Something To Challenge Your Perceptions. .
 

. . I know it sounds like a stupid question to start with, But are we real? Is the 'world' real? How do we know we exist? What if this 'world' is just a dream?

Makes you really think about what we really see in the world. Is there a beautiful bird in the sky real, or is it just our imagination. Can people really see what we see and describe it the same, but its actually different? I mean .. when they say blue, is it red in their eyes? Maybe the grass is purple; but our eyes somehow change and interpret the colour differently.

It got me thinking hard about it. Just curious ..

so you seen the matrix then, and its opened your eyes?

This is a pretty old concept, my man...

I've heard it worded as...

What if I'm just a dream from someone else's sleep?

What if my awake time is when he's sleeping and dreaming of my life and escapdes...

And his awake time, is when I'm sleeping.

Been there, pondered that.

The Matrix.. The Matrix Reloaded .. Matrix Revolutions

I Feel What Your Saying Though Cam... I Feel Like That Sometimes
Too...

Thinking about topics like this always inevitably frustrates me. There is no answer to questions like that. I'm a person that likes to have definite, indisputable answers to questions, so when philospohical discussions like this come up I always end up feeling meager and meek because I can't come to a conclusion. It is intriguing to think about things like this though. More than a few times, I've wondered if life is just like a "Truman Show" type thing where everybody's in on the joke except me. I've wondered what if this life IS heaven/hell or a dream and we just don't have the perspective to realize it. Who's to say that our understanding of reality is "how it is?" There are too many other perspectives that could be "the real reality." Insects, namely bees see in an ultraviolet color spectrum, therefore yellow (a lot of flowers) is red to them (a color that indicates pollen & they're attracted to) and the blue sky is purple to them. Who's to say that the way they see things isn't the real way and the way we do is? I don't know, like I said, there's no answers to this stuff and I hate that. I'm kinda like Kill in regards to having already pondered all this stuff and coming to the conclusion it's best to just let it go. Live life don't worry about trying to figure out all the secrets of the world. Just live life.

I've always thought about this...living in a dream state.......

No actually. Gaytrix never really interested me, but im guessing it's based ( Loosely ) on this theory. It's just something brought up at college that got me thinking .. Theer's more i wanted to ask, but i doubted you'd be interested enough for me to post them.

the purpose of life is to satisfy the id with respect to your super-ego and ego.

clear?

^ Wow .. the Jay Krupp lapdog makes another guest appearence rocking the same lame 'ego' diss that failed to produce humour a month ago, when he used the exact same joke.


Go find something productive to do, like strangling yourself maybe.

...Existance is life built through years of interaction and function...a dream is a short prelude retaining similarities to existance....

Its similar to the tree analogy.....A tree falls in the woods. Even though you didnt see or hear the tree fall...Did the tree make a noise.....

Heres something i wrote just for the heck of it a while back....its not the full thing cause sadly i lost the rest of it...but its a dialogue of me with socrates....

Soc. How can you be certain of anything?
Jus. By definition certainty is but full assurance of mind, if the mind is fully assured is there not certainty?
Soc. You validate certainty with it’s meaning, definition is then your objective authority?
Jus. The laws of nature avail consistency and with consistency there manifests objective certainty.
Soc. Are you infinite and therefore able to claim the consistency of the laws of nature within the test of time?
Jus. If we cannot observe infinity can we know anything at all?
Soc. You exist do you not?
Jus. Yes, but do we accurately coexist with the surroundings our senses interpret?
Soc. The mind and in turn body, have limitations making this a question of ontology, a question terribly vulnerable to speculation.

You have several ways of knowing existance....child birth, pain and feeling, emotion and relation....Then you have faith, faith not in being but faith in everlasting life....depending on beliefs....
thats me though

-1-

i reckon we are real we must have been put here for a purpose, but i dont think we will ever find out what that purpose is

any ideas???????

Simply put...life is what you make it.

^ But how do you know 'life' exists? How do you know that right now you arent just someone's dream?

my dialogue explains my thought....umm yeah finshed...

