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what is real? baby don't hurt me no more ... (thelemmy.club)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 4 points 1 day ago (10 children)

Gravity applies no matter how far away you are.

Reality might be completely constructed from interpretation if there were no outside forces in play. But if your atoms are interacting with other atoms, you're beholden to their rules.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago* (2 children)

    yes, but you can't convince people of that if they deny gravity is real.

    the issue we have these days is gravity deniers get together and egg each other on in their delusions and create ever more elaborate theories to defend their denial of reality.

    hell, many lemmy instances are created specifically for that purpose... because their theories often put that at odds with the general public.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago* (4 children)

    You are referring to some overarching reality, with a capital R, which is unknowable in its entirety. Contrast that to one's own reality, which is both more and less real than the 'outside world'. There are physical and social forces acting upon us all the time, but how we feel about them, when we even notice them, is what creates our internal reality. Which is vastly more important to our quality of life.

    The rules can be bent.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    It feels like you're using the word reality as a duplicate of the phrase personal experience. In that case I would agree. You can absolutely choose how you feel about the things you perceive.

    But no amount of choosing how you feel gets you to fly. And no amount of thinking you can fly will ever prove you to be right when you try and fail.

    Though you can certainly feel like it's worth trying again if you're so choose.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago*

    Sorry, looking over my usage today I just realized I didn't really address your statement at all, except to hand-wave it away. That seems to be happening more as I get older, sort of lose the thread and meander off to continue insisting on points nobody is really refuting. Probably just dementia or something.

    But, yes, I certainly agree. There are some hard facts about the world that impress themselves upon us. Like there's no amount of mentalizing that's going to change physics. Hell, most spiritual traditions are largely about understanding and effectively coping with the things we can't change.

    I have read some interesting proposals by legit philosophers that argue the entire world is in fact created by the mind. Post doctorates and well learned spiritualists are often as equally skilled in logical arguments as they are in sophistry so many of their points can be hard to refute. Not necessarily convincing, but certainly compelling in a way that makes you reconsider the nature of reality.

    Still, if someone is convinced they can fly, they might better try taking off from the ground first.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago

    It's a deliberate use of the word. Because people's personal experience is their reality. Even among scientists, objective truth isn't necessarily agreed upon, so aside from specific cases, it's hard to use it as a guide post towards navigating life. Like you said, there are certainly hard facts in the world which impact us, but how we perceive and interpret these phenomena, how we grapple with theory of mind, creates our reality.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    If that sounds a little too woo-woo then how about a more practical and fun example.

    Your nose takes up 10 to 15% of your vision.

    The capital R reality is that photons are bouncing off of your nose and entering your eye. Your eyes are seeing your nose. And yet, unless pointed out most of the time you don't even notice that your vision is nose-less when, in fact, a nose is constantly in your field of vision.

    Your mind has edited out the existence of your nose.

    That's not woo, that's neurobiology. But so is the conscious construction of your reality. If you think about getting into a fight, your heart races, despite there being no real threat.

    Now if a baseball suddenly hit you on the nose, you would be quite aware of capital R reality making it's presence known upon you. But how you perceive why that happened and what it means determines the rest of your reality.

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