WhatsAppRedditShareEmailTweetPin0 Shares
How did you start your day today? Did your alarm go off? Did you sleep in or get up right away? Do you exercise in the morning? Take a shower? Eat breakfast? Maybe you skip all of that and go straight to work. There are probably thousands of ways to start your day today. Millions, even. Could you prove to anyone that any of them actually happened if you had to? Could you prove that you even exist? Or that anyone else exists?
For some of us, this is an absurd question. Of course you are real. Of course the world is real. And, really, we could probably stop there. But how do you know? How do you know anything is real besides you? Let's dig a little deeper and see what we can find out.
What is reality?
Most of us take for granted what we see, feel, hear, taste, and smell every day as reality. In practice, we have to live like that. Society can't function unless we all agree that we're actually here and doing something. But just because we all tacitly agree on something doesn't make it reality.
Have you ever had a dream that seemed real? Have you ever seen something out of the corner of your eye that wasn't actually there? The fact is, there are many simple ways to trick almost all of your senses, making you believe something that isn't true. Magicians do it all the time. Illusions trick you into believing one thing when in fact another is true. But few people realize that they encounter such illusions every day.
People who have lost limbs may still feel them thanks to phantom limb syndrome. Numerous psychological disorders and medications can cause hallucinations, both visual and auditory, that can be indistinguishable from reality. A condition called synesthesia can cause one type of sensory information to be perceived through an entirely different sense, allowing people to see shapes while listening to music or, for example, smell something simply by seeing it. In other words, there are many ways in which the world you perceive can be altered in ways that others would consider completely unreal. But to you, it will seem very real.
Psychiatrists note that people are more than willing to believe in their own subjective reality than in the objective reality of others, including independent evidence. This is the power of your own consciousness. If you believe in the truth, why would you agree with a stranger that it's not true?
Imagine you're walking outside wearing a blue shirt. Someone stops you to compliment your gold shirt. You think they're crazy. You're not wearing a gold shirt, you're wearing a blue one. They disagree. They look right at you and clearly see that it's a gold shirt. It sounds absurd, and it sparked a huge controversy online when an image of a dress went viral, which some people mistook for white and gold, while others mistook it for blue and black. The thing is, for most people, perception is reality. And you can't doubt your own perception because it's obvious to you. In reality, it was a blue and black dress. But the people who assumed it was a photo taken in the shadows overreacted and concluded that it was a white and gold dress.
There are theories about how real or unreal the world is. One of the most interesting is the simulation hypothesis.
Modeling hypothesis
If you were asked right now what the odds are that the world is a simulation, what would you say? Some experts say we currently have a roughly 50/50 chance. But if our technology ever advances to the point where we can create artificial consciousness, those odds will shift dramatically in favor of us being a fictional world. How comfortable would that make you? Your entire existence is a coin toss.
Neil deGrasse Tyson said it's hard to argue with the possibility that this is true. To support this idea, he asks you to imagine computing power today and how it has evolved over time. How you could create a massive world like Minecraft or The Sims on a computer. Or a seemingly intelligent program like Large Language Models and ChatGPT. Now imagine what a computer will be like in 50 years. Or in 100 years. Imagine how powerful those computers will be and how realistic their worlds will be. Imagine being able to program a virtual person and make them think they're real. Now imagine you're that virtual person. If all of that were software, how could you possibly know anything different?
Even more astonishing is his suggestion that one of these simulated people could invent a computer in its own simulated world. And then, as technology advances, it could create its own simulated world within the simulation. This could go on forever, creating thousands, millions, countless simulated worlds within new simulations. And he said: if you think about it, what are the chances that you're in the one original, real world? Statistically, the chances are very small. Statistically, we're all probably just pretending. We're programs, playing out a simulation as dictated by some algorithm. We only have free will because we think so. Because we're not programmed to think otherwise.
One of the most difficult aspects of the simulation theory is that, given our current level of knowledge and technology, we have no way to prove or disprove the theory.
I think, therefore I am.
