How do I know that anyone besides me is real?I've had this feeling since elementary school that if other people were real with real thoughts, then I'd be able to hear it. I can hear my thoughts as clear as day. Shouldn't I pick up the slightest murmur of someone else?And then there's the world. Since around the same age, I've had recurring fears of being watched, like I'd leave the classroom, and suddenly a monitor would fold down from the ceiling, and everyone would watch and laugh at me. And if not the people around me then someone else, like I was living in a Truman Show.Other times, I wonder if things weren't placed in this world for the sole reason of making it believable. What if everyone occupies the same space but experiences a different dream? What if this world that I am experiencing is unique to me with everything else being an illusion while every other person lives with their unique illusions?I can't say I have any way to be sure.
>>42582687>I've had this feeling since elementary schoolsame but about whether they have soulswhoever came up with NPC theory really nailed it
>>42582731Originally, it was a soul argument: God created a set number, and they get recycled, but the race has grown too large.
>>42582687This is one of those questions that is fundamentally basically impossible to fully answer IMO. But I do get the feeling on occasion too, like something just feeling like it suddenly snaps into place a little too easily, or a thought being somewhat predictive for no real reason.If one thinks about it too much, I think it can get really freaky. Like, there's nothing to say that the entire universe didn't come into existence when you or I were born, and anything else is just to make the experience seem seamless. Nobody can (at least, not now) connect with another observer in a way to test any of this. Maybe someday it will be possible, but even then, I suppose you still can't prove the brain didn't just invent that plumbing to seem convincing anyway. But, really, what matters is, whether it is or isn't, does it really matter? Some would say yes, but to me, your experience still means something, and probably exists for some reason.
>>42582687It's kinda like why do the machines in the matrix bother plugging everyone into one reality simulation. Why not just give each individual their own reality simulation which will be tailored specifically to them and making it impossible to wake up or free anyone else or communicate to anyone else. It's like those memes you see that are like, "YOU WONT BELIEVE THIS BUT YOU ARE IN A COMA AND WE ARE TRYING TO WAKE YOU UP." I hate those memes because I'm like FUCK what if that's actually true and I'm just like AHHH swipe left.
>>42582751>Does it matter?To me, yes. Consciousness is the most-precious thing I can imagine, and likewise, not having it is the most-terrifying.
>>42582759>why do the machines in the matrix bother plugging everyone into one reality simulation. Why not just give each individual their own reality simulation which will be tailored specifically to themThe same reason we go to school with 20+ people in our classes, take standardized tests and assigned numbers, the first one being at birth.
>>42582773but what are they testing us for
>>42582687>felt this way since elementary schoolme too but then I grew up
>>42582687>I’m in elementary school and this is deep
>>42582977So you have a solid refutation of solipsism I assume? Or did you just grow more stupid with time.
>>42582994God is a construct that allows us to move beyond solipsism. That’d literally the purpose of religion: a shared concretization of abstract metaphysics.
>>42582994It's called sex. Try it some time.
>>42583010But first you just make the assumption that other minds are real, with no proof. Also since you can't know for a fact the content of other minds if they even exist, you don't know if you're "sharing" your concretization with anyone at all. Thanks for playing though.
>>42583017From my perspective you and your fembot counterpart are just two robots mimicking animal behavior. I can't prove you have a mind or a soul.
>>42583024so you're just a narcissist. saved you thousands on a shrink. you're not smarter than everyone else
>>42583031And you're a regurgitation machine. A parrot basically. And yes, I am smarter than everyone else. It's a blessing and a curse. Although I don't even accept your premise, I'm arguing from the position that "everyone else" can't even be proven to exist. You assume they do without evidence beyond faulty sense information which dreams and hallucinates things just as real as "reality." That is, you WOULD assume those things if you had any cognitive function, which I doubt.
>>42583020Yeah that’s why it’s called faith retard. If you wanna kill yourself while muttering “all I know is that thought exists” then go ahead. Wouldn’t be the first, I presume
I don't know where in any of my posts I suggested that I wanted to kill myself. The retarded guy who "thinks" "God" exists solely to disprove solipsism has begun projecting. At least, such is my perception of pixels shaped like words that I learned to interpret at the beginning of the universe.
>>42583039>you're just an NPC! WHAAA WHAAAgood luck with that, bitch. you're the drone in my world.
Snort. Here I was thinking the retarded parrots were worthy of a philosophical discussion. My mistake. On with my day. Concessions accepted.
>>42583055btfo so hard that you start EPIC postingGod: 1Narcissistic elementary school kid: 0
>>42583061run away fag. we all know you're OP.
I apologize to OP for enraging the parrots. OP knows I'm not him, that's enough for me. Good luck with your search OP.
>>42583063honestly, from a holy perspective and a satanic perspective. guy has a baby idea full of obvious holes. hope the retard doesn't forget and actually changes his life.
