Sorry I’m depressed af and need answers. Are y’all even real? What if y’all are just part of the program to torture me? What if this is a test? What if this is a VR simulation and the societal collapse is just moral character test to see if I would be do anything about it? Like imaginr a society in the far future like 26th century and in a history class where people are wondering “why didn’t the 21st century humans rise up against their oppressors” and then this VR simulation is just testing the students “what would you have done”
(Sorry for the bizzare question, its just brain chemicals acting weird today :P)
You can’t technically truly prove any of these not to be true, but given that if you reject all the evidence available to you for what the world is with the notion that it could be fake, you end up with nothing left to make decisions with, you might as well just take the world at face value until things are proven otherwise.
That’s what people refer to when they say “it is what it is”.
In the big picture and when you realize the vast universe that surrounds us and how short of time we’ve been on earth, we are just a spec in time and none of us are important. Just live your life and try to be kind to others while you’re here. I find comfort in knowing we are all the same and we are nothing.
We are important. We are special. The most important thing in your life is how you make others feel. If you can give yourself someone, then you should.
Nothing else is important. Nothing else matters. All we are is dust in the wind.
Are y’all even real?
Upvote this man!
Pretty much what everyone else is saying as far as it can’t really be proven. Everything you experience is your brains interpretation of the stimuli it received from outside the body.
One of the few ways I rationalize it for myself is: there’s no fucking way at all that I am the “main character.” I’m the most pathetic, least important thing to have ever disgraced this earth with his existence. I’m not in a simulation that is centered around me, that universe would be absolutely insane.
deleted by creator
I think I’m slightly above you on the simulation leaderboard.
Last Thursdayism is a fun rabbit hole to dive down.
OR IS IT? vsauce intensifies
Boltzmann brains are also neat
Adding onto this rabbit hole
Truman Show delusion is a real and scary thing
“They have reported that one patient traveled to New York City after 9/11 to make sure that the terrorist attacks were not a plot twist in his personal Truman Show, while another traveled to a Lower Manhattan federal building to seek asylum from his show.”
It may very well all be fake and you’re living in a simulation.
That doesn’t matter though. It doesn’t change anything. That simulation is all you’ve got so you either play along or you end it for yourself. The only thing that is undeniable is consciousness - the fact of experience. That it feels like something to be. Any story about your existence that you add on top of that is just thinking. It’s appereances in consciousness.
I struggled with a lot of this myself until I stumbled on Taoism. It teaches that you can only interact with one moment. Now. The future and the past are an illusion that can easily slow you down.
Trying to understand the why will ultimately lead to no answers. A big part of this challenge was the idea of identity. There is no ‘you’. Everything you think of as ‘you’ is ultimately ‘dead’.
We assume all the living things around us have souls and perspective and feeling and life, but this is only perception from us. It’s a trust of our senses. But that’s all they can be. Senses.
When you describe who you are, you might tell someone what you do for work, your hobbies, where you grew up, your favorite pets, flavor of ice cream, and what terrifies you and makes you cry… But none of things are you.
Existence is only the moment through which you can perceive. It is right now. The choices you make in this immediate moment are the only thing you can be. Planning to do something tomorrow or wishing you did something different in the past is not you and never was or will be you.
The person in the past that made all those mistakes or successes is gone and that person that might fail at something risky doesn’t exist either. Only you can make choices and changes and it’s a responsibility to act accordingly.
This is something you can do for yourself at any time, in any place, at any moment. Take a moment in the place you’re in right now to stop for several minutes. Just do nothing. Observe the room you’re in. Listen to the sounds around you. Smell and feel the place you’re in. Let it wash over you with its infinite detail and complexity.
This is always there, available to you. It is a power known as mindfulness. If you are able to accept it, and make active choices to pursue it, you will find the world is filled with magic. Even in the worst places.
If you want a really good video that gives you a bit more of a grounded explanation, see Kurzgesagt’s video on Optimistic Nihilism. Waking Life is another recommendation along with Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.
“I’m frustrated and I need answers, here are some questions that have haunted philosophers for millenia”
The good news is you’ll find no shortage of answers and writing on the matter
reads Laplace’s Demon
You can’t know. There are so many options for what could be true. All I can know for a fact is that I exist as a thinking being. The rest of my ‘knowledge’ exists within the framework that the world I experience through the senses is ‘real’. And if it is brain chemicals, I fear knowing truth might not help. I’m also feeling a bit depressed right now, and the only thing that’s really helped me is crying, and the right brain chemicals 😕
I had a sort of similar problem once and a therapist asked me if I knew what a cairn was. It’s a pile of rocks usually from biggest to smallest, maybe in the woods or whatever. Point is it has no place being there in nature, but yet there it is. The obvious conclusion is that someone made that. With intention. Then he asked me to look at the nature of the universe, DNA, all of it. It has order. It shouldn’t exist, but there it is. Something made it with intention. Still not sure I buy that, but his point made sense. Wether you constructed this or not, it’s here, and has order and intent. So even if it’s all fake and you made it up, you made up one hell of a fantastical and wonderful thing that mostly defies explanation. Countless studies toil away attempting to explain it. But they can’t. And neither can you. Doubly so if you are the one who created it. Appreciate the complicated nonsense.
If I could just argue with your therapist for a moment - cairns (Cairns) are well researched and understood human creations, whereas we have exactly zero evidence the universe was made with intention, and definitely no evidence that there’s any intent or any point to any of it.
