# 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:** 4
**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, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/61 "2009-07-03T16:11:55Z")
OP, are you saying you were raised to believe that every first-pass impression you had from your apparent sensory perceptions must be regarded as true? If so, then you do have reason to be bitter, because that’s an absurd principle to live by. But you’ll be happy to know that the vast majority of the rest of us were never taught any such thing. ---
**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, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/62 "2009-07-03T16:20:04Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > In fact, I think you will find that most of your memories consist of seeing yourself in the _third person_, a view you could not possibly have obtained through your eyeballs. If you’re really describing your memories accurately, then I think it is possible that in some sense, you’re “wired up” differently than most people. I don’t mean that as an insult or an attempt to make you feel strange or something. I’m just pointing out that you may see the world or think about it in a very different way than most people. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that–indeed, it could be valuable. But the fact is, people don’t generally remember in the “third person” as you describe. However, it is possible to get people to begin experiencing the present in an apparently “third personal” way–they begin to feel they are floating around outside their body, watching events unfold from that vantage point instead of through their own eyes–by stimulating particular parts of the brain. Maybe something somewhere around that part of your brain is the culprit here? Total speculation. One which assumes you’re describing your memories correctly. ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/63 "2009-07-03T16:24:37Z")
People, why are you wasting your time?. The OP starts a thread, posts in it 4 or 5 times and then buggers off to start another round of nonsense. Read his public profile, the man is 2 vouchers short of a pop-up toaster ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/64 "2009-07-03T16:37:53Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > I laid my big pencil down on the desk. Could you clarify? By “big pencil” do you mean one of those huge pencils they sell to tourists in dinky stores at the beach, or did the pencil _appear_ big because you were shrunken down to a teeny tiny person and _everything_ appeared big?😕 ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/65 "2009-07-03T16:39:35Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > An Open Mind is not the same as having a Hole in your Head. This is awesome. Is it yours? May I use it? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Strinka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/strinka/32/512_2.png) [@Strinka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strinka)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/66 "2009-07-03T16:58:37Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > 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”. That’s not true. We have limited access to reality, not zero. If we had absolutely no access to reality, than any similarity between it and our perception would be pure coincidence. But since just about everyone agrees that the sky is blue, things fall down when they’re dropped and fire is hot, it can be reasonably safely assumed that our similarities in perception are not just due to a massive coincidence. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/67 "2009-07-03T17:03:59Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > Here is proof positive that the Universe of our perception is inconsistent, for we can actually do simple experiments to show objects popping in and out of existence as we move them in and out of our blind spot. My girlfriend hates it when I do this to her. Especially when she’s trying to put on her make-up. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/68 "2009-07-03T18:04:03Z")
> [@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. **Wanda:** You think you’re an intellectual, don’t you, ape? **Otto:** Apes don’t read philosophy! **Wanda:** Yes they do, Otto. They just don’t \*understand \*it. ---
**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, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/69 "2009-07-03T18:20:35Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > 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. Nonsense. Our memories and perceptions _ **ARE** _ our access to reality! > [@](#): > > 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”. We cannot compare or contrast reality with “_reality as we are capable of knowing of it_” because that would require knowledge of reality which we don’t have. But that does not mean we ignore the fact that there is a difference. Nor does it mean that the term ‘reality’ is used to refer specifically to our limited knowledge of reality, to the exclusion of “_the thing in itself_”. ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/70 "2009-07-03T18:22:19Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > Ah, but the question is, until we established the “fact” (in the Kantian sense of meaning “so many people agree, that we consider this to be accurate, even though it is not a metaphysical truth”) that, for example, the world was roung – was it? The probability wave representing a flat Earth and a round Earth did not collapse until we had some way of testing the system. And since not everyone accepts the Copenhagen interpretation, there is every possibility that the Earth may, indeed, still be flat; it is highly unlikely, but since the wave never collapses into a single Eigenstate, it always remains a possibility. And the Universe itself, being simply an overlapping series of probability waves in constant flux, may one day simply… pop. Like a soap bubble. And, in fact, may already have done so, many times. The Everett-Wheeler model suggests this is happening constantly. > > So as you go through life with your mores and knowledge softening and changing – is it really _you_ that’s changing, or is it the Universe? And is there a difference? The Participatory Anthropic Model suggests there isn’t. You do realize that this is complete and utter nonsense, right? Have you ever taken a class in quantum mechanics? Also, I read CoPR in college and found it really interesting. Clearly Kant was a brilliant man. But I did not find it, even as an adolescent, particularly relevant. ---
**Author:** ![SiXSwordS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SiXSwordS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiXSwordS)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/71 "2009-07-03T18:23:27Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > …the specific point where it dawned on you that the world was inconsistent, and that the grown-ups had **lied** to you about the nature of reality. **emphasis added** Now that the OP has left us for another, unrelated reality, I have a question. I am a grown-up with a son and several trainees. At least one trainee has told me outright that if I’m trying to teach that 2 + 2 = 4, she doesn’t want to know that 2 + 2 = 5 for extraordinary values of 2 or that 10 + 10 = 100 in base 2. So, does it constitute lying to gloss over certain inconsistencies in order to avoid confusion or to indoctrinate children or co-workers in order to have them understand the basics of the society or social group they are likely to live in _before_ delving into Hume’s fork and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus? Regardless of whether external reality is or is not consistent, how can we understand inconsistency if we don’t have at least the idea of consistency to compare it to? