pretty much anything. The former understood wind chills while the latter thought he could dismiss them. ---
**Author:** ![NoJustice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecb155/32.png) [@NoJustice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoJustice)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/44 "2009-07-03T08:11:53Z")
**When did you discover that Kant was a moron?** ---
**Author:** ![Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uosdwis_R.Dewoh)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/45 "2009-07-03T09:12:03Z")
Meh, Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/46 "2009-07-03T09:36:39Z")
Heideggar, however, was a boozy beggar who could drink you under the table. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/47 "2009-07-03T09:57:19Z")
I recall being blown away when young when my father told me about the philosophy that nothing and nobody exists until you actually look at them and create that reality. When you turn around that aspect of reality vanishes again. Thus from his point of view he was the only real thing in the universe and there was no way that I could show him otherwise. I found out later that this originated with the 18th century philosopher George Berkeley and that he also contended that reality existed in the mind of God, who constantly observes everything in the universe. There’s a marvelous story about this. Boswell was walking through the streets of London with Dr Johnson discussing Berkeley’s philosophy, with Johnson getting angrier and angrier with what he considered a nonsensical theory. Finally, when Boswell insisted that there was no way to disprove it, Johnson exploded and kicked a huge rock. “Thus I refute Berkeley!”, he bellowed. End of discussion. (Gotta love the Great Cham! BTW the [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley) page on Berkeley calls him an Irish philosopher. I take issue with that. Although born in Ireland he was an Englishman from a noble Gloucestershire family and always described himself as such. Somebody made the mistake of calling Wellington an Irishman once (he too was born in Ireland). His reply was withering. “Being born in a stable, Sir, does not make you a donkey!” ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/48 "2009-07-03T10:44:25Z")
Dude, perhaps you dropped **two** pencils in second grade? But really, your posts in this thread are entirely nonsensical. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/49 "2009-07-03T11:04:00Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > I know what you are talking about. What if D-O-G was really spelled C-A-T? Think about it. Oh, my, GOD. GOD. Is DOG…spelled backwards. No, wait! God…is CAT…spelled backwards. Ooooh no. Oh, nononono, no! ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/50 "2009-07-03T11:35:21Z")
I realized it once God stated showing me that His Word is absolute truth after coming to Him through Jesus. He showed things to me that are exactly out of scriptures. Things that so called teachers of scripture try to fit into the mainstream view of reality, God showed me that those teachers are teaching lies and perverting the Word of God. Trying to reconcile the seemingly contradictions in the Bible, particularly the Gospels, but in other places also, God spoke to me that they represent 4 intersecting realities of the world, each one has a different reality. The confusion of language of the Tower of Babble means that in everyday life those inconsistencies between worlds will not be pointed out, creating a single view of reality that is in serious error. God also showed me that some people have been able to force their view of reality onto others, these are the people who define the mainstream reality. We can see this in investigations, when the people are asked separately what happened we get differing accounts, once they get together usually one view of a single reality is established by those able to enforce their views on others. Those oppressed others are forced to live in realities established by others. The oppressed others because they think (know) they saw something different, yet accept the common view of reality, start to doubt themselves, and lean to yield to others opinions and hold back from figuring out their own reality letting others do it for them. From that time I have seen from time to time inconsistencies here and there, one person’s reality is not the same as another’s. One such thing is a car trip, for me it was raining so hard we had to pull over, for the other person in the car it was so foggy we had to pull over. Both are convinced of the rain/fog and have no doubt that what they experienced is what happened. God spoke to me that that person is in a different one of the 4 kingdoms, and it was also God speaking to him at the time, saying to him ‘you are lost in the fog’, while rain is a sign of blessings raining down. The effect was the same, we couldn’t see so we had to stop and wait. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/51 "2009-07-03T11:50:15Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Trying to reconcile the seemingly contradictions in the Bible, particularly the Gospels, but in other places also, God spoke to me that they represent 4 intersecting realities of the world, each one has a different reality. Sounds like the [TimeCube](http://www.timecube.com/). I now understand kanicbird. ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/52 "2009-07-03T12:24:48Z")