All that said, I respect the perspective of gratitude and radical acceptance.
No argument here. The dude was always pushing religious tones, but I’m not into that. But ultimately he wanted me to accept my reality, real or not.
A therapist pushing their personal beliefs on you is the kind of ethical violation state licensing boards will usually take seriously, fyi
To be clear:
When you “make” a cairn, you’re reorganizing stuff that already exists. In fact, whenever we say “make”, we usually mean modifying something that already exists.
It’s reasonable to assume that a painting has a painter. We have experience with how paint behaves over time when left alone, and it doesn’t assemble itself into a painting by default.
We don’t have first-hand intuitive experience with how cosmic amounts of matter behave over time. But we do have measuring tools and mathematical models, which give us a pretty good view of how it does seem to assemble itself into Earth-like places and even the prerequisites for life itself.
And we also have a good enough understanding of Earth’s history to know why we’re missing the ability to measure some of the most interesting steps here on our planet.
Buuuut all of that is pointless to our question anyway. Because we’ve been talking about whether “makers” are necessary to reorganize matter over time. And you made a leap from that to “making” matter and time itself. That is something for which we do not have an analogous experience.
If “making” means taking raw materials in a “before” time and combining them into something else in an “after” time… how do you “make” the very concept of “making”, and “when” does that occur if it must be “before” the concept of a “before”?
Well, I know I’m real, so by virtue, I believe you to be as well
Do I think I’m smart enough to have been able to come up with a language system of my own that makes sense to me rather than just a bunch of mood grunts? Nope.
The test? My understanding of the test is to see if we can be good people and if we can build a symbiotic relationship with our planet and other planets. It’s been a rocky few millennia for us people, but inspire of how chaotic life has been, it oddly feels like we are all much closer together than in prior generations.
I think for what we need to do to make things better starts with us. If I’m happy, then I can share my happiness with others. If I hold love in my heart, I can share love for others as well. If I hold anger, judgment, or dislike then those things can tend to spill out, even when that’s not what I would want. Connecting with my roots has helped me to have my heart, rather than being cold and more self-centered.
If we’re in a good spot, we can help our friends, we can help our neighbors, our local communities; we can create a culture of positive change. When everyone’s backs are against the wall, people need community now more than ever.
Taking that step forward every day will help you, for me it involved making a promise to myself to never stop moving forward. Hydrate yourself often, focus on getting nourishing meals three times a day, building yourself a routine will help, having a cup of coffee each day is beneficial, limit caffeine intake to one or two cups and only before noon, play brown noise in the background to help drown out any rude or critical thoughts or feelings, and low dose melatonin =<1mg for sleeping soundly and peacefully at night helps as well. I recommend visiting a therapist if you can afford it, but invest in yourself today because you are worth it. I spent a decade learning these lessons, but I’ve been thriving more the past few years now :D
It is what it is.
The thing is you have no way of getting to a higher position in order to discern the truths that are directly in front of your face.
So the only sane response to the universe that we are presented with is to treat it as if it is what it is.
Of course, feel free to keep your skepticism and, you know, to play the game however you choose to play it. Just know that there is no exit that is not eternal at this time as far as anyone knows.
Like imagine a society in the far future like 26th century and in a history class where people are wondering “why didn’t the 21st century humans rise up against their oppressors” and then this VR simulation is just testing the students “what would you have done”
And if you become self-aware in the middle of the simulation, it ruins the point of the lesson and you have to repeat the class.
Nice going!
repeat the class
Noooo I hate it. I don’t wanna do the “going to the dentist and have to get my bay teeth pulled” part again, fucking HELL. 😭
I have no “proof of reality” to offer you (Plato had similar thoughts with his “shadows in a cave” analogy), but in all cases I have heard of pursuing these hypotheticals too far simply feeds neuroses rather than uncovering the Illuminati. The current US paroxysms of conservative conspiracy theories are IMO the product of failing to rein in such unproductive thought… do you really want to go down this road?
Your 26th century bit reminds me of the Continuum tv series. Entertaining story, but not likely to be worth building your reality on.
The current US paroxysms of conservative conspiracy theories are IMO the product of failing to rein in such unproductive thought
Counterpoint: There are also people that completely disregard the potential of conspiracy theories being actually true. People keep saying “they can’t do this, its illegal!” with no deeper thought as to what laws even mean. Its just another sheet of paper.
Like NSA global surveillance. If you told people that before the Snowden Leaks, you would’ve been labeled as a crazy person.
MKUltra seemed insane until it got declassified, just as with COINTELPRO.
There are two extremes:
One is the 100% law-abiding person with zero doubts and just eats anything they’re told at face value.
The other end is the “government bad, therefore the opposite of what the government say must be true”, which is also equally ridiculous. I mean, just because the government says the sky is blue, doesn’t suddenly turn the sky red (yes I know its technically light reflections and all that lol)
Its very difficult to find the line of truth. There are government propaganda from every country, there are nutjobs and cultists spreading their propaganda, there are some dissidents actually telling the truth, but how do you even tell the difference between a legitimate dissident and a conspiracy theorist nutjob?
Even scientists/doctors can’t be trusted. They used to say “smoking is healthy” but then we found out they just got paid. Its hard to know if the info you get, have a more sinister origin.
Just enjoy the ride. Test or no test, we are only here for a short time, so better make the most of it.