-1-

I guess my argument, not to be dismissive, is who cares what we are? Who cares if there's no such thing as free will because God, or who ever is dreaming us, always intended for us to do what we just did. All I know is that if I wanted to, I could whip my meat out and type with my dickhead here in my cubicle at work, if that was what I wanted to do. Or I could go to the next cubicle over and sock the dude next to me square in his grill. That's proof enough for me of my existance and that life is just the individual pursuit of happiness.

This Is One Of The Many Ideas That Kill Me Each Night Before I Go To Bed. I Will Lay There And Think... "Am I Real?" "Why Am I Here, What Is My Purpose?" "Where Does My Mind Go After Death?"

It's Best To Dismiss These And Just Live Your Life To The Fullest.

This Also Brings Up The Idea Of Religion, Because Religions Were Made To Answer These Questions. So Which Religion Do YOU Think Is Right?

word to this topic, i always think about this, at least 2-3 times a month it crosses my mind.

sometime i think im the only real think and what i cant see doesnt exisist. but everything i do see i only see cause i want to see it. like im in my own world and i control everything about it.

something like that, but this topic is to deep so im leaveing or i might be thinking about it all day.

This crosses my mind everyday during biology. And as much as I try, when I think I have another answer, I come up with something that contradicts it.

I can go on and on on this topic. Yet I will not, instead I will post something that my research has lead me to read. In my many years of intense study, in several fields I have been in search of such answers. Today I am devoting my research to the new field of Astorbiology. Many many questions I had in the past have been filled in. I have so much more to learn, but I know have ammunition and fuel for the quest.

If your interested in this topic read the information below. It is something I read over every now and again. This was posted for those who turely care about the topic of this thread. I will keep my personel accounts out of this thread...


The dimensions of things are created by the limitation of our vision as interpreted by our brain. All around us is nothing but molecules; molecules in the air, molecules in our body, molecules in the space; molecules nothing but molecules. Our limitations of vision make us see only the bundles of molecules together as a table or a chair, a southern belle or a school bell. What if we could see through molecules? Then none of these differences would have mattered. A table would have looked like a chair and the belle would be indistinguishable from a bell. Our tactile feel of warm flesh would be meaningless if we could not feel; a round corner would not appear round at all.

Because we cannot see certain lengths and light waves, objects appear to us as they are displayed by our imagination. These may appear quite different to other species if their ability to see through light waves is different from us. Therefore the question about the real shape of things can not be answered. The flaw in human vision is that it assumes a demarcation of things whereas in reality all things are a continuum of molecules, atoms and subatomic particles. Air, thin, invisible, is yet composed of same type of molecules as make a denser object such as a human body. It is the discrimination of our vision and our perceptible faculties that make things "appear" what they are.

All too difficult to imagine, it should suffice if we are to understands that what we may not be what we are. Do we really exist today, asked a well-known French philosopher about three hundred years ago? We don't know, came the answer. But such questions explored repeatedly only lead to frustration. However, understanding our senses and their limitations may soften the blow of harboring this frustration.

There is a divine relationship between the senses and the world they sense. And like many things in God's divine plan for the universe, the senses seem to occur in fives

How different the universe is, can be discerned from the differences in the perception of other species. The eye of horsefly has 20,000 individual cells, each responding differently to electromagnetic radiation of highly specific wavelength or chemical molecules in the air. The "image" composed in the horsefly eye can not be visualized by us.

The electromagnetic spectrum range which we perceive through our classic senses is so small that it is not even calculable: less than one-trillionth of a trillionth of the total spectrum. Each species with its own window on the electromagnetic spectrum has therefore a different view of the universe, while they are blind to the vision of other species. Bees can not see reds in the flowers; they are instead attracted to the ultraviolet radiation from different parts of plants signaling presence of nectar. We can not perceive ultraviolet radiation because it destroys our retina.

Bats use an ultrasonic radar system to echolocate obstacles and prey. The frequency of this radar system is outside of human perception. A bat can tell it all by the bounced-off waves through their altered speed and wavelength, about what lies ahead or behind them as they fly in the pitch of the dark. Can we visualize what bats can. Or perhaps what a snake sees in the infrared picture it draws of objects around it. Or how lizards can smell their prey miles away. The kangaroo rat jumps only when an owl is just about to capture it because the rat can hear the movement of owl wings from distance and calculates the precise time to jump

The ability to detect magnetic fields is found in bacteria, which use it to avoid oxygen, birds use it to navigate and most likely dolphins use it to chart their course of migration. Fish use electric signals to move around.

