What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
impermanence
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What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by impermanence »

Most that have delved deeply into philosophy eventually seem to come to grips with the idea that Realty [and reality, as well] can not be accessed by our human intelligence. Initially a disturbing thought, eventually such a realization relieves many of the tremendous burden of attempting to, "figure everything out," a weight the drags even the hardiest among us through the proverbial muck.

If you have come to this conclusion, as well, I would be interested in how this outlook has changed your approach to living. Are you freer? Lighter? More content?
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by Terrapin Station »

The ramifications are that at some point one sophomorically put one's head up one's own derriere and then forgot to take it back out. :D
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by Sy Borg »

As far as I can tell, one consequence of not being in touch with reality is disorientation as one dies. Those nearing death often gain a greater appreciation of actual reality, and see the abstractions we are evolved to focus on for survival as overrated. Not too many on their deathbed wish that they spent more time at the office or giving smack to those who annoyed us.

Reality is ultimately dangerous. Everything out there is slowly eating at you, eroding you. The air, sunlight, microbes, people. So you need defences, mechanical, chemical and mental. But shielding is desensitising, limiting the information one can gain from the reality around you.

Our protective features and reflexes tend to blind us from the deeper reality that we are truly part of the environment - mind and body. That is, we are not just an embedded agent looking out but we are also a combined single entity, ie. you plus your environment. We all tend to know this abstractly, but having a visceral sense of oneness* feels different, and can lead to a change of personal ethics.


* Pardon the new-agism, but I could find no better word to describe it.
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by Count Lucanor »

impermanence wrote: December 24th, 2020, 1:40 pm Most that have delved deeply into philosophy eventually seem to come to grips with the idea that Realty [and reality, as well] can not be accessed by our human intelligence. Initially a disturbing thought, eventually such a realization relieves many of the tremendous burden of attempting to, "figure everything out," a weight the drags even the hardiest among us through the proverbial muck.

If you have come to this conclusion, as well, I would be interested in how this outlook has changed your approach to living. Are you freer? Lighter? More content?
There are no ramifications because reality indeed can be accessed by conscious agents. That's the only possible conclusion for anyone giving it a deep thought and not being misguided by solipsists.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by -0+ »

Count Lucanor wrote: December 24th, 2020, 9:11 pm There are no ramifications because reality indeed can be accessed by conscious agents. That's the only possible conclusion for anyone giving it a deep thought and not being misguided by solipsists.
Can anyone describe a reality test that can always unerringly distinguish between reality and dream (or alternate reality, or anything else that might be deemed to be non-reality)?
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by evolution »

impermanence wrote: December 24th, 2020, 1:40 pm Most that have delved deeply into philosophy eventually seem to come to grips with the idea that Realty [and reality, as well] can not be accessed by our human intelligence. Initially a disturbing thought, eventually such a realization relieves many of the tremendous burden of attempting to, "figure everything out," a weight the drags even the hardiest among us through the proverbial muck.

If you have come to this conclusion, as well, I would be interested in how this outlook has changed your approach to living. Are you freer? Lighter? More content?
I found that actually 'coming to grips' with and by understanding FULLY Reality, Itself, helped 'me' become and be much freer, much lighter, and much more content.
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by evolution »

-0+ wrote: December 24th, 2020, 11:52 pm
Count Lucanor wrote: December 24th, 2020, 9:11 pm There are no ramifications because reality indeed can be accessed by conscious agents. That's the only possible conclusion for anyone giving it a deep thought and not being misguided by solipsists.
Can anyone describe a reality test that can always unerringly distinguish between reality and dream (or alternate reality, or anything else that might be deemed to be non-reality)?
Yes.

But you first have to understand and know what 'reality' itself is.
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by evolution »

Greta wrote: December 24th, 2020, 6:40 pm As far as I can tell, one consequence of not being in touch with reality is disorientation as one dies. Those nearing death often gain a greater appreciation of actual reality, and see the abstractions we are evolved to focus on for survival as overrated. Not too many on their deathbed wish that they spent more time at the office or giving smack to those who annoyed us.

Reality is ultimately dangerous. Everything out there is slowly eating at you, eroding you.
This, in fact, could be completely false, wrong, and incorrect.

But if you could answer, properly and correctly, who and what 'you' are, then you would already know this.

And, if you would like to discuss this FULLY, then I am more than ready and willing to.
Greta wrote: December 24th, 2020, 6:40 pm The air, sunlight, microbes, people. So you need defences, mechanical, chemical and mental. But shielding is desensitising, limiting the information one can gain from the reality around you.

Our protective features and reflexes tend to blind us from the deeper reality that we are truly part of the environment - mind and body. That is, we are not just an embedded agent looking out but we are also a combined single entity, ie. you plus your environment. We all tend to know this abstractly, but having a visceral sense of oneness* feels different, and can lead to a change of personal ethics.


