Makaze

Working things out in my life.
Well, trying to work things out. I got bored, so I'm wasting a few months on the Internet.

And you?

I dream every night and I've had a few lucid dreams.

The world is not in my head, it is outside of my head, my head is only perceiving it.

You write stories and such while you are awake, not while dreaming.

The holocaust happened because the consequences of it are still alive today.

Okay, then I am moral less often than you are. Acknowledged.

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Do you acknowledge the principal? It sounds like you do. The principle says that no matter what world you are in, it is real to you so long as you know nothing else and can make use of the dynamics of it consistently. Even if the world you have always been in is a dream, it will be real to you if you know nothing else. You have just acknowledged this by conceding my point and instead saying that your world was not one where that has happened to your knowledge.
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Sure. If only my dream existed it would be real to me, but I would need to have a different concept of realism than I have. And I can't make use of its dynamics consistently either. Dream rules do not seem to have any consistency to them at all.


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Yes you can. You can tear them up and use them as cloth for something else or give them to a projection of your mind that is smaller than you because you like to see that projection happy.
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Fine. There is somebody in Africa, an infant who died at birth. I do not know this infant, I will never see it, I will never see anybody who has known it. It is of no use to me. How can it exist then?

Yes, my morality is for myself, but the principles of my morality and the reasons I must be moral are for God and for other people. That it is what matters. I have different reasons than you to be moral, that does not make me less moral, it means we have different perceptions of morality.


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You acknowledge this intellectually, but you are willing to say that things cannot happen simply because they are low on the list. How can I trust your judgment?
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When I say "Cannot", I am generalizing. I really doubt it, so much so that it is to me not worth considering. I do not make a claim to have absolute knowledge when I say such a thing.

Yes I understand your frustration and I apologize for being the cause of it.

There is nothing that is not worth researching, there are only things that are more worth researching than others. And I would consider reattaching heads and magic to be very low on that list.

Just saw your VM that you posted while I was typing, apologies, maybe I should clarify, when I talk about reality in terms of shared existence, I mean that's what I consider reality. Of course I can't know what reality is, so when I talk about mechanics of reality, I'm talking about what I consider to be reality. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

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If you were born into a world where peoples' heads could be put back on that would be real to you.
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But I wasn't.


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Real is 'what you can make use of'.
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I cannot make use of a pair of pants that are too small for me. Do they not exist?

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"I'll choose not to believe in 'cannot' because I have not seen every single occurrence of a head coming off nor am I seeing all of them that are happening right now."
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Because the science I know has proven that it cannot happen, and I trust the knowledge.

Yes, reality would still matter to me. I would act more selfishly because I am not sharing the existence with anyone but myself and nothing is real.

You are misunderstanding me. You say I would kill you in a dream with no regret because I wouldn't have to deal with the consequences, but that's not it at all. I would kill you in a dream with no regret because we don't share an existence. The you I see in a dream is only a part of my brain, I'm not sharing an existence with anyone but myself. So I would have no regrets killing you in a dream if it is what I wanted to do. If I knew I was in a perpetual dream state in which I had to deal with the consequences of my actions, my actions would only be to aid myself.

It would be more real but still not real. Dreams have different rules than reality. I can cut your head off in a dream and you can just pick it up and put it back on and be fine. That isn't possible in reality. That's a big deal.

If I was in a perpetual dream state, I still wouldn't consider it real because I wouldn't be sharing the existence with anybody but myself.

The one in the real world in which we are conversing right now.

Your three questions are simply further knowledge I don't have that I wish to gain.

You are correct in that "Reality" to me is shared existence, as in, I can affect the life of somebody else who is real. Me and you both exist in this world and so we are both real. What I do to you matters to me, but what I do to characters in my dreams do not matter to me, because we do not share an existence (i.e my existence in a dream does not affect dream characters because they are just a part of my brain), my existence is here, in this world, in which my actions have permanent consequences. Actions in a dream are erased the second I wake up.