All of these differences among the perception of different species point to one conclusion: to the rest of the universe, the universe is quite different from our universe and we do not even know exactly what that difference is. The universe as we see is seen only through a narrow window of senses and thus a creation of our imagination.

The argument that something, including ourselves, exists because we can see, feel, hear, taste and smell it is not a good argument. If we base the definition of existence only on our ability to sense it then almost entire universe will have to be considered nonexistent. Similarly, to other creatures, in whose window of senses we do not fit, we will be nonexistent. Since there is no way to establish the hierarchy of senses, it will not be possible to say who is right. The theory of relativity applies here also; there is nothing absolute.

All of this rhetoric culminates in one concept. We exist as we see ourselves because of the sensory windows given to us by the Nature. To other creatures we may very well be a nonentity. To us whatever may lie beyond our sensory perception may not well exist, though it may be the whole universe. Therefore, whether we really exist or not is only a matter of our imagination. We have forced ourselves into existence through our senses and imagination. When we close our eyes, the world does disappear because there is no peering eyes to differentiate the continuum of molecules

In reality, I and the universe are the same. It is just a continuum of matter, whose various densities differentiate objects because of our narrow vision of molecules and the ability to discern their densities. But do molecules exist? The concept of molecules is also drawn as an extension of our vision of what we can see, which is an extremely limited vision. Perhaps nothing exists at all and what we see and what we don't but know it is there is only a fiction of our imagination. Or, perhaps, this how the Creator has planned for us to visualize and argue about this visualization.

Such is the irony and such is the dilemma.
By: Dr. Sarfaraz K Niazi

very good article..
really makes u think doesnt it...
nice

Life is what you make of it. That's correct.

Think of it this way... there are four realitys.

First off, there is undetermined reality. I walk through the woods and I find a box. I don't know what's in it until I open it and am able to measure it. Or perhaps, I have a box and I put something in it. I'll know what's in it because I put it in there, but for as long as it's closed I can't percieve inside that box. So until I'm able to take measurements of what is inside, anything could be going on.

There is your personal reality, which is everything the way you see it. (Even if it might not be that way, it's still nonetheless the way you percieve it. Mirage for example, would be reality until otherwise dismissed.)

Then there is mass-reality. Which is to say, everyone thinks the sky is blue. My personal reality says it's gray since I'm color blind, but everyone else says blue. Thus, everyone else is right.

And then there is absolute reality. We only percieve things in a limited scope of our five senses. But if there was nothing to measure the universe and reality with... well it'll still be around without us. It'll be what it is and what it is is absolute reality.

your first point reminded me of the movie Mohuland drive...you need to check that out Nec youd enjoy it @@@!!!

my teacher in school was talking about this the other day, that is a really good question old but deffinitly something that would be incredible to find out....but maybe people do, because some people can see farther then some people...and thing like that. Maybe you should ask your eye docter. She may beable to help you more

man controls his own destiny....there is no such thing as fate....
we all make our own decisions and they influence the way our life goes....

'u can be shown the door, but you must walk through it'

see^^ u decide to walk thru the door....no-one else....

^thats what you percieve...
...but may not be true...

This is a dope thread v.interesting to read everyones perception
of the subject...

But my view is...we do not know if fate is true or false
we just have to go out on a whim w/ what we believe
i dont really follow a religion or prophecy or w/e
i more try to..look into these and see everyones thoughts
...i mean i dont believe in god or reincarnation and what not
but it doesnt mean i rule it out...
And i think its good to have a lil think about shit like
'Are we real' do we actually exist...it reminds me that
we're human...and that we are actually not to knowledgable
despite scientific breakthorughs and going to space and other things
We dont actually know v.much about ourselves, or our surrondings
We merely act like we know...

dam! i'ma be thinking about this allday now...
mmm...i'll post some more views later after a ponder

Pz...

man, this just fucked up my whole day, ima be thinkin about it for a while...but im in school, so ill post my opinio later.

im tryin to block it out my mind now lol

See. That's what a high level boarder is about = ) I made at least eight threads that all sparked off dope discussion in here.

i always blabber on about this kinda shit when im drunk :)