What if?

[Jeff777]

What if you were actually in a dream right now? I don't mean your average ordinary day to day False Awakenings. I mean what if you had some kind of accident that you couldn't remember and you're in a coma right now but you're.. dreaming? What if existence as we know it was just one big giant elusive dream in which you're the unconscious creator of? Religion, government systems, all of those things are your unconscious creations (butterfly effect?) and you've been unaware of it up until this point. How do you know that the entire universe and existence as you know it won't cease to exist once you take your last breath? What if this very post was the first hint at reality you've been given since the time you lost awareness? What if? All the world's a stage and you're the unaware director? What if?

[Invader]

Well, would it make any difference?

[sloth]

I have also thought of the idea of: What if you were just "created" one second ago, complete with your neural connections, which means that all of your memories are constructed, and are all false?

[Jeff777]

Well, would it make any difference? If it had merit to it? Undoubtedly. 180 degree perception change. Suddenly, you're now god. Not some self-help believe in yourself type of thing. You're the alpha and the omega. I have also thought of the idea of: What if you were just "created" one second ago, complete with your neural connections, which means that all of your memories are constructed, and are all false? False memories. I like that. Sometimes the brain can't differentiate between what it remembers and what it created anyway.

[Raspberry]

I was thinking about this earlier today actually. Standing in the kitchen thinking; "what if I'm in a dream, but I've just been dreaming for so long that I've forgotten my actual reality?" Creeped out.

[Jeff777]

I was thinking about this earlier today actually. Standing in the kitchen thinking; "what if I'm in a dream, but I've just been dreaming for so long that I've forgotten my actual reality?" Creeped out. It is a trippy rabbit hole type of thing if you think about it for awhile...

[Arra]

I don't really find such questions interesting when the scenario in question is so far fetched. But if it were true, it would make a difference. The difference between an outside world existing objectively and existing in your mind. It might not change your experience, but to anyone for whom truth is relevant, the situation would be very different.

[Invader]

If it had merit to it? Undoubtedly. 180 degree perception change. Suddenly, you're now god. Not some self-help believe in yourself type of thing. You're the alpha and the omega. Ah, so you effectively become lucid and can change things all of a sudden. That makes a world of difference! If however all of the world remained a construct of your sub-conscious, and you lacked the ability to make conscious changes, what if? What if?

[Jeff777]

Ah, so you effectively become lucid and can change things all of a sudden. That makes a world of difference! If however all of the world remained a construct of your sub-conscious, and you lacked the ability to make conscious changes, what if? What if? Yeah. There you go. In some lucid dreams, while I am certainly aware.. I have trouble materializing things. I don't see how that's any different from me being in the waking world and not being able to materialize things. If absolute belief in ones abilities and their all encompassing knowledge of their own self-created world inside a lucid dream is what it takes to engage in god mode, what if that, to a very heightened degree, is all it takes to become the aware god in the waking world?

[Maria92]

The Ash Ketchum Theory

[DeletePlease]

The moment I wake up, I'm going to present a revolutionary idea to the world: the iPod.

[Raspberry]

The moment I wake up, I'm going to present a revolutionary idea to the world: the iPod. Bah! They'll either scoff and say it's impossible or they'll have something way cooler But you can try!

[Jeff777]

The moment I wake up, I'm going to present a revolutionary idea to the world: the iPod. Depends on how long you've been sleeping for. Technology may be more advanced in the real world than you think. You may be thinking iPod while the world is now just beaming music directly from satellites into the ears of people based on their present playlists at home. They'll rewind songs by shifting their eyes quickly to the left twice and go forward by shifting right twice.

