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Do you believe in objective reality?

Do you believe in objective reality?


  • Total voters
    47

John Bilbo

Member
If a tree falls in a forest with no one around does it make a sound?

Is it possible to observe the truth or do you have your truth conflicting with mine?

Will the world end when you die or will it move on without you?

Is science just a futile attempt to observe something beyond our skills of observation?
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I read news articles where volcanos destroy villages and overcrowded ferries sink.

But since I'm not there to see it, I guess they didn't happen and nobody died.

I farted with headphones on in and didn't hear anything. The other people on the train didn't seem to agree though.
My buddy during university (still talk to him now!) would rip farts on the subway and not care. He'd laughed as he'd say to me "I just let em fly". Good guy but kind of lazy. He rented an apartment so sometimes we'd go over to his place to work on projects. He'd then say he needs a half hour break to chill and smoke weed. Then he'd come back and instead of getting back to work, he'd be like "Hey guys, I'm kinda tired. Lets work on it another day. Going to take a nap".
 
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RAÏSanÏa

Member
we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively
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🎼 So good to see you
I've missed you so much
So glad it's over
I've missed you so much
Came out to watch you play
Why are you running away?
🎶
 

ParaSeoul

Member
My buddy during university (still talk to him now!) would rip farts on the subway and not care. He'd laughed as he'd say to me "I just let em fly". Good guy but kind of lazy. He rented an apartment so sometimes we'd go over to his place to work on projects. He'd then say he needs a half hour break to chill and smoke weed. Then he'd come back and instead of getting back to work, he'd be like "Hey guys, I'm kinda tired. Lets work on it another day. Going to take a nap".
He sounds like a good man and a saint.
 

StormCell

Member
If a tree falls in a forest with no one around does it make a sound?

Is it possible to observe the truth or do you have your truth conflicting with mine?

Will the world end when you die or will it move on without you?

Is science just a futile attempt to observe something beyond our skills of observation?
These aren't really examples of subjective reality. If a tree falls, it either makes a sound or it doesn't. Either would be factual and therefore objective. Now, if there were two people around when the tree fell, there may be some argument over whether the tree made a sound when it fell or if, in fact, it was the ground that made a sound. There maybe even an argument about whether the tree fell at all or if the ground pivoted and smacked the tree. What's up and what's down?

I'm not keen on subjective reality. You can have two people at varying distances from an event and only one person heard it. That a second person didn't hear it doesn't mean the event made no sound, and neither does it present subjective realities where the event both made a sound and didn't. It's one objective reality where one person was too far away to hear it.
 
No, I don't.

Consider your personal experience of reality. When the mind is "on" the world - your world - is there. When the mind goes into abeyance in deep non-rem sleep or for some other reason, what has happened to your world? It has altogether vanished - you know nothing of it...or anything else. To me, this suggests the opposite of what is assumed. The world exists within you rather than the reverse.

I'm not necessarily suggesting a solipsistic state, rather a sort of shared "dream" with many worlds/realities that intersect and influence each other.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
If a tree falls in a forest with no one around it still makes a sound. sound is a vibration that spreads as an acoustic wave and even if no humans were around to detect the sound wave, there would be other organisms in the forest who would be able to do so, such as birds, deer, foxes etc etc.
 

Wildebeest

Member
The "makes a sound" problem is a linguistic riddle that only has meaning in how you interpret its word play. What does it mean for something to make a sound, compared to make a noise, compared to create compression waves, and so on. The word sound itself is normally taken to mean something that acts upon the sense of hearing, then a sound can only be made if someone is there to hear it. But if you have a "generous" interpretation of sound as something that could potentially be heard by a listener, say in an alternate universe or something, then you could say it makes a sound even if the woods appeared empty.

There is an even shorter and more pithy version of this in Zen koan. "Who is the great master, the magician who makes the grass green?"

As for if I believe in "objective reality". It doesn't matter. I'm told that it exists, even if I don't believe in it.
 
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EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
If a tree falls in a forest with no one around does it make a sound?

Is it possible to observe the truth or do you have your truth conflicting with mine?

Will the world end when you die or will it move on without you?

Is science just a futile attempt to observe something beyond our skills of observation?
Yes.
Yes.
It will move on without me.
No.
 

BigBooper

Member
I believe the people who came up with this line of thinking had a reason to discredit objective reality. $$$
 

Rest

All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
Generally yes. But objective truth may not be as set as we think it is. A good sequence of books to get some insight as to why that might be are Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin, and Cycles of Time by Roger Penrose.



 

Catphish

Member
There are just some things that are unknowable. This is one of them.

My logical mind says, yes, there is an objective reality, and this organic vessel that I presently inhabit allows a unique, temporary perspective and subjective experience of it.

But, in all truth, there's no guarantee that this isn't some custom-made simulation meant for my experience alone that, when completed, disappears like the shutting down of a pc.

Nonetheless, I will conduct myself as best as I can, and try to ease (or at the very least avoid contributing to) the suffering of others, just in case all you fuckers do objectively exist. ;)
 
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Kamina

Golden Boy
Can someone explain which answer i have to choose if i think that the world will continue after i am gone.
 
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Yes, all this bullshit about being in a simulation or things don't happen without an observer are made up shit for thought experiments. You ever see a glitch in real life? Simulation = not a fucking chance. How did things become in the first place? Objective reality = true. Done.

Things that appear magical, unexplained or otherwise are just our lack of understanding.
 

Scotty W

Gold Member
Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation [which accounts for it] that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but [consists in the fact] that the relation relates itself to its own self. Man is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short it is a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two factors. So regarded, man is not yet a self.
 

bitbydeath

Member
If a tree falls in a forest with no one around does it make a sound?
You could leave a camera and the sound would be recorded with/without a person around.
Is it possible to observe the truth or do you have your truth conflicting with mine?
It would be pretty messed up if my observed truths were different from others, such as my blue skies are someone else’s purple skies. You’d think more people would be freaked out if the colour was dramatically different for them.
Will the world end when you die or will it move on without you?
I am but a humble meat suit.
Is science just a futile attempt to observe something beyond our skills of observation?
No, it can seem that way at first though, but science has taken us a long way. Lightbulbs would have been thought of as impossible at one point in time.
 

Wildebeest

Member
You could leave a camera and the sound would be recorded with/without a person around.
All you are saying here is that you can't parse any linguistic difference between a device that records "sounds" and a device that records raw audio signal. It is a word game. If you say that a sound is some sort of experience that happens in the head of a human, then we don't know how to make a machine that experiences sound.
 
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