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/72 "2009-07-03T18:47:10Z")
SmashTheState writes: \> I don’t know about your parents, but mine were naive materialists. 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.” The problem was not that your parents were naive materialists. The problem was that they were jerks. Yes, there are people who make fun of other people who try to explain halfway intellectual ideas. Sometimes they will even make fun of their own children. They do this for various reasons. Sometimes they do it because they don’t like the fact that other people are smarter than them. Sometimes they do it because they like to control other people and don’t want them interested in things that they aren’t interested in. Sometimes they do it because hurting other people is their idea of fun. I’m sorry that your parents were such jerks, but this isn’t true of most people’s parents. Perhaps you should get some psychological counseling for your problems. ---
**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, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/73 "2009-07-03T18:56:25Z")
Actually, although some people seem to be saying otherwise, the description **SmashTheState** gives of how his parents teased him sounds perfectly playful and all in good fun to me; I can much more easily imagine it as affectionate than jerkish. I think it’s again just a case of **SmashTheState** attaching far too much misinterpreted significance to something very minor and ordinary. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Weird\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@The\_Weird\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Weird_One)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/74 "2009-07-03T18:56:36Z")
> [@raspberry\_hunter](#): > > Also, I read CoPR in college and found it really interesting. Clearly Kant was a brilliant man. But I did not find it, even as an adolescent, particularly relevant. What the heck does CoPR stand for? ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/75 "2009-07-03T18:58:41Z")
> [@SiXSwordS](#): > > **emphasis added** > > Now that the OP has left us for another, unrelated reality, I have a question. > > I am a grown-up with a son and several trainees. At least one trainee has told me outright that if I’m trying to teach that 2 + 2 = 4, she doesn’t want to know that 2 + 2 = 5 for extraordinary values of 2 or that 10 + 10 = 100 in base 2. > > So, does it constitute lying to gloss over certain inconsistencies in order to avoid confusion or to indoctrinate children or co-workers in order to have them understand the basics of the society or social group they are likely to live in _before_ delving into Hume’s fork and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus? > > Regardless of whether external reality is or is not consistent, how can we understand inconsistency if we don’t have at least the idea of consistency to compare it to? Not sure I understand your question, in the sense that in the example you give, you’re not lying in the sense that 2+2 does always equal 4 given the common definition of 2 and 4, and the common perception that in the absence of base information you are working in base 10. Now, in the case where “2” really means “an experimental value of 2 which could range from 1.6 to 2.4,” then 2+2 could be closer to 5, but a kid or a trainee probably isn’t going to define “2” that way unless there is a specific reason to (e.g., you are measuring quantities, or teaching them about significant digits). Here is another example – my high school physics teacher used to always tell us he was lying to us as we worked kinematic problems without adding in any terms for air resistance. “Air doesn’t exist!” he would say. There, where you have word problems like “How far does a ball travel if I throw it at this speed?” it would be perfectly reasonable for a kid to translate this as “In the real world, if I threw a ball at this speed, how far would it travel?” which is not the same as “In the idealized world represented by these particular kinematic equations, how far would it travel?” However, by the time it gets to that stage, I think the student can handle statements like my teacher’s “I am lying to you by pretending air doesn’t exist.” In both these cases, there isn’t inconsistency, really – it’s just that one has to be careful about definitions. ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/76 "2009-07-03T19:01:03Z")
> [@The\_Weird\_One](#): > > What the heck does CoPR stand for? _Critique of Pure Reason_, in which Kant tries to Explain Everything, and the reading of which SmashTheState has apparently selected as a prerequisite to posting in this thread 🙂 ---
**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, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/77 "2009-07-03T19:01:33Z")
> [@The\_Weird\_One](#): > > What the heck does CoPR stand for? Presumably, Critique of Pure Reason. (Though, who knows? Maybe Critique of Practical Reason) ---
**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, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/78 "2009-07-03T19:10:10Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Actually, although some people seem to be saying otherwise, the description **SmashTheState** gives of how his parents teased him sounds perfectly playful and all in good fun to me; I can much more easily imagine it as affectionate than jerkish. I think it’s again just a case of **SmashTheState** attaching far too much misinterpreted significance to something very minor and ordinary. (Are people supposing his parents forced him to go to bed hungry or something? I really have trouble reading the episode as cruel intellectual stifling rather than a one-off instance of gentle teasing. I guess I’m dragging my own perceptions of **SmashTheState** ’s personality into this, but the intendedly harsh accusation that the parents “were naive materialists” just seems like so much smoldering teenage “God, I am so much smarter than my philistine parents. They don’t understand anything that matters” bullshit. For comparison, see the same accusations being tossed at all of us in much the same way here: > [@SmashTheState](#): > > 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. ) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/79 "2009-07-03T19:18:36Z")
I don’t think it was meant in an affectionate way if SmashTheState still remembers it that clearly so many years later. If it had been meant jokingly, his parents would have said so as soon as it became clear to them that he didn’t take it as a joke. Of course, it could be that his parents are the sort of people who constantly make fun of whoever the butt of jokes is at the moment. They will tell themselves that they are just having fun. When, often years later, the butt of their jokes commits suicide or goes crazy and kills a few of his tormenters, they will insist that they were just having fun and that the butt of the jokes should have realized that it was his position in life to be the target of everyone’s humor and that he should have just played along with it. ---
**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, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738/80 "2009-07-03T19:22:42Z")
**SmashTheState** also still remembers very clearly an instance in second grade where he dropped a pencil and failed to catch it. Memory’s a funny thing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wgen-did-you-discover-that-reality-is-inconsistent/501738.md?page=5)