* Pardon the new-agism, but I could find no better word to describe it.
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by baker »

impermanence wrote: December 24th, 2020, 1:40 pm Most that have delved deeply into philosophy eventually seem to come to grips with the idea that Realty [and reality, as well] can not be accessed by our human intelligence. Initially a disturbing thought, eventually such a realization relieves many of the tremendous burden of attempting to, "figure everything out," a weight the drags even the hardiest among us through the proverbial muck.

If you have come to this conclusion, as well, I would be interested in how this outlook has changed your approach to living. Are you freer? Lighter? More content?
Dude, what are you, trolling? A right-winger having a metaepistemic problem? Eh? Duh.
impermanence
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by impermanence »

baker wrote: December 25th, 2020, 6:42 am
impermanence wrote: December 24th, 2020, 1:40 pm Most that have delved deeply into philosophy eventually seem to come to grips with the idea that Realty [and reality, as well] can not be accessed by our human intelligence. Initially a disturbing thought, eventually such a realization relieves many of the tremendous burden of attempting to, "figure everything out," a weight the drags even the hardiest among us through the proverbial muck.

If you have come to this conclusion, as well, I would be interested in how this outlook has changed your approach to living. Are you freer? Lighter? More content?
Dude, what are you, trolling? A right-winger having a metaepistemic problem? Eh? Duh.
Having a bad day?
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by Count Lucanor »

-0+ wrote: December 24th, 2020, 11:52 pm
Count Lucanor wrote: December 24th, 2020, 9:11 pm There are no ramifications because reality indeed can be accessed by conscious agents. That's the only possible conclusion for anyone giving it a deep thought and not being misguided by solipsists.
Can anyone describe a reality test that can always unerringly distinguish between reality and dream (or alternate reality, or anything else that might be deemed to be non-reality)?
If you're ready to accept that a procedure will yield indisputable evidence of what's real, you have already made a commitment to believe that there is a reality to deal with. That's because even if the results showed to be a dream, that would not be a "non-reality", but still a reality. There can't be an intelligible commitment to "non-reality". Cogito, ergo sum. For the solipsist, his dream is reality.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by Sculptor1 »

Reality is what you make of it.
Be skeptical. Believe nothing.
Beware of idols.
Be truthful to yourself.
If it works- that is as close as you can get to reality, and as much as you need.
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by Papus79 »

Greta wrote: December 24th, 2020, 6:40 pm Reality is ultimately dangerous. Everything out there is slowly eating at you, eroding you. The air, sunlight, microbes, people. So you need defences, mechanical, chemical and mental. But shielding is desensitising, limiting the information one can gain from the reality around you.

Our protective features and reflexes tend to blind us from the deeper reality that we are truly part of the environment - mind and body. That is, we are not just an embedded agent looking out but we are also a combined single entity, ie. you plus your environment. We all tend to know this abstractly, but having a visceral sense of oneness* feels different, and can lead to a change of personal ethics.
I'd agree with a lot of this.

I also think of what sort of corner Darwinian competition forces us into. Certain astronauts were profoundly affected in their sense of earth as one big living organism by seeing the planet from outer space. To someone whose struggling to keep their head above water or to not be under the boot of another who'd love to extract value, and even health and longevity, out of them like wringing a tube of toothpaste - it literally can't matter, they're living too far down the stack of Maslow's hierarchy and quite often through no fault of their own.

For anyone whose not in a place of constantly needing to battle with other people to keep some semblance of individual freedom - the problem of being able to access reality seems less to be about whether we're collecting local data correctly, I think we are, but we simply can't know the broadest or deepest contexts of that data. The data we have from the scientific method lets say, particularly with physics, is cohesive and reconciles against itself. It's also true that human knowledge of the universe will always be a floating edifice - that it would likely be impossible to get under literally everything, and there's a lot to suggest that... lets just say the totality of being rather than the universe, people normally mean something pretty specific by that (ie. big bang, expansion of space and cooling of stars and galaxies, etc.) ... goes on quite a ways beyond anything we can see and measure, so for most intents and purposes we're stuck dealing with even preconditions for our universe that we don't have access to and many of our inferences have nothing that they can latch onto.

The other part, consciousness and subjectivity, it seems like political battles and the need to use ideas to corral public behavior rather than explore dispassionately is an inevitable problem stemming from how chaotic, manipulative, and generally destructive of others people tend to be. Here it seems like people are almost forced to care more about social results of ideas rather than veridical value, almost or even as badly as they have to put big walls and even taboos on genetics research. I think there are ideas that at least can be triaged in this area but I also find that many are so averse to anything that's not X or Y public policy belief that it's forbidden to even run that sort of cleanup on it.

Even stepping back from his metaphysics a bit, Donald Hoffman's take on how much Darwinian game theory electrifies the playing field and forces us to, in a match between game-theoretic utility and veridical value, throw veridical or truth value out the window - otherwise otherwise in the Grand Theft Auto scheme of things other agents beat us for either not weighing themselves down with veridical concerns or knowing when to call it quits sooner. I think this is where you really have to be, at your core, the kind of nerd who really doesn't have a choice - ie. where anything short of veridical truth and movement toward clarity at a minimum, if not veridical truth, is something you have to do because it's just that deeply woven into who you are and how you stay sane.