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I will assume that they could both show you the video in their respective worlds. They are exactly the same up until the divergence, where their memories split off.
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But only one can be trusted the same way only a real painting can be hung on my wall.

What if my goal is attaining knowledge? Then knowing whether I will survive the fall will help this goal. Under practicalism why do you care about unicorns? How could they possibly help you achieve your goals?

Welcome back, by the way.

The painting can be beautiful even if it's not real, it just can't be real, and that matters. I can't hang it on my wall. That makes it less valuable.

Unicorns are beautiful but not real. I can't own one. That's a big deal. That's why I make the distinction.

Regardless of the arbitrary values we assign the concept it is still there. I don't care what the quadratic formula is called, I care about the knowledge.

Another example is, if somebody told me that I could jump off of the Empire State Building and survive, I would wish to trust that knowledge just as much.

Mother 2 is real. I know she gave birth to me because I have seen the video. It matters because I owe her my life and childhood, I do not owe Mother 1 any such thing. She didn't do anything.

Again I do not consider reality arbitrary, you just admitted that whether something is real or not affects how you think about it. Unicorns are interesting and I seek knowledge about them- what cultures believed in them, where the myth may have started, etc. Whether unicorns are real or not is included in the knowledge I seek about them.

Of course I want to trust knowledge I gain. When I learn that the quadratic forumala is the -b +/-( b^2-4ac/2a)^1/2, I want to trust whether it's true or not, otherwise I am going to fail my test. What use is knowledge if I can't trust that it's true?

Again, if that were to happen, they would both be real, but only one of them would matter to me because only one of them is an actual person that exists independently of me, only one of them actually gave birth to me. That matters to me.

No problem. Welcome back.

Because, I have a thirst for knowledge. Despite how "Freeing" it may be I want to have an understanding of the world and my place in it.

I didn't see your other example because you posted it while i was replying to you, sorry.

Well first of all it's generally irrelevant because Dream Characters tend not to remember anything but past dreams. If they did, then they would be functionally just as "Real" as real people- but only one is my actual mother, who gave birth to me and raised me, the other is nothing but a representation of her.

Not to me, but to my actual mother, yes. It matters to me that I have the conversation with my real mother, if I were to realize in the dream that I was dreaming, anything that happened in the dream would instantly stop mattering to me.

This is not because of the functionality, which is the same, but because of other people. Other, real people, matter to me, but I suppose that's just a difference in ideologies (i.e. your practicalism).

Furthermore if this is just as good as reality why brush so many things off under the understanding that it's a dream? Why ignore the need for a scientific explanation of the beginning of the universe (Gosh, is that what we were talking about?), when this universe is just as good as whatever real universe you suppose lies beyond this dream?

No worries.

Okay, then, allow me another question...
If this is a dream, do you not have a desire to wake up? You are always talking about functionality and your "Goals", but what do they matter functionally if none of it is real?

You misunderstand me. I mean if you had a dream about me doing it, not that I had that dream. You are saying that whether I really do it does not matter or not. So if you see me do it in a dream, which I believe you would say is functionally the same as really seeing me do it, would that change your opinion of me? Would you consider me a threat?

I would not exist in that dream. What you would be seeing is a vision of me, it may have the same characteristics of me, but it is not "Me", the same way if I draw a picture of me, it is not me.

Whether something is real or not is not an arbitrary value at all. Whether something is real or not should affect how you think about it. If you had a dream about me raping and killing your entire family, would that change your opinion of the actual me? Because if it would, that's pretty ridiculous. You should not let it change what you think of me because it is not real. The realism of something matters very much.

You know what I meant, you're just incessantly splitting hairs.

You should not believe it because there is no basis to believe it. You are not in a dream because I exist, if this was your dream, you would be the only person who existed. So, by my existence, I have disproved your theory. You can choose to believe I don't exist (Which is rather offensive) and I couldn't argue with it. It's a pretty pointless argument to have. You'd be arguing with somebody who doesn't exist.

xD That's true. You must be scaring them all off normally then.