Are you dreaming?

If you are in a dream, or to be better explained, in a coma, how would you tell. if you have developed a dream reality in a night in which you made realistic and believable memories how could you tell them apart from reality? then how do you know you aren't dreaming now and you life now is not a dream? for you will forget when you wake up and simply not care about this discussion.
this is a relatively easy topic, I just posted it up for the sake of meaningless conversation.

 

It's also cliche, and even though I've only been here for a few months I would stake my very life on the fact that this has been brought up at least three times in the past. We simply live in a world where we define an existence through many facet such as reliability. This philosophical skepticism, although a fun one to sit around with an discuss-- because who doesn't like the Matrix?-- is easily refutable. Simply prove that I am dreaming or in an alternate state of mind as opposed to truly being awake at 12:43 AM and replying to this topic. Our reliability in discerning things in the world around us already accepts that those things are in a world around us, so in the end it's really just a pointless game of tug-o-war between both viewpoints.