[Xei]

Connecting a hard drive to some earphones was an original invention? You shittin me bro? Anyway, with the greatest respect... Descartes's Meditations was published in what, the 17th century? This path's so well trodden it's basically a muddy ditch; don't we get one of these threads on DV weekly? Yes, there is no way at all of knowing if I am dreaming, or if I'm a brain in a vat, along with everybody else or nobody. Perhaps when I die I'll find out; perhaps I won't; perhaps there'll be nothing to find out. And yes, contrary to what some people have said, I would find it extremely profound if everybody I know isn't really there. However, as I don't wish to spend my life in a state of utter despondence, I'm just going to give the universe the benefit of the doubt. Oh, but by the way: the Michelson-Morely experiment around a hundred years ago showed that there is no absolute time. So even if everybody is real, we know for sure that there is absolutely no basis for your thinking that they're here at the same time you are. Ruminate over that only if you have guts of concrete.

[IndieAnthias]

Well, would it make any difference? Here's something I thought of, not claiming originality or anything because it's probably been said before. There is, most certainly, such a thing as "objective reality". It is probably unknowable to humans, no matter how much we advance. So, while it may not be correct to say "there is no such thing as objective reality", it is not such a blunder to say that "there is no such thing as objective reality as far as humans are concerned." This seems like useless thinking because we base our behavior on something like objective reality (the part of it we are privileged to see) and have not yet been let down by it. Let's call this "consistent subjectivity". This is more accurate than "objectivity" and it does not hurt to call it what it is. In fact, thinking of it in these terms (consistent subjectivity) will make sure the door is always open for better understanding.

[Invader]

the Michelson-Morely experiment around a hundred years ago showed that there is no absolute time. So even if everybody is real, we know for sure that there is absolutely no basis for your thinking that they're here at the same time you are. How big can the time difference be? Are we talking fractions of a nano-second or months/years? I looked up the experiment and it had to do with the [falsified] theory of the medium in which light travels. But there was something about length contraction too... Care to elaborate?

[Xei]

Light doesn't travel in a medium, that was the point of the experiment. Although it's extremely counter intuitive, if you run towards light, it will hit you at the same speed as if you were running away from it. The consequences of this fact are profound. It is wrong to think of space as a set of coordinates through which things move; rather, things just have positions relative to each other. The same applies to time; whether or not two events happen simultaneously is relative to the observer (Relativity of simultaneity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). It's not a case of things being out of sync by a few seconds; it's a case of our entire concept being totally wrong.

[Invader]

This is where my understanding of physics falls apart. If photons hit an object at the same speed regardless of the velocity of the object, does that mean that light isn't supposed to undergo the doppler effect, or is that effect independent of the phenomenon we're talking about? Also, by observer I take it you mean any object/particle that can be affected by (or used to "detect") two separate events, is that right? As far as the "coordinate system" stance vs the "positions relative to one another" stance, I'm not sure I understand the difference. Does a coordinate system the way we're talking about it suggest that the universe would have to have an origin, or center, or would an origin be arbitrary? Does having positions relative to one another mean that the distance between objects A and B will look different depending on where they are observed? I always figured that if we could observe every element of the universe at the same time, there could be an accurate measure of the time that lapses in between every event... Or, is something only an event when it's "observed" by something? So many questions, tell me what I have wrong.

[Xei]

I'm no expert either. This is special relativity; it came up my course but I haven't had time to look at it properly yet, so I only have a superficial knowledge. The doppler effect is separate. I think the explanation of that is the expansion of space (which comes under general relativity), but I don't know. I didn't make the point about coordinates very well. It's this: you can't make an absolute coordinate system. So, in your words, you can't label the centre of the universe, or indeed any other object, like the sun, as the origin of an unmoving coordinate system, and then have everything else moving through it. When we move through space, we are not moving through an objective entity; we're just changing our positions relative to other things. Everything has its own different coordinate system and things look different within that specific system. Distances can look different. This depends on your velocity. Time, which was the main point I was making, is also relative to you. There's a certain kind of particle, I can't remember the name, which shoots down to Earth from space at a very high speed. The puzzling thing is that its half life is too short for it to touch the Earth before it decays, but it does so anyway. From the perspective of Earth, this is because time is passing much slower for the particle, so from this perspective it has more time to reach the surface. From the perspective of the particle, therefore, time on Earth is passing much faster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox). Also, as the particle still has to get all the way down to Earth's surface, in what, for it, is still the very short time before which it decays, what happens is that the distance decreases. In the direction it's travelling, everything is squished towards it, meaning the particle has a much smaller distance to travel before it decays. Anyway, the basic point I was making is the answer to your last question. No, this is impossible; in fact, it doesn't even make sense. It's meaningless. The thing is that there is no single, absolute time at which everything can be said to happen. The simultaneous events for one omnipotent object are a different set of events for another. The concept of a certain set of events objectively happening at one moment, and then the next set of events objectively happening in the next, is no longer viable.

