Reality is not real

Let's start with a good one.

It's in the word, right? "Real" is a part of "reality". It should be as simple as that. But it's not.

Here's question. If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one (animals, people, cognizant life, recording devices, etc.) around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The obvious answer is: Yes, what the fuck kinda stupid question is that? Something hits something and it makes a sound. What the fuck doesn't?

Okay, so put aside the snark and let me ask this then: How do you know? Can you confirm it? Are you one hundred percent sure that it made a sound? How would you even find out if there was nothing there to confirm it?

In fact, this is a philosophical question that has been asked for a long time and the answer is: You can't be sure. Because of the fact that when you look at the obvious answer, you are operating on the assumption that the rules of the world are consistent. But what if they aren't? What if the reality we perceive is not the truth of the reality that exists.

For example, our senses are certainly not a perfect representation of what reality is.

Our eyes can perceive only three colors: red, green, and blue. The multitude of colors that we can see are derived from those three. Dogs have different color sensing cells in their eyes so they see colors differently. Whereas a mantis shrimp has a dozen different color sending cells in their's. So they see things really differently. So who the fuck sees the real reality? May be no one.

Perhaps, the best and simplest place to start to explain is with a movie that everyone has seen, and if you haven't you should: The Matrix. Spoiler alert for those of you who haven't seen it. The Matrix is of the latest reiterations of one of the oldest philosophical mysteries of all time. The problem of the mind and the body and their relationship. I won't get into it too much since that's an entire topic in of itself but I bring it up because The Matrix provides a very profound simplistic take on the nature of reality. Namely, that what we perceive to be real, really isn't.

At the beginning of the movie, Neo finds himself living a simulated life as a Mr. Anderson. He finds things being just slightly off but isn't quite sure what. It's only when he takes the red pill offered by Morpheus, named after the god of sleep and dreams, that he is able to wake up from the Matrix and see the false reality for what it is. And the movie provides a great explanation for how easy it is to actually fool or senses. After all, everything that we perceive is comprised of electrical signals in our brain, sent from our eyes, nose, skins, muscles, etc. So theoretically, if you are familiar enough with which part of your brain handles which senses, it's entirely possible to stimulate those parts of the brain in just the right manner and cause us to hallucinate. Take that thought just a bit further and you can see the Matrix as being an entirely possible thing.

So is it possible then that we ourselves are in some sort of Matrix? Well, you can't really answer that question until, like Neo, you step out of the Matrix. How the hell do you do that? Who the fuck knows.

But this is only one possibility of how our perception of reality is not necessarily real. There's a lot more.

Another possibility is that you, as an individual, are simply having a dream and your entire life as you know it will disappear and fade away once you wake up. Yes, I know that it's a TV trope but that only shows how prevalent the idea is in the collective consciousness. And it's been around for a while now.

Back in the old old days, there was a famous Chinese philosopher that once had a very very vivid dream. I'm sure that everyone has had those sort of dreams where it seems so real that you swear that it was real even after you wake up. Well, this philosopher named Chuang Tsu woke up from this dream where he was a butterfly and asked himself a question: "Was I a man that dreamt himself a butterfly or am I a butterfly that dreams himself a man?" How the hell do you answer that question?

In fact, this sort of thought is still something that happens nowadays. There are plenty of cases where people have woken up from comas and experienced depression because they lived an entire life in that coma and lost it all when they found out that it wasn't real. To them, they've lost parents, family, spouses, friends, and children. I'm sure that all of you have experienced something similar where you have a dream where something happened and after you wake up, you're still feeling pissed off or sad because of it. I know that I have.

So then, this begs the question of whether or not the life you are living now is all a dream.

Maybe or maybe not. But let's move on to another possibility.

There's another line of thought that posits that we are all in fact computer simulations of life that were never alive in the first place. This is a more interesting one in that if you believe that it's possible then you'd believe that there's a 99.999999... percent chance that it's true.

Let's start with an assumption, as all of these things do, that given enough time our computer technology will be advanced enough to completely and one hundred percent accurately simulate all the laws of physics and reality a la The Matrix. If you take a look at the progress that we've been making in the videogame department, that seems entirely possible. So sometime in the next several decades or centuries, we may reach the point that we can create an entire universe in a computer simulation down to the smallest subatomic particle. If that happens, it's entirely possible then that artificial intelligent life will arise in the simulation, or that we might create them ourselves.

If the computer simulation with life in it is entirely accurate then it's possible that the living AI in the simulation will then develop its own technology to the point where it can create its own simulation of the universe that will then develop its own life which can then develop its own computer simulation. And then this goes on and on and on ad infinitum.

I think there was a Rick and Morty episode on this very topic but I don't think they did much to explore the nature of reality.

Now add to this train of though one more assumption: that there is only one real reality. If this is true, which is a big if, what are the chances that we exist in one of the infinite number if simulated realities versus being in the one true reality? That's right, there's a 99.99999... percent chance that we are a computer simulation.

Scary thought, right? But all of these theories are based on assumptions. If one of these assumptions is proven to be false somehow or someway, then the theory would go kaput.

Besides, there's no real reason to think to much about them as they certainly have no bearing on everyday life. Nonetheless they are still interesting thoughts that are fun.