Reality

Dreams, Stories, and Myths

Reality and Mathematics

Reality of Matter and Energy

Reality of People and Consciousness

Reality of Time

Are We Part of a Simulation?

Reality is Strange (to us, anyway)

There is much about what we call reality that either conflicts with our senses or what we think we know, because our brain and senses are tuned for a particular environment. We don't notice relativistic and quantum mechanical effects with our eyes alone here on Earth. So much of what our brain seems to do is inaccessible to our consciousness. We seem to have misconceptions because we evolved to make quick decisions without taking everything into account and miss things that are really there.

Here are aspects of reality that confound, interest, and inspire us. Everything listed here is probable; some are opinions and some have been corroborated with evidence so as to be "true beyond reasonable doubt:"

Reality beyond our senses

We're comfortable at certain scales of space and time. Outside of these bounds, well...

• Time does not flow at the same rate for all observers. Simultaneity of events can never be agreed upon.
• Spacetime is curved.
• Particles can be in the different places simultaneously, until you observe them.
• Uncertainty, uncertainty, uncertainty
• Electricity and magnetism are (gasp!) kind of the same thing.
• WTF is dark matter and dark energy anyway?
• What about white holes? We can describe them mathematically, but do they exist? Was the big bang a white hole?

We strive for physical explanations of things, but sometimes, as with the expansion of the universe, analogies like raisin bread and four-dimensional ballons just seem to fall short, and we have to resort to mathematics.

Parts and Wholes

There are real qualitative differences between parts and whole. Why does this surprise us? It shouldn't, if you think about it.

• Liquid water is made up of molecules, each of which is not "wet."
• The mind is made up of mindless agents.
• Consciousness is made up of non-conscious entities.
• Life is made up of non-living matter.
• Programs are made up of bits, each of which doesn't really do anything on its own. (Okay, so which specific bit of the program is the one that causes the email to be sent?)
• The meaning of each letter in a story, say, is of a different nature than the meaning of the whole story.
• Music is made up of sounds and frequencies, paintings from paint strokes and dots, video images from pixels.

It may be possible to describe these phenomena reductionistically, but any such explanation must take into account the effects of organization. Nevertheless, reductionistic explanations must not be confused with the necessity of the existence of basic, primitive laws.

What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle. — Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind, Section 30.8.

The problem with absolutes

Using the power of language and formal structures to represent concepts, you can build situations that are paradoxical or otherwise nonsensical.

• You can't consistently define adjectives that can always partition words into two sets, because the word "heterological" cannot do this.
• You can't build a consistent theory of unrestricted sets, because the set of all non-self-swallowing sets couldn't be a set.
• (From Hofsatder) You cannot make a record player that can play every possible sound, because then it could play the sound that breaks (shatters) it.
• You can't have a consistent and complete formal description of arithmetic, because formulas in a system can always be numbered, making it possible to express the formula "I am not provable."
• You can't have a entity that can do everything, because it couldn't build a stone too heavy for itself to lift.
• You can't have an entity that is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. (The Problem of Evil)

So free yourself of thinking those absolutes must exist! Why do you think they should?

Just because we can describe something doesn't mean it has to, over even can exist. Our brains' ability to represent and describe the impossible — the unreal — seems just as capable as its ability to represent and describe reality.

This does not follow...

We have evolved to assume and predict and make connections between things. We seem to love cause and effect. But we sometimes overdo things, ascribing the wrong causes to things, or failing to see causes that really do exist. We tend to ascribe big causes to big effects (think conspiracy theories) and small causes to small effects. But this isn't always so:

• A very, very tiny change to a system can have massive effects on outcome (think of changing one character in a computer program).
• Some systems are so stable (single attractor) that massive changes in input have no effect on outcome.
• Amazing and mystical things can have basic explanations. Don't stop searching for them!
• If consciousness were found to have a complete physical explanation, it would not invalidate free will.
• The lack of any transcendental law-giver does not necessarily make people immoral.
• The lack of any transcendental creator does not remove purpose nor awe from human life. To many, it enhances the ability to experience awe.
• The existence of a transcendant being or beings is not incompatible with the lack of evidence for it, nor of a completely physical description of the universe.
• If A causes B, and B happens, you can't infer A happened because B might have other causes.
• Just because something happened doesn't mean it was caused. Or does it?

It is kind of hard to shake the belief that things require causes, and hard to believe things can create themselves. Maybe they can and maybe they cannot.

"I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" — Rick Warren

A Closing Quote

"Reality is strange, but that doesn't mean your strange belief is real."

I don't remember where I heard that....