[Invader]

Mind feels like.. Jelly. @_@ That certainly changes a few things in my world view!

[Savy]

If you're unaware that you're dreaming, it wouldn't matter at all.

[Dannon Oneironaut]

One of the point of practicing lucid dreaming, is to take control of your dream, and realize that YOU are the dreamer. You are number 1, this is your dream. This theory is like the Matrix. In the Matrix, Neo realizes that HE is the one. The others are aware that they are in a dream, but they haven't realized that it is THEIR dream. In dreams, there are many subconscious things which grab our power. When we feel fear or shame in a dream, then something has our power and we do not realize that it is our dream. Then you cannot do your true will. Looking at life in this way can enable you to take control of your life as if it were a dream, so that you can do your true will. Realizing that THIS life is yours and yours alone, just like a dream. You are right, it doesn't really matter if you are dreaming right now or not, and we can never know. That leaves us a choice of how to live, and how to create our life. As long as whatever choice you make, you understand that your understanding is limited and reality is much more than you can imagine. This gives you infinite room to grow in. As you live, so you dream. As you dream, so you live. Living and dreaming becomes creative. And this life becomes your creation.

[InvisibleWoman]

What if you were actually in a dream right now? I don't mean your average ordinary day to day False Awakenings. I mean what if you had some kind of accident that you couldn't remember and you're in a coma right now but you're.. dreaming? What if existence as we know it was just one big giant elusive dream in which you're the unconscious creator of? Religion, government systems, all of those things are your unconscious creations (butterfly effect?) and you've been unaware of it up until this point. How do you know that the entire universe and existence as you know it won't cease to exist once you take your last breath? What if this very post was the first hint at reality you've been given since the time you lost awareness? What if? All the world's a stage and you're the unaware director? What if? gfg Light doesn't travel in a medium, that was the point of the experiment. Although it's extremely counter intuitive, if you run towards light, it will hit you at the same speed as if you were running away from it. The consequences of this fact are profound. It is wrong to think of space as a set of coordinates through which things move; rather, things just have positions relative to each other. The same applies to time; whether or not two events happen simultaneously is relative to the observer (Relativity of simultaneity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). It's not a case of things being out of sync by a few seconds; it's a case of our entire concept being totally wrong. One of the point of practicing lucid dreaming, is to take control of your dream, and realize that YOU are the dreamer. You are number 1, this is your dream. This theory is like the Matrix. In the Matrix, Neo realizes that HE is the one. The others are aware that they are in a dream, but they haven't realized that it is THEIR dream. In dreams, there are many subconscious things which grab our power. When we feel fear or shame in a dream, then something has our power and we do not realize that it is our dream. Then you cannot do your true will. Looking at life in this way can enable you to take control of your life as if it were a dream, so that you can do your true will. Realizing that THIS life is yours and yours alone, just like a dream. You are right, it doesn't really matter if you are dreaming right now or not, and we can never know. That leaves us a choice of how to live, and how to create our life. As long as whatever choice you make, you understand that your understanding is limited and reality is much more than you can imagine. This gives you infinite room to grow in. As you live, so you dream. As you dream, so you live. Living and dreaming becomes creative. And this life becomes your creation. As above, so below.

[Raz]

What if... There is only one of us here?

[really]

What if <insert mental nonsense here>? These kind of questions are just a waste of your own time; best kept for lucid dreaming only.