If you're in that last camp to the question 'What are the ramifications of not being able to access reality?' - you keep trying anyway because there really isn't a lot else to do that's particularly interesting other than perhaps condensing what insights you've found into symbolic art or more technical work.
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by Sy Borg »

Papus79 wrote: December 25th, 2020, 2:20 pm
Greta wrote: December 24th, 2020, 6:40 pm Reality is ultimately dangerous. Everything out there is slowly eating at you, eroding you. The air, sunlight, microbes, people. So you need defences, mechanical, chemical and mental. But shielding is desensitising, limiting the information one can gain from the reality around you.

Our protective features and reflexes tend to blind us from the deeper reality that we are truly part of the environment - mind and body. That is, we are not just an embedded agent looking out but we are also a combined single entity, ie. you plus your environment. We all tend to know this abstractly, but having a visceral sense of oneness* feels different, and can lead to a change of personal ethics.
... The other part, consciousness and subjectivity, it seems like political battles and the need to use ideas to corral public behavior rather than explore dispassionately is an inevitable problem stemming from how chaotic, manipulative, and generally destructive of others people tend to be. Here it seems like people are almost forced to care more about social results of ideas rather than veridical value...
Yes. Being on "the spectrum" I spent my youth thoroughly confused because I could not tell the difference between actual information and manipulative lies, and I was especially intimidated when someone would aggressively insist on something that reliable others had previously (aggressively) insisted was true. Today I have no time for those preaching their "truths" to "the blind" or manipulative players.

The deceptions lead to a lifelong interest in using data to help me break deadlocks between rival claims (note that anyone who is serious about data is acutely aware of its limitations; many things, eg. unrecorded one-off events cannot be measured. Ultimately, the idea is to better access reality, not to dedicate oneself to a method so all tools available are fair game - senses, emotions, science, math, psychology, meditation, altered states, the arts, dreams.
Papus79 wrote: December 25th, 2020, 2:20 pmEven stepping back from his metaphysics a bit, Donald Hoffman's take on how much Darwinian game theory electrifies the playing field and forces us to, in a match between game-theoretic utility and veridical value, throw veridical or truth value out the window - otherwise otherwise in the Grand Theft Auto scheme of things other agents beat us for either not weighing themselves down with veridical concerns or knowing when to call it quits sooner. I think this is where you really have to be, at your core, the kind of nerd who really doesn't have a choice - ie. where anything short of veridical truth and movement toward clarity at a minimum, if not veridical truth, is something you have to do because it's just that deeply woven into who you are and how you stay sane.
I agree again. Humans have been corralled into a situation where a more accurate perception of reality is not rewarded, and is ultimately treated as wasted effort. Worse, if you don't keep your interests to yourself, then you are either expected to be an advertisement for your schemas. If you are philosophically inclined and not leading an ostensibly content life, people will think like Anton Chigurgh when he asked of Carson Wells in No Country for Old Men: "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?".

Competitive paradigms, with each iteration of the game leading one further down the incorrect notion that, in philosophy, one size fits all.

I prefer to judge my current actions in terms of how I might feel about them when I am on my deathbed. At this stage my life is replete with facepalm moments, but one can always improve. No one wants to feel like they wasted the opportunities of life on BS. Yet FOMO and subsequent box-ticking is obviously not a wise response to the situation either. Flaws are inevitable.

I see humans/the biosphere per se as works in progress, as inherently unable to operate maturely as a chimp is inherently unable to consider what she will do in a year's time or a toddler is inherently unable to speak clearly. I like to think that future entities will be more capable of living deeply and authentically (without punishment) but, for all we know, a "planet killer" comet could zoom in from the outer solar system and stop Earth's evolution in its tracks at any time.
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Re: What Are The Ramifications Of Not Being Able To Access Reality?

Post by Papus79 »

Greta wrote: December 25th, 2020, 5:27 pm I like to think that future entities will be more capable of living deeply and authentically (without punishment) but, for all we know, a "planet killer" comet could zoom in from the outer solar system and stop Earth's evolution in its tracks at any time.
Jamie Metzl was on the most recent Youtube upload of Eric Weinstein's 'The Portal', it seems like our technological future can't be looked at without both great terror and hope. One possibility he mentioned that was in the pipeline - it might come down to there being a completely different way of matching eggs and sperm where only the best of something like 100,000 trials is brought to term (incubated artificially and then artificially implanted). If there's one thing that keeps everyone at each other's throats it's sexual selection (ie. most of the social status race, 'Smiths vs. Joneses' is about that). On one hand I've thought often that this might be the only way that the game theory that's destroying our culture changes (short of servitude to an AI artilect) but again - also a great way to unravel our genome fast if we do it wrong.
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