Although simulation theory is relatively new, only a couple of decades old, doubts about reality have been around for much longer. The philosopher René Descartes famously said, "I think, therefore I am." This statement was an affirmation of reality. But, more specifically, it was an affirmation of Descartes's own reality. This means he was certain of his own existence. Technically, one cannot be certain of Descartes's existence. One cannot be certain of the existence of anyone outside oneself. Because the only thing we truly know is what's inside our own heads. As we saw with altered perception, anything that comes from outside is potentially distorted or deceptive.
Descartes tried to get to the heart of how we know anything, and he based his understanding on the idea of doubt. He believed that everything outside of us must be subject to doubt, except that which itself doubts. In order to doubt everything else, there must be something that causes doubt, and that something was the "I" in the phrase, "I think, therefore I am.".
It's worth noting that even your inner perceptions can't be trusted. Mental illness or chemical exposure can easily trick you into thinking you're Napoleon Bonaparte, rather than who you really are. Or perhaps you are Napoleon, and the rest of us are suffering from a misperception. So, the principle "I think, therefore I am" still applies to you, but the question of who you really are may remain open.
Ultimately, Descartes' conclusions boiled down to the fact that it's more logical to believe everything in the world as real because it's simpler, to a greater or lesser degree. But other philosophers have delved deeper into this idea. The problem is that, from a scientific perspective, it's very difficult to approach. As a philosophical exercise, it's not a problem. But from the standpoint of providing precise scientific proof of reality, if we accept that science in this reality will obey the rules of a false reality, this makes the task quite difficult.
Scientific attempts to prove that reality exists.
Unless you're currently experiencing an existential crisis, you're probably wondering how we know the world is real. We can't just accept that it's unknowable, can we? There has to be something more. And rest assured, many people have gone to great lengths to find a way to prove that you are real, your cat is real, Boston is real.
Experiments have been conducted proving its reality. It's a strange assertion, but that's the point. Essentially, if you can't trust your senses, how can you determine the existence of something outside yourself? To do that, you need to do something independent of your senses. Taking this to its logical conclusion would mean, for most of us, that it's an impossible task.
In one experiment, the researchers tested quantum mechanical theories that suggest reality doesn't exist until it's observed. One of the most popular examples is Schrödinger's cat. You can't tell whether the cat is alive or dead until you look inside the box. But there are other examples in physics, particularly where you can't determine the location of a particle until you see it. In the experiment, the team essentially proved that reality is the same regardless of who observes it, making it objective or "real.".
Another experiment conducted by Chinese researchers delved deeper into quantum entanglement, showing that reality doesn't truly exist until you look for it. In quantum mechanics, particles exist in a particular state only when you observe them. Until they are observed, they essentially exist in multiple states.
Using quantum entanglement to observe two entangled particles—that is, two particles connected to each other over a significant distance—researchers have determined that these observable properties don't exist until you see them. This is certainly somewhat esoteric, to say the least. But it does suggest that reality exists when we look at it. This is certainly a better conclusion than concluding that reality doesn't exist at all.
«"Wigner's Friend" is another unusual experiment that touches on the idea of reality. In this experiment, Wigner's friend is a scientist in the lab. He observes a particle and sees its state—something we've already determined, something you can't know until you see it. But he saw it, so he knows. He observed the particle in a state with its spin going up.
Wigner is outside the laboratory. Wigner doesn't know what happened during the experiment. But he can mathematically justify the idea that the particle is in an indeterminate state, where its spin can be up or down. And scientifically, he'll be right, even though his friend is also right in knowing that the true state is spin up.
In this experiment, both men have different perceptions of reality, and yet both are right, based on our understanding of science. The conclusion? Perhaps reality is subjective, or perhaps it is objective, and we're missing some pieces of the puzzle to understand it.
There's one thing to remember here, especially if you're feeling the anxiety that you might just be a simulated person in a simulated world: reality still exists. You're likely living a long, rich life. You'll do thousands of things and meet thousands of people. You'll try interesting foods, fall in love. You might travel. You'll have good days and bad days. Even if none of this were real in the sense you currently understand the word, would it matter? After all, if you're living your entire life and it's just a simulation, isn't it as real as you need it to be? Just think about it.
Other articles that may interest you