>>42583073I'm not making money from replies, you can quote me unless you're a fucking coward. I really despise arrogant retards like you. You prance around anonymously pretending you have a single good thought, yet you have accomplished nothing.
Two foolish parrots think they have no need for the deepest philosophical question ever considered by the wisest men from all cultures, whether anything about knowledge or reality is provable or not, and they think *I'm* the retard. Let that sink in. Just replying for one last kek.
>>42583090You are, by your own definition, completely fucking alone and talking to yourself. LMAO! Btfo againGod sends his regards
>>42582687You're meant to develop empathy and a theory of mind. Both of these things are needed to actually comprehend, not just understand, that other people are real.For some reason you unfortunately didn't develop at least one of them. And really, the only thing you can do is accept the fact that your gut feeling is completely wrong on this, to see other people as equals to you in all regards.>What if everyone occupies the same space but experiences a different dream?They are. We all have different motivations, goals and responses to things built up through our nurturing and instincts. You're not going to react the exact same way, externally and internally, as anybody else. You are unique, as is everyone else. It's a blend of this uniqueness that forms civilisation and bonds.That last paragraph really illustrates that you lack empathy and or a theory of mind. I genuinely feel awful reading that. It sounds isolating and to an extent scary.
>>42583104You try spending 30+ years with a hallucination that constantly harasses you for responses and tests you and mocks you and denigrates you, and see how good you are at maintaining absolute detachment from the world. So you think you won this argument by saying that I BTFO myself? Well then I was also on the winning side, was I not? I was btfoer and btfoee. Brain in a vat is childsplay compared to the thoughts I have. Why need a brain at all? Mind precedes brain in the experiential mind-first framework anyway. You perceive a world, then you perceive the world telling you that you're perceiving it via a brain and senses. What if the world is lying? How can you prove it's not lying? It calls itself God? Well aren't there a dozen threads right here right now calling God an evil liar? You can't just, "have sex, retard" your way into a winning position in this argument. Just because that argument probably works on you, doesn't mean it works on actual thinking minds. Yeah, the possibility exists that I am talking to no one and the universe is just vibrating back in a certain way to milk me for more information while my mind suffers hallucination after hallucination at the hands of Descartes' Evil Demon. You'd be crazy too, you'd have to be, if you weren't just a bunch of harmonic vibration fine tuned to make me believe you are God or that you talk to God or that you're smarter or more special than I am. I've heard all of it before. Faith is just a different word for willful blindness and submission to an evil entity which refuses to make decent arguments as to why it itself is not in the same solipsistic mess that I am. If it's just me and the God-demon, it has to be in the solipsistic mess too, because there is no escape from it. If you really really want absolute hard irrefutable proof of something this abstract, you will never find it, and all you can do is make peace with the hallucination and wait for the God-Demon to die.
>>42583138Holy jumping to conclusions batman!
>>42583163I'll jump to another one, you're a lolsorandom millennial based on you saying the most quintessential Reddit phrase.But it's not jumping to conclusions, it's drawing a conclusion based on OP very clearly demonstrating questioning in the final paragraph that shows they lack the ability to embody someone else mentally. Unable to comprehend how another person interprets the world, how another person even simply thinks.Even more is OP themselves hints at similar conclusions, acknowledging that everyone has their own unique lives but failing to comprehend that that is the conclusion he's looking for.
At this point, you should know better. It's time to embrace solipsism.You have heard about solipsism before, you have considered it before. It's the idea that only one's own consciousness is sure to exist. This entire world is imagined, by you. You have no idea if it's a person behind this message, you take it for granted by just reading it because everything beyond your immediate experience requires faith, and yet that on itself is giving up to God, your imagination.Your conscious experience is privileged in a way that others' experiences are not, even though they are equally "real". But even if you experienced them, from a perspective of "another character", you would still be "you", right? So what are "you" exactly?You're the sole container underlying the world, but that's because this very moment is your entire world right now. You're both immanent in the world and transcendent beyond it. You're not only equal with the universe, but the universe, while the universe exists within You, you're not limited to the universe or anything you're so far seem from it. In other words, the world is just a part of you, an extension of you, a product of the imagination of your concious-awareness. Everything exists, because only the mental does. All is mind/spirit, and matter is manifestation of consciousness. The Tao, Brahman, Krishna, the Christ: Conscious-presence itself, IS GOD; and this is who you really are: Totality itself.You are not actually afraid of solipsism, your ego is. Solipsism will not kill your ego, but it will make it extremely fluid which is the next best thing: Your ego is God's ego. That fluidity is the reason solipsism isn't popular. It will morph into different things, which you will just have to experience for yourself. But is the only foundation (besides any approximations of that, pointing out to it) that will conclude in your absolute soverignity. Be magician, manifest your wings, and be free.Now, go and play. You're safe.
