Is Reality Fake?

[Corpsey]

And in any case, even if it isn't a "SIM", it's as ultimately meaningless and illusory as it would be if it was.

But - also - we're just as programmed as if that was the case. Programmed to be unable to defy the rules of the game even if we know on some level it is a game.

I suppose if we knew FOR SURE it was a game we would be able to act in new ways.

 

[WashYourHands]

Tedium would be a good foundation, mixed with the evolutionary hell of getting your species out of arboreal foraging and eating, then off the planet into the solar system and space.

Our experience of time is emergent. If you could simulate that the geometry of 3D space is less problematic.

Everyone’s out in the snow, so stoned Dad thorts. Sometimes I wonder if the universe is a puzzle that, due to entropy, has to be reset somehow.

 

[catalog]

I don't know about it being fake but I think the idea Matthew talks about in his book, that our brains cant cope with everything, so we get a little section and then a lot of unknown, which psychedelics and meditation or whatever "open up" for us, so we see it all suddenly.

But like platos cave I suppose.

But this isn't what you're getting at is it?

 

[luka]

i wasnt getting at anything specific. it is an 'umbrella' thread.

 

[luka]

the valve idea Matthew talks about he got from Aldous Huxley the doors of perception but i cant remember where huxley got it.

 

[catalog]

Yeah that's right, I think he quotes it pretty directly. But yeah, it's in this Jan fries book as well. Seems a fairly reasonable assertion and makes sense of all those trails you see when you're shrooming

 

[luka]

i wasnt getting at anything specific. it is an 'umbrella' thread.

everything connected to a sense of irreality and fraud. from simulation theorys to bots posing as people to crisis actors

 

[catalog]

Cos we'd explode if we saw it all. Which is doors of perception I suppose. I've never actually read any Huxley, probably should do.

 

[luka]

brave new world, island and doors of perception are all good. not read any of his boring ones though.

 

[shiels]

The reducing valve, reality tunnels. The idea that any model must be reductive by necessity to achieve a goal. signal / noise

 

[catalog]

The fake reality / deep fakes / masks thing sounds like a sort of extension of fake news / future evidencing. Almost like a magick ritual or something, you imagine the reality you want and think of concrete ways in which, if it were true, it would manifest eg if it were reported on a news feed, what would the report look like.

When I was on a government sponsored business course in the early 00s, this was something they got us to do, imagine the future evidence of our businesses

 

[DLaurent]

I like to think like a KGB defector. 'Active Measures' are taken to put us off reality.



Very easy to do in a digital age of 'hyperreality'.

 

[luka]

William Casey may or may not have said "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false" but it's a brilliant quote either way.

 

[shiels]

hyperstition dispenses with this question doesnt it

 

[shiels]

'the spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual deception produced by mass media technologies. it is a world view that has actually been materialised, a view of a world that has become objective.'

 

[poetix]

What if reality doesn't have the basic properties we attribute to it, e.g. mutual exclusion of incompatible outcomes. We think that precisely one out of Everton and Arsenal won the football game between the two teams, but in reality both outcomes were realised; we picture this in terms of "parallel universes", supposing ourselves to live in one and not the other, but there are no "universes" in this sense, just a superposition of all possible eventualities through which we navigate in a systematically blinkered fashion

 

[shiels]

ok but whats the thing that traps us in this timeline

 

[poetix]

Sheer obstinacy

 

[luka]

im going to work out the way to shift to the good one. loads of stuff uses this model of reality nowadays. eg shes living her best life. this is the worst timeline etc

 

[version]

What if reality doesn't have the basic properties we attribute to it, e.g. mutual exclusion of incompatible outcomes. We think that precisely one out of Everton and Arsenal won the football game between the two teams, but in reality both outcomes were realised; we picture this in terms of "parallel universes", supposing ourselves to live in one and not the other, but there are no "universes" in this sense, just a superposition of all possible eventualities through which we navigate in a systematically blinkered fashion

I read an interpretation of The Wake along these lines,

One of Joyce's tactical methods of embracing a universe where you can't "pull back the curtain" and know perfect truths and correct interpretations is by splitting the story at points of description into multiple possible stories/interpretations. When a character is described they are simultaneously attractive and repulsive, tall or short. I think what Joyce is doing here is almost like deriving equations. To create a terribly shoddy metaphor here, most writers solve math problems by inputting the specific numbers of the problem and doing out the math. Joyce leaves the variables general and twists the equation around to find the general solution to a whole class of problems.

Where this metaphor falls apart is actually something I like because Joyce doesn't stay general with his variables/descriptions to do this, he provides every specific example of a variable he can fit into the text. When people talk about finnegans wake being inspired by Vico and his cyclical conception of history where stories repeat (and Joseph Campbell's incredibly popular conception of the heros journey repeating over and over again) I think they are talking about this concept. Finnegans Wake is interested in the patterns that the repeating stories of humanity create when plotted altogether in all their permutations.

To leave a specific example of this in Finnegans Wake that is perhaps most prominent, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker did SOMETHING bad in the park, or he didn't, maybe he exposed himself maybe someone exposed themselves to him, maybe he was pissing drunk and didn't realize he was doing it clearly in eyesight of others.... it is never resolved. Instead every one of these interpretations sums together into an interference pattern and THAT pattern is the story.