You know the apocalypse is upon us when **kanicbird** amd **Smash The State** enter into meaningful diaglogue. We’re fucked peoples. Take cover NOW!! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/53 "2009-07-03T12:42:08Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Dude, perhaps you dropped **two** pencils in second grade? > > But really, your posts in this thread are entirely nonsensical. Actually, no, they aren’t. They’re just incredibly simple philosophical observations presented as if they’re great revelations. What SmashTheState’s posts boil down to is “the perception of reality is subjective.” (Plus his apparent bitterness over being “lied to” about it.) Well, duh. Sensory inputs and the way the brain interprets them provide us with a picture of reality, but it’s not always an accurate one; just look up a web site of optical illusions for a very simple example. This is something we’ve all figured out, I would hope, by the time we’re 12 years old. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/54 "2009-07-03T13:14:09Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > None of you have read CoPR, have you? For people who have such an overweening sense of your own intellect, some of you folks seem surprisingly uneducated. Mocking anyone who doesn’t share your in-jokes and rigid materialist dogma appears to be the SOP here and, I have to say, as an outsider looking in, it makes the SD boards look remarkably unpleasant. That’s because your OP is ridiculous. I mean really. You expect people to believe that “reality is inconsistent” over the much more likely hypothesis that: a) you are lying b) you misinterpreted the noises you heard and whatnot to think the pencil hit the floor or c) you are too uncoordinated to catch a pencil ? Or you have not articulated your OP in such a way that you are adequately conveying your intended meaning. Because what it sounds like is you are asking us when we first realized the physical properties of the universe are different from what we are told in by our parents, teachers, most of the scientific community, our friends, everyone we ever met and common sense. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/55 "2009-07-03T13:44:38Z")
I teach second grade, and I take great delight in blowing the little buggers’ minds. I use optical illusions and magic tricks fairly often. Generally I understand how the illusion works, but I can’t always explain it in second-grade terms; the magic tricks I always relent and explain how they’re done, so the kids can impress other folks. I don’t lie to them about how reality doesn’t always conform to our experience of it; on the contrary, I demonstrate it to them repeatedly, and then I try to help them understand exactly what’s happening when perceptions and reality don’t match up. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/56 "2009-07-03T13:46:11Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m not quite trolling, but I am being deliberately provocative to see which people have minds open enough to try and understand what I’m saying. An Open Mind is not the same as having a Hole in your Head. That there are limitations to any sensors – including the ones we human beings use to sense the outer wourld does not imply that We Cannot Know Reality or that We Create Our Own Reality or that Everything We Think We Know is Wrong. We can sense that cross that’s in our Blind Spot right now either by moving the sheet or by using other sensing means. It’s more likely (using Occam’s Razor) that Reality is Consistent and that we have a few easily detectable limitations on our senses than that Reality is Inconsistent. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/57 "2009-07-03T15:06:16Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > It’s more likely (using Occam’s Razor) that Reality is Consistent and that we have a few easily detectable limitations on our senses than that Reality is Inconsistent. That has certainly been _my_ experience. Reality will kill you a hundred times over before it ever admits to an inconsistency, but human senses are easy to fool or misinterpret. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/58 "2009-07-03T15:51:03Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > Um… no, we call these “memories” and “perceptions.” > > [QUOTE=SmashTheState] > > Yet it is these memories and these perceptions which we refer to as reality, and it is here that we exist. Um… no, we call these “memories” and “perceptions.” I do not think the term “reality” means what you think it means. Try here for some definitions. In particular, there is this definition: “something that constitutes a real or actual thing, as distinguished from something that is merely apparent.” [/QUOTE] No, **Smash the State** is correct. **dracoi** is incorrect. I do not mean there is no “reality” in existence, just that we have absolutely zero access to it. What we have access to is something different, composed in our minds from a combination of memories and perceptions. And we do _call_ that “reality”, that is to say that in general we do tend to ignore or elide the difference between reality and “reality as we are capable of knowing of it”. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/59 "2009-07-03T15:52:07Z")
To answer the OP question, about 8 or 9 years old. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/60 "2009-07-03T16:09:21Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > When I first discovered Plato and tried explaining to them the difference between the Ideal and our perceptions, they mocked me and forked food off my plate, saying, “If you don’t exist, then you won’t mind if we eat your dinner, haw haw haw.” You seem to live in some kind of strange alternate-reality philosophical Chick Tract. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738.md?page=4)